Best bets
That’s where we are this week with the Truist Championship in Pennsylvania. It’s the old Wells Fargo with a new sponsor and, for this year anyway, a new venue because its regular home, Quail Hollow, has been commandeered for next week’s second Major, the US PGA.
Welcome to Wissahickon at the Philadelphia Cricket Club! For lovers of golfing lore, in 1854 a group of young men who had played cricket at the University of Pennsylvania founded what was originally a cricket and tennis facility but its nine-hole golf course became so popular it was extended to 18 and rated testing enough to host the 1907 and 2010 US Opens.
In 1921 the legendary AW Tillinghast, famed for designing Bethpage Black, this year’s Ryder Cup venue, and Winged Foot, was drafted in to create a second course, Wissahickon, on a different site and that masterpiece, with a sympathetic renovation in 2013-14, is what the elite Truist field will be playing this week, not only as the final warm-up for the PGA but a high-class Signature event in its own right.
Used for the 2016 Senior Players Championship, this flat, parkland course makes its main tour debut now and the absence of course form makes it tricky to evaluate. But it will be tough as Bernhard Langer’s winning Seniors score was one over par. And the likelihood is that shorter hitters will not be disadvantaged on this 7119-yard par 70, only 102 yards longer than nine years ago. The 1-2-3 that week, Langer, Joe Durant and Miguel Angel Jimenez, weren’t into power. The biggest trick here is to avoid the 118 bunkers.
Here endeth the history lesson apart from telling you Wissahickon means “catfish creek” in Lenni Lenape, the language of the original Native American inhabitants of the area.
School’s over and now to the business of following up a winning CJ Cup (Scottie Scheffler first at 11/4, Jordan Spieth fourth at 18/1) as Rory McIlroy bids for a fourth victory of a stellar year and Scheffler obligingly steps out of his way though not before throwing down the gauntlet with a remarkable, kick-ass, record-equalling 31-under-par masterclass in his home state of Texas that removed all doubt that he might, after eight straight defeats, no longer be the mighty force he was.
The rest of the field needed a strong pair of binoculars to catch a glimpse of him as he charged to an eight-shot runaway that could have been more. It must have been a very quiet golf weekend in the Fitzdares trading room with Scheffler’s first round of 61 virtually killing off the tournament almost before it had started. His eight-shot lead at the 54-hole stage prompted a unique quote of 1/200.
With Scottie resting on his laurels, McIlroy would have been almost unbackable if the Truist had been at Quail Hollow – he has won there four times – but he will be rubbing his hands at the prospect of having that course to play in the second leg of “mission impossible”, the same-year Slam.
Rory won’t be worried as much about winning this weekend as next but that’s not to say he won’t win. Yet the 4/1 is still resistible when the likes of Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Ludvig Aberg, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland and pretty well every big name in the game bar Scheffler is among the glittering opposition. Scheffler had none of those to beat in the Nelson and was only a point shorter. It’s not as if it’s Quail Hollow.
After the blissful 62 that lifted him to fourth on Sunday, I wanted to put Jordan Spieth up this week even if he, like Rory, will have Quail Hollow distracting him though for a different reason: he needs the PGA to complete the full set of Majors and join McIlroy among the elite. Yet his shot-making was so sublime at the weekend with golf reminiscent of his heyday that he surely won’t be far away.
So it is his great pal Justin Thomas who carries the burden of being my main selection. JT’s Heritage victory last time had been on the cards ever since he cured his putting woes and will have cleared away any doubts in his mind about his place in the game after 18 months of misery.
There won’t be any 31-unders this week, Tillinghast courses aren’t like that, and accuracy will be the key. Thomas’s iron play is second only to Scheffler’s while others likely to suited by the challenge in what will be a wet first couple of days are Morikawa, Schauffele and our own Tommy Fleetwood.
Schauffele’s Masters eighth showed he was nearly back to his glorious best after the eight-week layoff while an intercostal muscle injury healed and it’s not hard to see him as a major contender while the underrated Russell Henley who putts like God and is making money hand over fist with a swing that doesn’t win any style awards has to go on the short-list too.
Apart from a disastrous first day at the Masters, it’s been roses all the way for the 36-year-old grafter from Georgia who won against the best at Bay Hill and has been a constant presence on leaderboards right up to a Heritage top-ten last time out.
Cut from the same cloth, Daniel Berger is a winner waiting to happen after his last-time-out T3 at Heritage. This fierce competitor lost almost two years of a highly successful career with serious back problems but all that is long behind him and his consistency has been mighty impressive.
Although a winner this year at Torrey Pines, three disappointing performances in a row have put me off Ludwig Aberg and while Cantlay’s consistency cannot be faulted, he has never really threatened to win. Still, this could be his sort of course if the putter behaves – and the same comment applies to Morikawa.
