Best bets
1.5pts each-way Tom Kim @ 33/1
1.5pts each-way Sepp Straka @ 50/1
1pt each-way Lucas Glover @ 66/1
1pt each-way Brian Harman @ 33/1
2pts win Jon Rahm @ 8/1
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The FedEx Cup playoffs tee off in Elvis territory at TPC Southwind in Memphis with the top 70 on the points list doing battle for the right to go one more step towards life-changing riches. Only 50 go through to Olympic Fields next week when 20 more will be eliminated, leaving only the elite 30 to line up for the big Tour Championship finale at East Lake, Georgia.
This is quite a change from past years when 125 set off and there was one more qualifying tournament. The new-look FedEx format has worked against ‘name’ players such as Adam Scott and the out-of-form Justin Thomas who finished outside the top 70. These are three weeks when the stakes have never been higher.
There’s a further $20m to be won at St Jude where sadly last year’s winner Will Zalatoris remains sidelined and unable to defend the title he won in a playoff with Sepp Straka, the big Austrian who finished joint runner-up at Hoylake and is a warm favourite to be in Luke Donald’s Ryder Cup squad in Rome next month.
Given his course and current form – just before that impressive Open performance he won his second PGA Tour title with a riot of birdies at the John Deere Classic – Straka has to be on your short list this week despite the presence of the Big Three, Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, and everyone else who matters.
Rahm’s share of second place behind runaway winner Brian Harman at The Open has seen the Spaniard regain the No. 1 spot from Scheffler and victory in Memphis – it would be the fifth of this campaign – would extend his lead.
He will be well aware that the guy who is No. 1 after next week’s second leg gets a ten-stroke start for the final. Unlike a racing handicap where the best horse has to give weight away, the best golfer’s talent is rewarded rather than penalised. Last year McIlroy started five behind Scheffler under this bizarre system, dropped four strokes on the first two holes yet was still able to turn it all around by shooting 63-66 on the weekend to win by one and pocket $18m.
But they are all off levels at St Jude, thank goodness, and I’m expecting Rahm to come out on top of his two main market rivals. He has the best course form with a fifth and a seventh whereas the other two surprisingly missed the cut last year, Scheffler after previously finishing 14th and 15th and McIlroy’s MC-12-47-4 indicating that a relatively short (7243 yards) course with only two par fives does not play to his strengths.
The same comment of course applies to the other two but now that he has regained the No. 1 spot, Rahm will be focused on retaining it and that record-breaking 63 in round three at Hoylake tells us his game is in tip-top shape.
Scheffler arrives with question marks over his putting and given the modest St Jude record of all three, it’s a perfect scenario for a surprise winner.
It could be birdie machine Straka who shot four rounds in the 60s last year but so did Lucas Glover who tied with Open hero Harman for third place. The 43-year-old who won the US Open back in 2009 is in the midst of a renaissance after switching to the broomstick-style putter that has kept fellow-twitcher Scott in the game in his forties.
It has to be significant that Glover’s St Jude effort was easily his best of the year and with his confidence at an all-time high after Sunday’s Wyndham victory he will surely figure again if he has any adrenaline left after last week’s heroics. The win hardly came out of the blue as three July efforts produced a 4-6-5 run.
He is a last-gasp qualifier for St Jude as the Wyndham triumph lifted him from 112th, way outside the top 70, to 49th. Can he make capital out of this unexpected opportunity? Fitzdares go 66/1 but I suspect he will outperform those odds.
This could be a massive week too for Tom Kim, the dazzling Korean who won new admirers by shrugging off a painful ankle injury to limp into a four-way dead-heat for second at The Open a week after a similarly impressive display at the Scottish Open.
He withdrew from last week’s Wyndham to rest the ankle so there has to be a slight worry about him being 100% but they do say beware the injured golfer! The 21-year-old, already a dual winner, finished 13th at St Jude on first acquaintance last year and Southwind with its accent in accuracy over length looks the perfect assignment.
His older compatriot Benny An is also playing superb golf – third in Scotland, T2 at Wyndham – and is a likely longshot and what’s stopping quiet man Harman winning back to back? The Open champion lets his clubs do the talking and if that putter is still hot, this is an ideal course for him, as he proved with last year’s T3.
Matt Fitzpatrick who shared fifth spot with Rahm last year, could be Britain’s best chance and I can see Collin Morikawa and Hideki Matsuyama getting into the mix too in a hot, sticky week with temperatures hitting 90F and thunderstorms could disrupt play.
Best bets
2pts each-way Ruoning Yin @ 33/1
1pt each-way Linn Grant @ 22/1
1pt each-way Leona Maguire @ 16/1
1pt each-way Nasa Hataoka @ 22/1
1pt each-way Rose Zhang @ 16/1
French star Celine Boutier’s stunning back-to-back victories, a fairytale first Major in her home country followed by an equally convincing display in the Scottish Open, has teed up the final female Major of the year, the AIG Open at glorious Walton Heath, for a European triumph.
