Best bets
2pts each-way Haotong Li @ 28/1
1pt each-way Rasmus Hojgaard @ 25/1
1pt each-way Adri Arnaus @ 22/1
1pt each-way Robert MacIntyre @ 25/1
0.5pt each-way Jeff Winther @ 66/1
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We’re paying SIX places at the Ras Al Khaimah Classic!
Who’d be a golf tipster? Putting up a loser is bad enough but when that loser is the twin brother of the winner, it makes you feel a right fool.
It’s never happened before and hopefully will never happen again – although this glutton for punishment is really asking for it this week by putting up Rasmus Hojgaard for the second time when his identical sibling Nicolai is favourite for a Ras Al Khaimah encore.
Seriously though, is it not truly remarkable that these Danes have now won five European tournaments between them before reaching their 21st birthday?
After the embarrassment of the heaviest Ryder Cup defeat in history last time, it must be a comfort to the incoming captain, rumoured to be former world No. 1 Luke Donald, to know he has two such precocious talents ready to rock and roll in Rome next year.
The Americans have nobody that good that young. And while it’s easy to say the five that the boys have won were not against elite opposition, winning any tournament these days takes plenty of doing.
Just ask Tom Hoge who went to the well 202 times before clocking his first PGA Tour victory at Pebble Beach on Sunday. Or Luke List who had to lose almost 100 before finally getting the monkey off his back the previous weekend.
Or even an Open champion like South African Louis Oosthuizen, four times a Majors runner-up too, who has played almost 200 times in the States in the last 12 years and not won there once.
So real hope for the future for Europe with the Hojgaards and we’d better start learning how to spell their names as they are going to crop up over and over again this decade, just as Rory McIlroy did in the last one.
The first European champion to be born this century, Rasmus won at 18, 19 and 20 to go three up in the sibling rivalry. Now Nicolai, the elder by a few minutes and the longer hitter averaging a whopping 315 yards, has hit back to make the score 3-2 and we’re nowhere near half-time yet.
At the end of August Rasmus won his third in Switzerland. The following week Nicolai bagged his first in Italy. Could history repeat itself in reverse when Ras Al Khaimah’s Al Hamra course hosts the DP World Tour for a second week?
The line-up is understandably much the same with the notable addition of Spanish bomber Adri Arnaus who almost hooked a $1m fish at the weekend when first European home in third spot at the mega-rich Saudi International.
Prize money of $2m stays the same too. Only the title has changed – last week the Championship, this week the Classic.
Coming after missed cuts in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Nicolai was hard to pick last week even though none of the big names stayed on for Ras Al Khaimah.
Given that back-to-back winners are rare and noting the big price gap – Nicolai 14/1, Rasmus 25/1 – It could be all change as Rasmus was going well last week until a dire Sunday and he said that when big brother does well, it inspires him to do better.
He needs to. His 2022 Desert Swing form has yet to match last year’s two top-tens and there’s every chance the revived Chinese No. 1 Haotong Li can beat both of them.
Li started too slowly at Al Hamra, his 74 leaving him nine off the lead and seven behind the eventual winner, but finished like a lion with a best-of-the-week 63 to leapfrog into third place.
That confirmed what we saw in Hawaii last month when Li was right in the mix at the Sony Open, a far stronger tournament than this. A final position of 12th did not do justice to the quality of golf he played over the first three days.
For the previous 18 months it looked as if Haotong’s career was on the slip-sliding away but now he’s sorted himself out, he’s well worth following at this level. Don’t forget this is a man who has finished third in an Open Championship.
As a past winner of the Dubai Classic, Li was a proven desert rat even before Sunday’s 63 at Al Hamra, the 7235-yard par 72 that made its main-tour bow last week. This time he needs a better start.
Jordan Smith and Arnaus, two who have winning form at the track albeit only at Challenge Tour level, also come into the conversation.
Smith who couldn’t compete with Hojgaard’s hot finish at the weekend but second spot was his third high UAE finish in a row. While not impressed by his resolution after hitting the front, he again holds each-way claims although 14/1 is plenty short enough.
The same goes for Arnaus whose putter let him down when another winning chance came along in Saudi but if that hasn’t left another scar on his confidence, he won’t have many better opportunities of losing that serial loser tag.
Ambitious Robert MacIntyre has no more ability than Arnaus or another talented but flawed non-winner in Thomas Detry but has a better attitude than both and while 13th at the weekend was decent, this young Scot has much more to offer.
With Hojgaard for inspiration, another Dane, Jeff Winther, could outrun his odds and make the frame at a big price. He made his breakthrough in Majorca in October, didn’t play great last week but at least got all four rounds in, and was a fair 12th at Al Hamra on the 2017 Challenge Tour. More relevant is his recent sixth in Abu Dhabi.
