Best bets
2pts each-way Tyrrell Hatton @ 28/1
1pt each-way Viktor Hovland @ 16/1
1pt each-way Marc Leishman @ 28/1
1pt each-way Matt Fitzpatrick @ 25/1
0.5pts each-way Justin Rose @ 50/1
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Paying SEVEN places at the Arnold Palmer Invitational!
The announcement on Monday that Zach Johnson is to be the US Ryder Cup captain for next year’s rumble in Rome prompts thoughts about how the hell we’re going to get that trophy back after the Whistling Straits walloping that saw Europe humiliated by the widest margin since these Europe v USA showdowns first teed off in 1979.
Johnson, a dual major champion who won our Open at St Andrews in 2015, is the same sort of guy as the last US leader Steve Stricker, a God-fearing, family-loving pillar of mid-West Iowa society but exciting and inspiring? No.
Who needs to be inspiring when you’ve got a great team? You pair them up with partners they feel comfortable with and make sure they get to the first tee on time. Sure, there’s a bit of skill and judgment required in working out the best running order for the 12 singles but that’s governed by the state of the match. A dinner, a few speeches, job done.
On the wrong end of some shellackings as a player – Johnson was on the winning side only once in five – and still carrying the scars from three defeats out of three in Europe, the new captain won’t be taking anything for granted in Italy even though Fitzdares rate his men 8/15 “good things” to become the first to triumph on European soil this century.
The Ryder Cup is particularly relevant to this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational because Bay Hill has been a European stronghold in recent years with Rory McIlroy, Frankie Molinari and Tyrrell Hatton winning three in a row before Bryson DeChambeau narrowly foiled the four-timer when holding Lee Westwood at bay last year.
The omens are good after last week’s European 1-2 through 100/1 winner Sepp Straka, the 17st Austrian who must now come into the Ryder conversation, and unlucky Shane Lowry at the Honda Classic, the opening leg of the Florida Swing.
Then came another boost for Europe with the news that DeChambeau would not be defending his title because he was still feeling only 90 per cent ready after hurting left wrist and hip in a tumble in Saudi Arabia where he was being courted by the Saudis as the potential poster boy for their proposed new “world” tour.
DeChambeau did not feel it was worth risking bigger tournaments coming up, like next week’s Players Championship and next month’s Masters, by participating in Orlando and that obviously weakens an already depleted home task force.
With no Morikawa, DJ, Thomas or Spieth in the line-up of 120 chasing a first prize of $2.16m, the chief American standard-bearer looks to be Phoenix breakthrough winner Scottie Scheffler so I’m predicting a European takeaway for the second week running.
Five of the world’s top 10 are on the tee, headed by world No. 1 Jon Rahm whose 21st at Riviera last time out was his first outside the top 15 this year. But it is 2020 Bay Hill winner Tyrrell Hatton, rather than Rahm, who could be Europe’s main trump card.
After his eyecatching start to 2022 – sixth in Abu Dhabi followed by fourth in Dubai – the mercurial Englishman opens his PGA Tour campaign at the scene of his only American triumph in very positive mood.
This renowned 7466-yard layout which has hosted the Palmer since 1979 was a test of patience when Hatton prevailed in blustery conditions two years ago – and patience is not normally a Tyrrell trademark. But he gutsed it out in a week when only four players finished under the par of 288.
And although it will be very warm in Orlando this week, around 29C, there’s also some wind, up to 15mph, in the forecast and that will favour great iron-play shot-makers like Hatton on a course where water, as ever, will extract its toll in penalty shots.
Rahm and 2018 champion McIlroy head the betting but whether they represent value at 8/1 and 11/1 respectively, given how infrequently they actually win tournaments, is a subject for discussion. I would rather fish further upstream with Hatton, Viktor Hovland, Matt Fitzpatrick and forgotten man Justin Rose.
Announcing last week that he is to become a second-time father in the summer, Rahm may well be the best golfer in the world but is still a long way behind Tiger Woods who won the Palmer no fewer than eight times between 2000 and 2013.
Rory also looks a bit short considering his shortcomings when push comes to shove and at more than double the odds Fitzpatrick, runner up to Molinari in 2019 and a top-ten finisher on two subsequent visits, makes more each-way appeal.
On current form, there’s an argument saying that Norwegian ace Hovland should be closer to favouritism than 16/1. He is surely destined to be world No. 1 one day.
After a couple of poor years, Rose looks set to regain his bloom. That sixth place at Torrey Pines was encouraging and now that his putting is looking more solid, he is well capable of going close on a course where he’s been second and third in the past.
Aussie duo Marc Leishman and Adam Scott also come into the conversation, Scott with his last-time-out fourth at Riviera, Leishman as Bay Hill winner in 2017 and runner-up to Hatton in 2020.
Other thorns in America’s side could be Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama, already a winner this year in Hawaii, and South African Christiaan Bezuidenhout, a tidy operator who finished seventh at Bay Hill last year.
But with Straka and Lowry dominating the Honda finish, Bernhard Langer and Miguel Angel Jimenez making hay on the Champions circuit and Leona Maguire opening her LPGA Tour account, European golf is on a roll. Fingers crossed it is still rolling come Sunday!
