Best bets
2pts each-way Justin Thomas @ 14/1
1pt each-way Scottie Scheffler @ 5/1
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Tiger Woods’ comeback in his charity tournament, the Hero World Challenge – his first PGA Tour appearance since pulling out injured in round three of the Masters – will get all the headlines in a fascinating week when two national Opens, the Australian and the South African, will help keep golf junkies glued to their TV screens round the clock.
No real point in going to bed with the action in Sydney teeing off on Sky at 1am, time for a snooze and breakfast before we’re off to Johannesburg at 10.00 and a leisurely dinner before seeing how Tiger and company are doing in the Bahamas at 6.30pm. That’s Thursday through Sunday sorted then.
Now what about a winner … or two … or three? Try an each-way treble on Justin Thomas at 14/1 for the Hero, Dan Bradbury at 16/1 in South Africa and Marc Leishman at 16/1 in Oz. That 2634/1 return if they all cop should pay for a nice few Christmas drinks! They may not all win but should be there or thereabouts.
Let’s start with Tiger’s fun tournament. Let’s pray it’s fun for him too. He had an ankle fused in April but is still in some pain. We don’t want to see a repeat of the distressing pictures that went round the world from Augusta. At 50/1 with Fitzdares, he’s 19th in the elite field of 20 headed by defending champion Viktor Hovland at 15/4 and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler at 5/1.
This is not an official tournament so victory here would not be his record-breaking 83rd on the PGA Tour. Even so, no buggies allowed so he still has to walk 72 holes on the Ernie Els-designed 7449-yard par 72 Albany course in New Providence.
The last time we saw him at the Masters in April he made the cut, just, then withdrew with an inflamed heel after seven holes of the weather-delayed third round when in 54th and last place of those who made the weekend. On his only other 2023 start he also made the cut, at Riviera, played all four days and finished T45.
He is reliably reported to be walking much better now and striping it 290 yards down the middle. An open, flat resort course in a balmy 75 degrees, even with two holes in excess of 600 yards and five par fives, in a relaxed atmosphere far removed from Major stress should see him in a good light, yet at 48 next month he can only occasionally be the Tiger who won 15 Majors. But Woods never enters a tournament just to make up the numbers – he’s in it to win it so if you want a pound each-way you will be on a trier.
Woods has won five of these end-of-term get-togethers but none at Albany and none since 2011. This is the eighth World Challenge in the Bahamas and the last two are virtually mirror images of each other: Hovland won both, Scheffler was runner-up in both – and Thomas not only finished fifth in both but fifth again in the last pre-Covid one in 2019.
FedEx Cup winner and Ryder Cup hero Hovland is now regarded as an even better golfer than he was last year. Scheffler’s putting problem is less likely to surface in this minimal-pressure and relaxed atmosphere. So there’s no reason, bar the law of averages, why they should not dominate proceedings for a third straight year.
On current form, Max Homa, the shining light in an underpowered US Ryder Cup display and impressive again when romping away with the Nedbank Challenge on his Sun City debut earlier this month, would be a threat but was only 17th on his Albany bow 12 months ago.
Although the prize money is good ($1m to winner, $100,000 for last) some treat the Hero more seriously than others. It is hard to credit, for example, that Jordan Spieth would have finished 15th, 16th and last in the three most recent renewals if he’d been trying on every shot. But the record book tells us that Thomas wants this – and wants it badly to give him an upbeat climax to the worst playing year of his career.
There has been an appreciable upturn in his game with 12th at the Wyndham being followed by fifth at Fortinet and fourth on a South African sojourn to the Nedbank, plus a brave Ryder Cup showing in Rome. If, as those brighter efforts suggested, the wayward driving and a putting stroke totally lacking in confidence were on the mend. then Albany is the sort of forgiving course where he can look the JT of old. Thomas each-way rates the best value with four places being paid out.
It was a comeback year for Rickie Fowler, ending the drought with that Rocket Mortgage win, and his Albany record (a win and three top-fives) brings him into the conversation too but I don’t fancy the Brits, Matt Fitzpatrick (only 12th and 13th the last two years) or Justin Rose, or 2023 Major winners Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman.
A big welcome back, though, to Will Zalatoris, making his first start since the Players Championship in March. The 2022 St Jude winner has been recuperating from back surgery but is finally ready go again.
Best bets
2pts each-way Marc Leishman @ 16/1
1pt each-way Ryo Hisatsune @ 25/1
1pt each-way Cam Davis @ 17/2
1pt each-way Joaquin Niemann @ 14/1
Min Woo Lee goes for the down-under double at the Australian Open after winning the Aussie PGA title with a degree of comfort in Queensland on Sunday but is likely to find it a tougher assignment in a field strengthened by a couple of decent Americans, Nick Hardy and Patrick Rodgers, coming over and a LIV contingent out in force.
The biggest name in the field is 2022 Open champion Cameron Smith but he embarrassed himself in his home state last week by missing the cut after a second-round 78 – “my worst day as a pro”. He was 21 behind the leader, a “totally unacceptable” situation. Even though he’s the highest-ranked golfer in the line-up, the LIV standout is not one to trust with hard cash right now.
