Best bets
2.5pts each-way Min Woo Lee @ 11/1
2.5pts each-way Justin Rose @ 9/1
1pt each-way Thorbjorn Olesen @ 28/1
1pt each-way Adrian Meronk @ 12/1
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At last the DP World Tour hits the UK this week with the British Masters at iconic The Belfry, scene of glorious Ryder Cup memories, and an iconic tournament host too in six-time major champion Sir Nick Faldo.
Beefing up the field and both in the sort of form to fight out the finish are one-time US Open champion and Olympic gold medalist Justin Rose and the exciting young Australian Min Woo Lee, one 42 the other 24. The old and the new. Well not quite new as we have known how good Lee is since he won the 2021 Scottish Open and even before that.
For years a work in progress, he is now showing not only Britain but the world just what a talent he is. Greater prizes than the British Masters await him. Min Woo won $2.2m in the States this past month for finishing fifth at the US Open and, after hitching a lift from LA to Connecticut in Aussie pal Adam Scott’s private plane, following up with ninth at the all-star Travelers Championship on Sunday.
Min Woo, kid brother of LPGA star Minjee Lee, herself a major champion, is using this week as part of his build-up to next month’s Open Championship at Hoylake and if he can adapt quickly to The Belfry’s tricks and its water hazards, he is playing with such supreme confidence and power – his drive at the last at River Highlands on Sunday measured 374 yards and his short game is touched with genius – he is surely the most likely winner.
Rose, winner at Pebble Beach in February, sixth at Sawgrass in March and in great nick in May/June with ninth at the PGA, 12th at Colonial and eighth at the Canadian Open, rates his biggest danger, as the betting tells you.
The tall, stylish Englishman is a past British Masters winner, way back in 2002 at Woburn, and although not a member that year of the victorious European team in the last of the four Ryder Cups to be played at The Belfry, he knows the Sutton Coldfield course well. Everyone knows the Brabazon course at The Belfry, 7336 yards long par 72 with its ingenious short risk-and-reward par-four tenth and its wicked dogleg 18th, almost 500 yards long, a monster par four twice across water with drive and second shot, two of the most instantly recognisable holes in British golf.
Last year’s winner Thorbjorn Olesen somehow managed to finish eagle-birdie there last year to capture the prize he had looked like throwing away after going into the last round three ahead. Persistently driving it left on the final day resulted in the Dane standing two behind with two to play but he pulled himself together in the nick of time. We haven’t seen that much of Olesen this year but in February he added a seventh win to his CV in Thailand and more recently was a good third in Belgium. As he arrived at The Belfry last year without a top-ten to his name, he is not a player you have to worry about being poorly prepared.
The only other bet for me is Adrian Meronk who added more valuable Ryder Cup points with a share of third in Munich – where BMW victory went to 90/1 South African Thriston Lawrence on a tipsy-turvy afternoon as three-shot leader Joost Luiten more or less threw it away – and now looks a shoo-in for the big Rome showdown in September. The lofty Pole was third at The Belfry two years ago on the famous day when Cinderella man Richard Bland, now with the LIV rebels and playing in Spain this week for $25m, broke his duck in Europe at the 478th attempt at the age of 48.
Like Bland, I have particularly fond memories of the course as it was at The Belfry in 1978 that I won my weight in Hennessy VSOP for being nearest to the pin at the 183-yard seventh in the Hennessy Cognac Cup pro-am which preceded the match between GB & Ireland and Europe. As I was a good 25lb heavier (and 44 years younger!) then I am today, that added up to a heck of a lot of hooch, 57 bottles, way in excess of the amateur prize allowance, so I had to give 19 bottles apiece to my partners. Still, plenty left for me … and I still have one as a souvenir!
Best bets
1.5pts each-way Austin Eckroat @ 40/1
1.5pts each-way Justin Thomas @ 14/1
1.5pts each-way Tony Finau @ 10/1
1pt each-way Tom Kim @ 16/1
Only three weeks to go before the Open Championship and golf’s Big Three, Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy, take a break while the lesser lights do battle in Detroit for the Rocket Mortgage Classic.
Scheffler, whose tee-to-green golf is off-the-scale phenomenal but needs a warmer putter to be a regular winner again, posted yet another top-four in Connecticut, consistent McIlroy cruised to a share of seventh but there was a rare missed cut for Rahm who suddenly seems a long way from the guy who won four times by Masters weekend in early April. Tenth place at the US Open showed there’s not that much wrong but Rahmbo needs to recharge his batteries.
So not a great field for Tony Finau to beat if he is to make a successful defence of the Rocket Mortgage title he won in a canter last year. Mind you, that was a month later in the year, a couple of weeks after our Open and the week after he had come from five back in the 3M Open to win by three and was putting like God.
He is not rolling his rock in quite such deadly fashion these days and his five performances since winning the Mexico Open at the end of April have been no better than ordinary.
So the likelihood of the big fella destroying the 7370-yard par 72 Detroit course as he did in last year’s 26-under rout is conditional on him recovering the appetite that saw him victorious four times in nine months. But, with the big cats away, he is still capable of winning this without his A game.
There’s no doubt the ever-popular Rickie Fowler will be put up by many as the man to take the champion down. After his long spell in the doldrums, we are all loving see the golden boy back playing so well he has to be on the short list for a Ryder Cup return.
Yet he played like little boy lost when challenging for the US Open a couple of weeks back and his Sunday 75 was a sad finish. And after a third-round 60 at the Travelers last week, he again had a winning chance if the two leaders faltered and although 69 wasn’t a disaster it was nowhere near what was required and he slid to 13th.