Best bets
2pts each-way Rafa Cabrera Bello @ 28/1
1.5pts each-way Matthias Schwab @ 20/1
1pt each-way Mark Hubbard @ 20/1
0.5pts each-way Chad Ramey @ 40/1
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Stand by too for a European 1-2 in the Puerto Rico Open in Rio Grande where Abu Dhabi runner-up Rafa Cabrera Bello has a massive chance and Matthias Schwab, seventh on Sunday, could post a second Austrian triumph on the PGA Tour in a week.
Best bets
1.5pts each-way Francesco Laporta @ 50/1
1.5pts each-way Justin Harding @ 16/1
1.5pts each-way Shubhankar Sharma @ 33/1
0.5pts each-way Daniel Van Tonder @ 25/1
0.5pts each-way Marcus Armitage @ 25/1
0.5pts each-way Oliver Bekker @ 33/1
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Swarthy Italian Francesco Laporta can be a magical 50/1 first-time winner of the Magical Kenya Open which tees off a three-week African Swing in Nairobi this week.
Two new tournaments in the South, both Jack Nicklaus layouts, the Pecanwood Classic in Hartbeespoort and Steyn City Championship in Johannesburg, follow and will bring the African contribution to the DP World Tour up to six in 2022.
Magical by name the Kenya Open may be, but there’s nothing magical about the field. You have to scroll down to 75th, 89th and 130th on the rankings to find Fitzdares’ three co-favourites Dean Burmester, Adri Arnaus and 6ft 6in Pole Adrian Meronk. Only six of those tackling 7184-yard par 71 Muthaiga rank in the top 100.
Muthaiga has hosted 40 times since 1967 although not since 2018 when it was on the Challenge Tour. Not played in 2020 because of the pandemic, the last two Kenya Opens, in 2019 and 2021, were elevated to main-tour status and played on another classy Nairobi course, Karen.
Looking at the 2017 Challenge Tour leaderboard gives one clue to Laporta being the No. 1 selection. Aaron Rai, that year’s winner, has gone on to main-tour success and is now making a name for himself in the States, and Matt Wallace, who shared third place with Laporta, also went on to main-tour glory, so the Italian was mixing in talented company.
Although a dual Challenge Tour winner in 2019, the 31-year-old from Brindisi has yet to do it on the main stage although he shone in tip-top company at Wentworth last year when briefly threatening an upset in the DP World Tour’s main UK event, the BMW PGA.
He eventually found the company a bit too hot to handle but sixth place behind American raider Billy Horschel was still an eye-catching effort, and not the only one in a campaign that also saw him runner-up in the Dubai Championship, fourth in the Irish and Italian Opens and seventh in the Algarve.
True, Laporta has done nothing of note this year but this modest affair with no big names to frighten him could be where the world No. 175 finally breaks through.
Burmester has also struggled in the early desert skirmishes and this giant hitter also missed the cut on a visit to Pebble Beach but he did rediscover his game when shooting 22 under for second place in the Dimension Data at Fancourt on the Sunshine Tour, and the standard in Kenya is only slightly higher.
Yet, at the prices, three other South Africans look better value. Justin Harding is a Kenya specialist and will be disappointed this event is not being played at Karen, where he won last year and finished runner-up in 2019.
He looked like grabbing an early 2022 victory at the Dubai Desert Classic but a Sunday 76 knocked him back to fourth place. This laid-back character with the telephone-box swing shrugged off that blip to post another top-ten next time out at Ras Al Khaimah and will be hard to kick out of the frame.
Daniel Van Tonder won the Savannah Classic when Karen played host for a second week in Kenya last March. As he won four on the Sunshine circuit and carded decent finishes at Ras Al Khaimah, he too merits an interest.
Compatriot Oliver Bekker impressed with top-tens in both Ras Al Khaimah tournaments and this seven-time Sunshine Tour winner has form at Muthaiga – sixth to Lorenzo Gagli when the course was last used for a Challenge Tour event.
Of the British contingent, Marcus Armitage and Scott Jamieson played good golf in the Gulf. European Open champion Armitage’s 12th in Dubai and ninth in the Ras Al Khaimah Classic was matched by Jamieson’s ninth at Ras Al Khaimah and tenth in Abu Dhabi.
Narrow preference is for joker Armitage as Jamieson can’t ever seem to finish the job off. It is ten years since his lone victory and when presented with a cast-iron chance in Abu Dhabi he folded with a 77.
Kenya is almost a home game for Indian No. 1 Shubhankar Sharma – Indians constitute a third of the Nairobi population – and the form that took him to second behind Thomas Pieters in Abu Dhabi in January and third in the Spanish Open last October would win this.
You can go broke backing serial losers Thomas Detry and Arnaus but they have all the tools, bar a clear mind when in contention on Sundays, to do a job on these rivals.
Best of the rest could be Meronk who keeps knocking on the door and has a Muthaiga fifth from 2017 on his CV and Johannes Veerman, a classy American swinger who was a first-time winner last year.
With temperatures just under 30C and no more than a modest breeze, we should be seeing plenty of birdies but Muthaiga doesn’t dish them out with lashings of double cream as the average winning score there in the last six renewals is only 13 under par.
For all the latest odds on the PGA Tour, head to our dedicated golf betting page.
