The irresistible Scottie Scheffler chases a hat-trick at Colonial this week after crushing the life out of his toiling rivals at the Houston Open and PGA Championship and even at 9/4 there will be plenty of takers as the great man has now won 11 tournaments, two of them Majors, since March of last year.
That’s 11 wins in 14 months starting from Bay Hill – just think how many it might have been if he hadn’t damaged his hand at Christmas and missed three tournaments. And at 28, eight years younger than his most persistent rival Rory McIlroy, time is very much on his side for accumulating Majors.
His score now stands at three. What price a fourth this year? Fitzdares have the languid Texan (but born in New Jersey) at 100/30 for next month’s US Open and 5/1 for our Open at Royal Portrush in July. It’s not so much that he won Houston and the PGA, it was the way he swatted away his rivals for eight- and five-shot victories – golf from another planet.
It’s great for the game that the first two Majors have been plundered by the creme de la creme in Rory and Scottie but was I the only one who found the PGA underwhelming?
Quail Hollow is like several others we see on tour week-on-week, a good course but a not great one. It lacks soul and the vaunted Green Mile, presumably named after the 1996 Stephen King best-seller being all the rage at the time the course was being tweaked by Tom Fazio, isn’t that fearsome – we weren’t short of birdies to cheer on 17 or 18.
As the combined yardage of the three Green Mile holes falls a long way short of a mile, 514 yards short in fact, that iconic label also fell a bit flat.
What with refusing to do the obligatory post-round interview on all four days on top of a miserable T47 performance, it wasn’t Rory’s week but at least he made the cut (just) when other notables like Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Shane Lowry, Hideki Matsuyama and Ludvig Aberg failed to do so. A curious week indeed and a bit of a damp squib – especially if you followed my spectacularly bad tips!
With this week’s tournament not far from his Dallas home at Fort Worth, Texas, Scheffler should justify his quote in a tournament he has yet to win. He has twice been runner-up, losing out in a playoff with his pal Sam Burns in 2022 but well beaten last year by surprise five-shot conqueror Davis Riley. The 9/4 will hopefully grow bigger in running so wait and see what happens
Riley must have a good shout of retaining the only solo tournament he has ever won. Last week’s splendid T2 to Scheffler at the PGA. Colonial clearly suits as he’d also been fourth to Burns there in 2022. If the PGA hasn’t taken too much out of him. Fitzdares’ 45/1 rates fair value.
I’m also keen on Hideki Matsuyama and Daniel Berger. Missing the cut at Quail Hollow has given the Japanese star more time to prepare for this assignment. He has otherwise been good nick after a flying 35-under-par start at Kapalua.
Berger has the benefit of being a course winner in 2020, pipping Collin Morikawa to Colonial’s much-prized Tartan jacket, a tradition that honours the nation where it all started.
Coming back after a long injury layoff, he is desperate to make up for lost time. Runner-up at Scottsdale and Torrey Pines at the start of the year, Berger is closing in on a W and looked sharp when third at Heritage and 11tth at the Truist.
One more I want on my side is putting wizard JT Poston who likes the course (T10 in 2020 and T12 last year) and has just posted his first top-ten of the year, T5 at the PGA. And I also give a squeak to stylish Harris English, already a winner this year at the Farmers in January, he leapfrogged into second place at Quail Hollow on Sunday with a spectacular final round.
Tommy Fleetwood, Aaron Rai and Bob MacIntyre spearhead the British challenge while Rasmus Hojgaard looks the more likely of the Danish twins to make a splash and Jordan Spieth is a law unto himself but if he’s on a going week, he’d be a menace even to Scheffler. Spieth won this tournament back in 2016 but much water has flowed under the bridge since.
As a 7289-yard par 70, Colonial is a classic test of every club in the bag. Colonial carries the nickname of ‘Hogan’s Alley’ because legendary Ben won there five times. Time for Scheffler to get started! Thunderstorms on Thursday and Sunday are predicted.
The DP World Tour’s European Swing touches down in Belgium this week at the Rinkven International course just outside Antwerp and two of its favourite sons Nicolas Colsaerts and Thomas Pieters will be trying to head off the marauders at a course that has provided upsets galore in its short history.
None of the winners since the Soudal replaced the Belgium Knockout as the nearest thing to a national Open has exactly been a household name and in the case of 2023 winner Simon Forsstrom there have been few sightings of him on leaderboards since.
In the absence of Belgium’s best player Thomas Detry, who lines up at Colonial after making his US breakthrough at Phoenix at the start of year, Pieters and veteran Colsaerts, both Ryder Cup players in their time, fly their country’s flag but moving to LIV and a different type of golf has failed to bring the best out of Pieters.
His fourth place in Korea stands as a lone top-ten this year while his outside sorties have led to three missed cuts.
Colsaerts is better as a Sky pundit these days than at being a golfing force. Both face extra crowd pressure too so look elsewhere for the winner.
At 6940 yards, Rinkven is short for a par 71 but has five lakes and plenty of timber for protection to keep the scoring honest.
The latest winning scores, 18 under by Spanish veteran Nacho Elvira last year and 17 under by Forsstrom in 2023 show a good balance has been achieved. Big hitting is good but not essential.
Pieters is a bomber who was T2 last year and he loves coming back for local admiration but on current form Chinese No. 1 Haotong Li has a significant edge.
Li is enjoying a renaissance, winning in Qatar before going close in Shanghai and Turkey (T4 and T2). Now he’s got his mojo back – it’s not so long ago he was playing so badly he gave serious consideration to quitting the game – his class stands out.
Another tour winner who’s been to hell and back is Matteo Manassero, hailed as a boy wonder when he won four times before the age of 21, capped by whipping Europe’s finest in the 2013 BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
The world was at his feet but in going for extra yardage to stay competitive at world level, it all went pear-shaped and for a decade we never heard from him on leaderboards – until, almost out of the blue, he ended the drought in South Africa last year and took advantage of an opportunity to play on the PGA Tour.
Manassero has not yet set America alight but that was a level above what he faces in Antwerp this week and the likeable Italian represents good each-way value on a course where lack of power won’t be shown up.
The 100/1 for Yannik Paul looks big. The German ace burned himself out trying to make the 2023 Ryder Cup squad and has only just got the taste again as we saw with his third place in China last month. A runner-up here three years ago, he can build on that.
If Laurie Canter, T7 last year, can recapture his early-year form when he won in Bahrain, finished second in the SA Open and third in Dubai, there’s no need to look elsewhere for the winner. Missing the cut the Players, the Masters and the USPGA might have taken the edge off his confidence but returning to the DP World Tour with nobody in the field to frighten him should show him in a better light.
Brandon Robinson-Thompson may be a new name to many, but he’s already created a favourable impression and fourth place in Turkey – admittedly he blew a tidy lead at the 54-hole stage – augmented three earlier top-tens in his first year, the best of which was a T3 in Qatar. He’s fun to watch.
Young Frenchman Martin Couvra bids to go back to back after a dazzling breakthrough success in Turkey, course winner Guido Migliozzi, the consistent Matt Wallace and the infuriating Jordan Smith, who gets into a winning position in Europe more often than anybody but can’t finish the job off, are all feasible alternatives in a wide-open Soudal Open where the rain is due to hold off until Sunday.