Best bets
1.5pts each-way Bubba Watson @ 33/1
1.5pts each-way Adam Scott @ 40/1
1.5pts each-way Hideki Matsuyama @ 16/1
1.5pts each-way Jordan Spieth @ 18/1
1pt each-way Justin Thomas @ 12/1
With so many bizarre early-season results and mega names playing well but not well enough to bring home the bacon for punters, the inclination with this week’s Phoenix Open is to go with two of yesterday’s men for another upset.
Well, not quite yesterday’s men but great forty-something golfers, two Masters heroes from a different decade, trying to prove to the world they are no back numbers and still have plenty of years left in the big-time.
Step forward, Bubba Watson, 43, double Augusta winner in 2012 and 2014, and Adam Scott, 41, who took the Green Jacket back to Australia in between the Bubba years.
The self-taught Gerry Lester Watson Jr (that’s Bubba to you and me) is a left-handed law unto himself, a magical inventor of golf shots, hard to predict but brilliant on his day. He had two of those days in Saudi Arabia, shooting 64s on Thursday and Sunday, for what looked a winning score … until 66/1 shot Harold Varner III matched Watson’s last-hole eagle with one of his own with an outrageous 92ft putt to nick the $1m top prize.
Apart from Solheim Cup heroine Leona Maguire’s LPGA breakthrough, the best sight of the weekend had to be Bubba haring 100 yards to the 18th green to embrace the man who had just deprived him of a first win in almost four years.
On a tacky weekend when the talk seemed to be more about money than sport, Bubba’s spontaneous and warm-hearted gesture was a timely reminder that there’s far more to the game than the greedy rants of multi-millionaires like Phil Mickelson.
Considering he had not played competitive golf since missing the cut at Northern Trust back in August, Watson’s second place was an astonishing performance.
The fact that he has stellar, albeit non-winning, form at TPC Scottsdale – twice runner-up, a third and a fourth – adds to the yen to back him. The course, a 7261-yard par 71, has hosted the Phoenix for 35 years and gives him the space for him to operate.
Bubba loves the raucous atmosphere at Scottsdale where half a million fans are expected. Last year, with a Covid-restricted crowd, was deathly quiet by comparison but 20,000 will be filling up the grandstand around the famed “Coliseum” 16th again, shots that miss the green will be heckled and much Budweiser necked.
The 23-hour flight from Saudi to Phoenix and abrupt time-zone change seemingly puts him at a disadvantage, golfers seem to shrug off jetlag quickly these days.
Moving up from 105th to 60th on the world rankings will be some compensation for missing out in Jeddah but starting his year in the desert sets him up nicely for this week.
As for Aussie Scott, he has moved home and family to Crans in Switzerland, rearranged his schedule to start in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, his first visit to the Emirates club for 20 years, and is making Phoenix his first US start for the first time in a long career.
This classic swinger is talking a great game and backed up his enthusiasm straight away with top-tens in the UAE – ideal prep for more desert golf this week.
Although Augusta is the main target and Riviera is where he last won two years ago, in February too, please note, he is so thrilled with this fresh approach that he needs only to sink the putts, always his Achilles heel, to make a few serious statements.
Rahm, steady in Scottsdale but no course specialist, has now been a beaten favourite three times while Cantlay’s inability to make a putt at Pebble Beach on Sunday echoed a previous last-round disappointment for favourite so we’ll leave him out too.
Dual Scottsdale winner Brooks Koepka defends but still does not play freely after knee and hip problems while last year’s joint runner-up Xander Schauffele is not quite firing yet.
That leaves Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland, Jordan Spieth and Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama of the front runners in the betting and they are all feared.
The Japanese No. 1 was a back-to-back Phoenix champion in 2016-17, both after play-offs, one gifted to him by Rickie Fowler, and won’t easily be beaten judged on his January triumph at Waialae.
Hovland needed a Rory McIlroy brain-fade in Dubai to collect. The Norwegian youngster is deservedly up to No. 3 in the world after an impressive run but it is pals Thomas and Spieth who most appeal.
Thomas, 13-3-3 here the last three years, is winless since Sawgrass but certainly appeals even if his price is a little on the skinny side. Spieth, meanwhile is a much more backable price and was impressively straight for the most part at Pebble Beach where he looked all over a winner until one small stumble let 66/1 shot Tom Hoge pounce and register his first victory at the 203rd attempt.
Spieth’s fourth place at Scottsdale last year was the first sign that the Jordan of old was getting his act back together and points to the one-time world No. 1 taking a hand again.
Birdies will be plentiful in the Arizona desert where the weather is as usual set fair for the four days but even so the long-standing 28-under record set by Mark Calcavecchia in 2001 and equalled by Mickelson 12 years later is unlikely to be threatened. Scottsdale has a few more teeth these days.
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