The title went abroad at Victoria & Kingston Heath last year when 6ft 6in Pole Adrian Meronk put local heroes Adam Scott and Min Woo to the sword with 20 birdies and three eagles in the last three days, but the betting says the placings will be turned round at a different venue, the Australian club at Sydney suburb Rosebery where the bulk of the tournament is being played. Meronk’s last three sub-standard results suggest trying so hard to get a Ryder Cup place has drained him.
At a 7207-yard par 72, it is the oldest club in the country, has hosted 21 Opens and twice been revamped by Jack Nicklaus. Its cavernous bunkers and general shot-making requirement are reminiscent of Walton Heath. It’s a placement over power course. The last winner there was Cam Davis in 2017 with an 11-under score and the last winner at The Lakes, a shorter layout to be used in conjunction for the first two days, was Mexican star Abe Ancer the following year.
Min Woo and Scott, who won his national Open 14 years ago and was runner-up to Meronk last year, deservedly head the market but two other Aussies, Marc Leishman and Davis, might be better value. Cam won here six years ago and warmed up with a fair T7 in the PGA but it is canny Leishman, bubbling up after second place in LIV’s Chicago tournament and a fast-finishing third (64 on Sunday) at the PGA, who rates the No. 1 vote.
Like Thomas at the Hero, this six-time PGA Tour winner and Open Championship runner-up has struggled for much of the year but is fighting his way out and needs that W more than most. Turning 40, as Leishman did last month, often galvanises a golfer into recreating his heights in case time is running out and that could be the case with Marc.
Another LIV Aussie in the field is Sydneyite Matt Jones and he’s a dual Australian Open winner on this week’s course. But it’s hard to pick him on what he has shown on the Saudi-backed rebel circuit this year.
Rikuya Hoshino finished runner-up to Min Woo at the PGA but for my money Ryo Hisatsune is a more likely winner for Japan. The French Open winner put in yet another good shift when T13 last week. He’s wonderfully consistent and at 21 has plenty of scope for improvement.
Joaquin Niemann, another LIV man, got us the place money last week and is certain to play a hand and although it’s hard on what they.have done recently to recommend American raiders Hardy and Rodgers, both still awaiting their first solo victory in the States, remember it was in Australia that another visiting American, Harold Varner, found that elusive first success eight years ago.
There’s a fair bit of rain heading to the Sydney area with thundershowers threatening to disrupt proceedings on Saturday. Good to see we’re not the only ones getting wet.
Best bets
2pts each-way Dan Bradbury @ 16/1
1.5pts each-way Zander Lombard @ 20/1
1.5pts each-way Dean Burmester @ 13/2
1pt each-way Matti Schmid @ 20/1
1pt each-way treble Thomas @ 14/1, Leishman @ 16/1, Bradbury @ 16/1
Yorkshire rookie Dan Bradbury has taken a real shine to South Africa and why not as it was in Johannesburg this very week 12 months ago that he bagged his first DP World Tour win on only his third pro start.
The love affair continued at the Nedbank a few weeks back when he took fifth place to hot American Max Homa at Sun City (blew up a bit, should have finished higher) and a sizzling last-round 64 on Sunday saw him tearing up the Joburg Open leaderboard into third place.
Sixty under for his last five starts which also feature two good efforts in Spain and a Tour Championship 17th, the 24-year-old from Wakefield looks headed for the big time. And he’s feeling even more chipper as third place at Houghton won him a cherished spot in the Open Championship.
Back in Joburg where it all started for him, he’s strongly fancied to capture the South African Open which returns to Gary Player’s daunting Blair Atholl course at Lanseria, where the Black Knight made his home for more than a quarter of a century.
One of the longest courses in the world, it can stretch to 8232 yards (not a misprint) but with a choice of five tees to play from, it will be a little shorter than that and you can take nine or ten per cent off the yardage for altitude.
Thriston Lawrence coped with it well enough to win with 16 under par last year when there was little evidence you had to be a bomber to compete. However, long hitters are undoubtedly favoured as wide fairways encourage them to open up, so I’m expecting local sluggers Dean Burmester and Zander Lombard, first and fourth at Houghton on Sunday to feast on it.
LIV man Burmester (six top-eight finishes there) and now US-based had a good T5 at Blair Atholl last year. Lombard fared less well (30th) but work since on his putting, always his Achilles heel, has started to reap dividends although he still missed a few sitters at the weekend. One week he’ll get it right and why not this one?
Lawrence will be feeling sore after blowing a three-shot lead on Sunday, not the best prep for a title defence, and I’m still feeling the hole in my wallet. As if trying to defend wasn’t more pressure, now he has another millstone round his neck.
Eight of the top 11 at the weekend were South African so you discount Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Hennie Du Plessis, Jayden Schaper, Darren Fichardt, Wilco Nienaber and impressive newcomer Nikhil Rama at your peril while Germany’s Matti Schmid has been putting up enough eyecatching performances.to come into any conversation at this level.
He knows the course too, placing fourth a year ago, when Blair Atholl made its main-tour bow. I’d be more confident if he hadn’t missed the cut at the RSM last time out but he’s done it on both tours with second place in Andalusia and third in Bermuda and is a winner waiting to happen when the stars are away, as they are this week. No reported weather problems but it will be humid with the temperature rising to the high-80s as the week wears on.
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