So although his last four form figures of 6-9-5-13 are impressive, it is four years since he had a W and I need to see him crack that mental barrier before being tempted. At 12/1 there’s not much juice in his price as the bookies know he’ll be backed.
Another player who has been through a lean spell, although a much shorter one, is Justin Thomas who posted his first top-ten at the Travelers since the Valspar in mid-March.
Missed cuts in two of the three majors came as a shock from last year’s PGA champion whose driving, putting and confidence all seemed to collapse simultaneously.
On an easy course like River Highlands last week much of that self-doubt disappeared and with an even bigger birdie-fest likely in Detroit, a 1913 Donald Ross layout that doesn’t present the challenge it used to before technology took over – winning scores for its first four champions: 25, 23, 18 and 26 under par – expect JT to help himself if he can handle the tricky greens. Few hit their iron approaches closer to the pin.
Two of the four past winners, Nate Lashley and Cam Davis, had not won before and have not done so since so there is every chance of an upset. Step up, Austin Eckroat. The 24-year-old Oklahoman put in another good shift last week (24th) but it was that tenth at the US Open and second at the Nelson that really caught the eye. A winner waiting to happen and he could be in the perfect place.
Even newer kids on the block Sam Bennett (top amateur at the Masters in 16th), fearless Gordon Sargent and University No. 1 Ludwig Aberg (top 25 on first two starts in Canada and Connecticut) need watching too.
Sticking with the youngsters, Korean prodigy Tom Kim, just 21 and one of the discoveries of 2022, didn’t fare as well as expected last week after his US Open eighth but much of his golf at River Highlands was spectacular. Unfortunately, a couple of holes caught him out big-time. If he can avoid those blips in Detroit where he was seventh to Finau last year, this thrilling talent must have a shout in this lesser company.
Compatriot Sungjae Im, world No. 9 Max Homa, the highest-ranked golfer in the field but not quite living up to his billing at the moment, and the ever-consistent Hideki Matsuyama, 13th on Sunday, won’t be far away either.
New Englander Keegan Bradley, 80/1 winner of the Travelers in what was almost a home game for him in Connnecticut, is attempting to do what Finau did last year by going back to back. But he looked shattered at the end of it and won’t have the same motivation over in Michigan where the weather is hot and sticky with thunderstorms looming.
Best bets
2.5pts each-way Sergio Garcia @ 14/1
1pt each-way Talor Gooch @ 16/1
1pt each-way Carlos Ortiz @ 50/1
0.5pt each-way Richard Bland @ 80/1
If Sergio Garcia can’t win at Valderrama this weekend when the LIV circus pitches its tent in Europe for the first time this year – to be followed in two weeks by a return visit to the UK – then he can’t win anywhere.
The temperamental and divisive Spaniard – Jon Rahm wants him as his Ryder Cup partner in Rome, Rory McIlroy doesn’t even want to be in the same room – practically owns this wonderful but quirky course in Sotogrande where Europe, led by Seve Ballesteros, scored a famous Ryder Cup victory in 1997.
He won three consecutive Andalusia Masters titles there, was three times a Volvo Masters runner-up (once beaten in a playoff by one of this week’s rivals Ian Poulter) and was third in the 2016 Spanish Open. In 15 starts there, he’s had 14 top-tens.
Sergio first played it when he was 13 “and it was love at first sight”. It’s a golf course like no other, you can think you’ve hit a good drive only to find a tree barring your view of the green.
It’s a positional course, a thinker’s course, not long at just over 7000 yards, but one demanding patience – not, one would think, Garcia’s prime attribute – and a supreme confidence in knowing where your tee ball, not always with a driver by any means, is going to finish. All the par threes are masterpieces but potential disasters, as are the approach shot over the water at the par five 17th and the claustrophobic drive at 18. You can never let your guard down at Valderrama and many of the big names this week will walk off shaking their head. Par is always good and several tournaments have been won with an over-par score.
So why isn’t the 14/1 Sergio the bet of the year? Well it may be but Garcia is not the same golfer who was once world No. 2, regarded as the coming threat to Tiger Woods.
One of LIV’s most expensive signings, he has yet to deliver in 14 appearances although he got close in April when going down to Talor Gooch in a Singapore playoff. And he posted top-four finishes in Jeddah and Chicago at the back-end of last year.
So I’m going for the mug’s bet and putting him up. But there are others playing this week who have won or done well at Valderrama which has signed a five-year deal with LIV and has been struck off the DP World Tour roster probably forever, a sad end for a course that was for so many years home to the Volvo Masters – the precursor to what is now the Tour Championship in Dubai.
Poulter and Graeme McDowell have also won there, Martin Kaymer has been runner-up twice, Lee Westwood beat Tiger there in the fourballs on his Ryder Cup debut, Richard Bland has played decently on numerous visits – and this British Masters week at The Belfry is the one where Blandy finally cracked it on his 478th European Tour appearance. Could that inspire him?
As Bland has had some success with LIV, notably a third in Bangkok in October, and kicked off this year with top tens in Dubai and Abu Dhabi on the DP World Tour, I can see him making the frame at a big price as he has the right mentality for the task ahead.
So too have players like the Mexico’s Carlos Ortiz, a LIV runner-up in Portland and Tucson, and the metronomically straight American Gooch, already a double LIV winner and knowing a third is almost certain to net him a huge Player of the Year jackpot.
It’s 54 holes of shotgun-start golf starting on a showery Friday with $25m on the line in individual and team prize money. Nice work if you can get it!
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