Best bets
2pts each-way Collin Morikawa @ 7/1
1pt each-way Robert MacIntyre @ 33/1
1pt each-way Tyrrell Hatton @ 22/1
1pt each-way Min Woo Lee @ 33/1
0.5pt each-way Haotong Li @ 100/1
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We’re paying SEVEN places at the Abu Dhabi Championship!
Collin Morikawa is only 24 but the brilliant young Californian will stand on the first tee at the Abu Dhabi Championship’s new venue, Yas Links announced as Open champion and Race To Dubai winner – and he fully deserves his position as co- favourite for the opening event on the DP World Tour.
He clinched the European money title in the tour finale in Dubai in December and here he’s back two months later with a golden opportunity to win for the second time on UAE soil in neighbouring Abu Dhabi.
Having won the Open on first sight of Royal St George’s last July, Morikawa knows all about links golf so the fact that Yas is a modern links-style layout like architect Kyle Phillips’ Scottish creations Kingsbarns and Dundonald won’t faze him at all and he’s much preferred to the enigmatic Rory McIlroy, his main market rival.
High-ball hitter McIlroy isn’t normally at his best when the wind gets up and with eight holes on this 7425-yard 72 right against the coastline and gusts up to 30mph forecast for Friday at least, Yas will be no stroll in the park.
“There’s going to be lots of different winds, lots of slopes on the greens, lots of run-offs” says Morikawa “and after the wide fairways of Kapalua, this place looks pretty narrow!”.
The world No. 2 was fifth after starting slowly in the PGA Tour season-opener in Hawaii so there are no doubts about his current game whereas for McIlroy, this and next week’s Dubai Desert Classic are where 2022 starts. He never won at the old Abu Dhabi course although he did hit the bar on more than one occasion but this is a very different test.
At the prices, 22/1 against 7/1, I would sooner be with defending champion Tyrrell Hatton and even though this isn’t where he won the title, as a dual winner of the Dunhill Links, it may suit him even better. One of the Dunhill courses, Kingsbarns, is a Phillips design which augurs well for the Englishman prospects. Much depends on his putter, sometimes an awesome weapon, sometimes the cause of much anguish.
Shane Lowry, Lee Westwood and Tommy Fleetwood (twice) are also past winners but obviously on a different course and it will be fascinating to see who can stem the US tide which last year saw US raiders Morikawa and Billy Horschel run off with three big European prizes and the USA turning the Ryder Cup into a rout, much like the Aussies did in the Ashes.
Bad days at the office are rare for Morikawa but a last-day 76 in the Bahamas was one and it allowed his Norwegian pal Viktor Hovland for a Hero World Challenge smash-and-grab. It is not a big price that this pair will fill the first two spots this week.
With plenty of Japanese blood in Morikawa’s pedigree, Hideki Matsuyama’s Hawaiian triumph on Sunday could not have been better timed if any incentive were needed.
It is clear from last year’s four-shot triumph that Hatton can strike early and he will surely be in the mix but the young Scot from Oban, Robert MacIntyre, may prove even better value at 33/1.
The last time we saw Bob was in the UAE when he ran fourth to Morikawa in last month’s Race To Dubai climax. He generally failed to live up to expectations last year but his best performances came on the biggest stages, that one plus two Majors top-12s, and mixing with the elite will get his juices flowing.
He has grown up on links golf and will know what to expect from a Phillips course as two in his own country are on the tour roster.
Garrick Higgo, Dean Burmester and Erik Van Rooyen are three South Africans who could ruffle a few feathers and now that his putting is no longer a weak link, Burmester could be the best of them.
This bomber thrives in the desert – sixth at the last Tour Championship in top company, twice fourth before that – and his Dunhill Links seventh showed an aptitude for the type of shot-making required at Yas Links on the west coast as part of what they call the Island of Entertainment.
Also of interest is Chinese No. 1 Haotong Li who went into serious decline last year but bounced back with an Asian Tour third in his national Open at the end of the year and followed that with his first decent show for yonks last week on the international stage when contending for most of the way in the Sony Open.
He wound up 12th but looked likely to finish much higher and he arrives with game and confidence in their best shape for a very long time. He’s risky but at 100/1 it’s s risk worth taking.
It is relevant to recall that Li’s best-ever performance came on a links when he was a fast-finishing third in the 2017 Open at Royal Birkdale.