Could it be Boutier herself or is asking her for three in row just too much? Morale could not be higher and this is a Major that has produced recent European winners. Britain’s Georgia Hall, 500/1 German Sophia Popov and the experienced Swede Anna Nordqvist, an adopted Brit as she married a Scotsman, fended off all-comers to provide three of the last five champions.
South Africa’s Ashley Buhai is the defending champion as the Open goes for the first time to the famous Surrey heathland course where the 1981 Ryder Cup was played, mostly in teeming rain with a one-sided scoreline in favour of the finest team the USA has ever fielded. That domination has not stretched to the Women’s Open as we have to go back to 2014 to find the last American champion.
Unless the uber-talented Nelly Korda or new sensation Rose Zhang conjures up the magic, I’m expecting their lean run to continue on a composite course of Old and New that’s short of 6700 yards and a test of accuracy and course management. Staying out of the deep fairway bunkers and clingy heather is the key to victory.
This is a year of change in the women’s game. Stars like Lexi Thompson and Danielle Kang are in decline, Inbee Park, that mopper-up of Majors, has gone off to have a baby (born in April) and Chinese No. 1 Shanshan Feng has called it a day. The younger generation are taking over. Three of the first four Majors fell to Lilia Vu, Ruoning Yin and Allisen Corpuz, all young first-timers with a combined age of 70.
Chinese sensation Yin, at 20 the youngest and the one with most potential, has won the PGA and the LA Open in her rookie year and has just finished third at the Scottish. Cool and composed, at 33/1 she looks the best value.
Boutier would be quite a story if she were to pull off the hat-trick. I won’t believe that until it happens but Europe has such a strong hand with Leona Maguire, Hall, Charley Hull and the exciting Swedes Linn Grant and Maja Stark, great rivals and friends. Wouldn’t it be great if these two roommates were to finish first and second?
It could happen: Grant has just made her US breakthrough at the Dana Open while feisty Stark was contesting the lead for the first three days at the Scottish.
Maguire, debutante star of the last Solheim Cup, has also opened her LPGA account and continues to impress on a weekly basis while Hull, after an otherwise mediocre summer, played out of her skin when taking second place at the US Open. She’s capable of anything but I think Maguire and Grant will be better suited by the course.
The last American to win the British was short-hitting Mo Martin back in 2014 and it is surprising the magnificent Korda hasn’t made more of an impact. Her year was interrupted by back problems and although she has won a small tournament since, is she back to her very best?
I’m more interested in former amateur star Zhang, like Yin only 20 yet a winner on her first LPGA start. Obviously a big-occasion player, she has already finished in the top ten in three Majors and will win some sooner rather than later.
Atthaya Thitikul and Yuka Saso are two more fearless new-generation stars capable of winning this but my final pick is Nasa Hataoka, at 5ft 1 is the mighty atom of Japanese golf. She arrives on the back of finishing third at the US Open and fourth at the Evian. Her first Major is well overdue.
Best bets
3pts win Bryson DeChambeau @ 9/1
2pts each-way Matt Wolff @ 33/1
1.5pts each-way Henrik Stenson @ 33/1
The golfing world was gobsmacked when Bryson DeChambeau shot a 58 at The Greenbrier on Sunday to add to his 61 the previous day to turn the LIV tournament in North Carolina into a rout. But can he do it again this weekend in New Jersey?
Nobody shoots 119 for 36 holes unless it’s a Mickey Mouse course which The Old White, challenging enough to be used for a Ryder Cup and nine editions of the Greenbrier Classic on the PGA Tour, most certainly is not.
DeChambeau’s first victory since he joined the the upstart LIV tour has seen him installed as favourite for LIV Bedminster, the tournament Henrik Stenson surprised everyone by winning on his LIV debut, the Swede tossing away the Ryder Cup captaincy in return for a reported $40m signing-on fee.
He had been playing so indifferently on the regular tour that most thought the 2016 Open champion was a yesterday’s man but there was no fluke about his two-shot victory over Dustin Johnson and Matt Wolff on the Trump National course at Bedminster.
Stenson seems to like Trump real estate as his fourth at Washington DC on another Trump National design was his best performance this year, closely followed by his sixth at LIV London and 13th in the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool.
While expecting a sturdy title defence from Stenson, don’t be surprised if last year’s co-runner-up Wolff turns the tables. The American seems to have taken Brooks Koepka’s criticism of his attitude to heart as he put in his best shift of the year at The Greenbrier, sharing third place behind DeChambeau and Mito Pereira.
Bedminster, a much longer course (7580 yards) than The Old White at Greensboro and better suited to his power game, is the perfect track for him to open his LIV account if the DeChambeau show turns out to be a one-off.
Bryson finished 14 shots and 29 places behind Wolff at Bedminster but that was a different DeChambeau, a wayward genius desperately searching for a golf game. That finally arrived at the weekend with a flawless putting performance that made the most of 350-yard tee shots. When the “mad scientist” is in the zone and finds a method he believes in, punters should stick with him.
LIV Bedminster is a 54-hole tournament teeing off on Friday with a shotgun start with $4m to the winner. Temperatures in the mid-80s, dry for round one but heavy rain to follow.
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