Best bets
Big-hitting Chris Gotterup, four-shot winner of the inaugural Myrtle Beach Classic 12 months ago, has an outstanding chance of an encore in the PGA Tour’s second-tier tournament in South Carolina.
Myrtle Beach is brash enough to call itself “The Golf Capital of the World” (funny, I was deluded enough to think St Andrews was) but the Dunes Golf & Beach Club, a 1948 creation by Robert Trent Jones along the Atlantic Coast, is a spectacular 7347-yard par 71 test for the lesser lights unable to get into the bigger bucks on offer in Pennsylvania.
Although not on Sky, the Classic holds plenty of European interest and victory for Antoine Rozner, T13 in better company at the CJ Cup, Sami Valimaki, Seamus Power, Victor Perez, Thorbjorn Olesen or Matteo Manassero wouldn’t do their Ryder Cup prospects any harm.
Presidents Cup stars Tom Kim and Mackenzie Hughes are the marquee names at the head of the betting but Kim is struggling and Hughes blows hot and cold (T3 at Heritage then missed the Nelson cut) dependent on whether his lethal putter is on song, but all will have to be at the top of their game to stop Gotterup retaining his title.
Not only is he an emphatic course winner, the 26-year-old from Maryland with an average drive of 313 yards has the current form to back it up with a string of top 20s right up to Sunday’s T15 behind, though not in the same parish as, the great Scheffler.
With similarly attractive course and current form is the Taiwanese player Kevin Yu, fourth at Myrtle Beach last year and with pleasing top 20s this campaign at Phoenix, Genesis, Valspar and Houston. Like Gotterup he made his breakthrough last year when capturing the Sanderson Farms in October and this is his level.
I’m becoming a fan of big Oklahoman left-hander Max McGreevy who gets on with it and looks like he’s having fun. He tied 15th with Gotterup on Sunday to add to other eyecatching efforts and although yet to win in his home country, he did go over to Japan last year and pick off one of their marquee tournaments, the Dunlop Phoenix.
Valimaki looks the pick of the Europeans. The Finn hits it a long way, though not always straight, and putts like a demon. Fourth at Houston and top-20 at Torres Pines, Texas and Heritage, he is now showing the consistency for a decent each-way punt and the course will give him the room he needs to shine.
Best bets
The Turkey Open returns to the DP World Tour after a six-year absence – Tyrrell Hatton was the last champion after a six-man playoff at Montgomerie Maxx in 2019 – but this week we are at the Regnum Carya course in Antalya which hosted from 2016-18. It is the first leg of what they are calling the European Swing, later taking in Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.
It’s a pity Justin Rose hasn’t entered because he loves Turkey and won back to back at Carya in 2017-18 but he has bigger fish to fry at the Truist Championship in Philadelphia. Nor is the other course winner there – Thorbjorn Olesen, champion in 2016, has business in Myrtle Beach where he has a solid chance in second-tier company.
But we do have the man Olesen beat into second place, Haotong Li, and the Chinese No. 1 is in lively form, birdies galore laced with the usual quota of Li disasters but strong enough form to make him the main pick in a field where most have proved expensive to follow. And he’s twice finished second at this week’s venue, to Olesen in 2016 and two years later running Rose to a playoff.
Gifted but flawed, Jordan Smith looked to have the China Open in the bag last time out, then knocked it out of bounds to gift first prize to Chinese journeyman Ashun Wu, Matthew Jordan keeps building up strong positions and self-destructing, Sam Bairstow is another with enviable ability without the temperament to match and Wenyi Ding, touted as the next big star out of China, has yet to show he can handle final-day pressure.
Li himself gave it away in China after leading with 16 to play before slipping to T4 but at least he has won this year, at Qatar in February, and since built up a portfolio of good finishes that suggest he is the man to beat.
Yannik Paul, once touted as Ryder Cup material, finally rediscovered his game with a third to Wu in China after a dismal 2024 – this might be the right time to catch him at a price – but the much-heralded Spaniard Angel Ayora who made such a promising start has since failed to live up to his billing.
Richard Mansell was in the same unpredictable bracket, often looking the business but failing to deliver when push came to shove until holding it together as if to the manor born in Singapore, only to miss the cut by a mile in the Indian Open next time out.
That flop was on a marmite course that humbled some so if you’re prepared to overlook that, he would be a chance. Marco Penge, winner of the Hainan Classic last time out and noted as one to watch for some time since graduating to the main tour, is the other one for the short list in a tournament that makes little punting appeal.
One that might be a bit of each-way value at 60/1 is Tapio Pulkkanen, the Finn with the pork-pie hat, after his 13th in India and seventh in Shanghai. Cash out the win part of the bet if he’s in the lead at 54 holes as Sundays rarely show Tapio at his best.
Carya is a 7220-yard par 71 on the Mediterranean coast inspired by the great Surrey heathland courses and was the first course in Europe to have floodlights, hopefully not required this week when the weather is set fair in the upper 20s.
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