Aussies Min Woo Lee and Adam Scott also come into the argument, Lee in particular as he won last year’s Scottish Open on a modern links. Admittedly, he should have done better than a never-threatening fourth in a very weak Australian PGA Championship but it might just turn out to be the perfect warm-up.
Best bets
2pts each-way Patrick Cantlay @ 8/1
1pt each-way Patrick Reed @ 33/1
1pt each-way Seamus Power @ 33/1
0.5pts each-way Michael Thompson @ 80/1
0.5pts each-way Andrew Landry @ 125/1
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Did you know that “The American Express”, the big pro-am that tees off in the Californian desert on Thursday, is the tenth incarnation of what began as the Palm Beach Desert Classic in 1960 and was best known as the Bob Hope Classic from 1965 to 2009?
Or that when former President Gerald Ford played his first pro-am at Palm Springs in 1977, his driving was so notoriously erratic and wild that the public were advised that for their own safety they should walk on the fairways!
Ford was just one President who took part. Dwight D Eisenhower was another and there was the famous three-of-a-kind occasion in 1995 when Bill Clinton, the first in-office President to tee it up, was joined by Ford and George Bush Snr to make up a team with pro Scott Hoch.
Donald Trump, who played in the pro-am when it was renamed the CareerBuilder Challenge, was the best President golfer and helped his team win a prize but in private games was as economical with his scores as he was with the truth in his political career so his claim to 4-handicap expertise needs to be taken with several pinches of salt.
But although still a pro-am, much of the old showbiz glamour and celebrity groupies who have no interest in golf have gone, much to the relief of the professionals, it has long since stopped being a 90-hole slog. The number of courses, cut to just two last year because of Covid, reverts to three with La Quinta reinstated.
Most of the big guns still give it a swerve. That’s why only 13 of the world’s top 50 have checked in. Others are not keen on three days of slow-motion golf with amateur hackers before getting down to the serious business on Sunday.
Still, the presence of world No. 1 Jon Rahm, the winner in 2018, and America’s reigning Player of the Year, FedEx Cup winner Patrick Cantlay, gives the AmEx more then a touch of class.
Logically, those should should finish one-two but there’s nothing logical about many of the past winners, some of them not even household names in their own household.
Who now remembers Ed Fiori, Donnie Hammond, Keith Fergus or, more recently, DJ Trahan, Adam Long, Hudson Swafford and Andrew Landry? Only those who backed them – or cursed them for beating their bet!
Long, for example, was the party pooper who deprived the much-loved Phil Mickelson of his third AmEx win in 2019. Last year only the Pete Dye Stadium course (7112 yards, par 72) and the Nicklaus tournament course (7214 yards, par 72) were used. Now La Quinta (7060 yards, par 72), a fixture for 56 years until being dropped, is back on the rota.
In the two-course format, Si Woo Kim just hung on to foil Cantlay’s last-round 61 with Cam Davis third, Tony Finau fourth and then it was four more back to the fifth. Rahm was due to play last year but withdrew with a sore shoulder.
As both Rahm and Cantlay opened the year in top nick at Kapalua – the Spaniard an unlucky second – how can you shoot 33 under and get beat? – the American fourth after starting slowly – the current well-being of those class acts is in the book.
The betting tells you as much but there’s rarely anything logical about this tournament. Many little-known names have prevailed, Landry being one in 2020. Long the previous year had traded at 1000 on Betfair, Swafford was barely a household name in his own household until he stunned us all in 2017.
So look around for outsiders with a squeak. Mickelson is one you could justify, Adam Hadwin, twice unlucky to be pipped by a shot five years ago and again two years later, another. And stocky journeyman Landry is twice the golfer here than anywhere else.
Hadwin and Landry might be wildly inconsistent but boast fair recent form – Hadwin sixth at Las Vegas, Landry fourth at Sanderson Farms – and on the right type of course are capable of mixing it with the best.
Even worthier of an interest is bearded Michael Thompson, an eye-catching fifth at Waialae on Sunday who has solid AmEx form – fifth to Si Woo Kim last year and ninth to Long in 2019. He could make the frame for the second week running.
Best of the more fancied rivals to the Big Two could be Irishman Seamus Power, who is 54 under for his last 12 rounds and took third place at Waialae, and Patrick Reed, who shot a record 28-under to win this in 2014 and once again demonstrated a magical short-game touch when third in the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas.
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