Best bets
4pts win Scottie Scheffler @ 11/4
1.5pts each-way Will Zalatoris @ 16/1
1pt each-way Sahith Theegala @ 18/1
1pt each-way Jake Knapp @ 50/1
0.5pt each-way Mackenzie Hughes @ 50/1
Place FIVE pre-tournament bets and get an in-play matched FREE BET! T&Cs apply.
Sometimes golf sucks. Last week it didn’t look promising with big box-office stars Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler taking a break in the run-up to the Masters. And it got worse, much, much worse.
The colour quickly went out of the Valspar Championship when past champions Sam Burns and Jordan Spieth exited on Friday, then Justin Thomas struggled and favourite Xander Schauffele got too far back to seriously contend. On Sunday the last straw — yet another 300/1 shocker, this time Peter Malnati, a 36-year-old journeyman from Indiana, making his 259th PGA Tour start with only one minor success in Mississippi back in 2015 in the win column, that W coming thanks to holing 496 feet of putts and having no bigger name than 2009 US Open champion Lucas Glover to frighten him.
We all love a fairytale but in a field of 155, give me 100 goes at pinpointing the winner and I still might not have come up with Malnati. And punters are understandably fed up, some looking at other sports for their entertainment. Turn them upside down and there are only so many £1 coins that fall out of their pockets.
One swallow — Scheffler swooping past Major champions Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman and windy Schauffele for his second straight Players Championship — does not make a summer or compensate for a winter of discontent.
Little weekend relief either for golf punters in Singapore, where 66/1 shot Jesper Svensson pipped 100/1 Kiradech Aphibarnrat after three extra holes, but enough whingeing — the sun’s shining in Houston, it’s nicely warm at 25C and we’ve got the world No. 1 back in action chasing a hat-trick after Bay Hill and Sawgrass. What’s not to like?
The 9/2 with Fitzdares for the Masters faces another trim if the Dallas-based Scottie cops at 11/4 in his adopted State at the Memorial Park municipal course where he was runner-up to Jason Kokrak in the days before he started winning golf tournaments by the handful in 2021. Since then he’s gone March-mad, winning five of his eight in that merry month.
The tournament was held in November that year and again in 2022 when he was T9 to runaway winner Tony Finau and comes back on the roster where it used to be, as a warm-up for the Masters. And as it finishes on Easter Day, the 31st, it just fits into Scheffler’s favourite month.
He’s obviously the man to beat and there aren’t many with the minerals and the method to do it.
On current form US Open Clark, so desperately close to a playoff with Scheffler at Sawgrass (how did that putt not go in?) would be the chief threat and, T16 the last time at Memorial Park, he is a sounder putter than the favourite.
But I just prefer Will Zalatoris on course debut. Runner-up in two Majors before breaking through at St Jude in 2022, he has recovered brilliantly from the back problem that kept him out of the game for four months with classy efforts at Torrey Pines (13th), Riviera (2nd) and Bay Hill (4th).
The missed cut at Sawgrass came as a surprise but he is a man in a hurry to make up for lost time and I can see this old course, a 7345-yard par 70, suiting him. Renovated in 2019 with two new holes, the pond tripling in size, additional water hazards making the finish more difficult and a ravine in play from holes two to seven, it favours straight-shooters who know where their ball is going.
On the three occasions it’s been played since the revamp, the winners have been Carlos Ortiz, a relatively short hitter, Kokrak and Finau, two pretty long ones, but all three accurate drivers.
On course and current form, Mackenzie Hughes must have place chances. He tied third at the weekend thanks to some amazing putting, was T7 behind Ortiz at Memorial Park in 2020 and T16 to Finau, two years later.
On course and current form, Mackenzie Hughes must have place chances. He tied third at the weekend thanks to some amazing putting, was T7 behind Ortiz at Memorial Park in 2020 and T16 to Finau, two years later.
Si Woo Kim, T6 to Scheffler at Sawgrass (where he has a fine record) and Sahith Theegala are two more who catch the eye but they’ll have to sprout wings to catch Scheffler.
Theegala, who started the year with second place at Kapalua and has settled into a nice run with fifth at Phoenix, sixth at Bay Hill and ninth at the Players, appeals more but this looks the Scottie Scheffler Show — Part 3 (to be continued).
Best bets
2.5pts each-way Anirban Lahiri @ 22/1
1.5pts each-way Shubhankar Sharma @ 28/1
1pt each-way Bernd Wiesberger @ 25/1
0.5pt each-way Matteo Manassero @ 66/1
0.5pt each-way Ewen Ferguson @ 20/1
India have just given us a good seeing-to at cricket on their own pitches and there could be more joy for the home side at this week’s Indian Open in New Delhi when Anirban Lahiri and Shubhankar Sharma, the continent’s two finest golfers, are taken to see off raiders from around the world.
Victory for Lahiri would be another stab in the back for the DP World Tour as he has been making a fair old living on the rebel LIV circuit for the past two years and it was only a couple of weeks back that he was picking up a handy $750,000 as a member of the winning Crushers squad in the LIV team event in Hong Kong.
On top of that, $146,250 for a mid-division individual performance, so he won’t be coming for the modest $2.25m prize fund but for the glory of winning his national Open for a second time.
The tournament, not played in the three years before 2023 because of the pandemic, is taking place, as it has done for its last four renewals, at the DLF Golf and Country Club, a traditional par 72 measuring 7416 yards with a massive 624-yard par five finale. But this is no power test and no winner has been a long hitter. Indeed, the champion in 2017, local hero Shiv Chawrasia, was one of the shortest, with the nickname Chip-Putt-Sia because of his magical short-game skills.
The fact that two forty-somethings, Marcel Siem and Stephen Gallacher, have won the last two Indian has drawn me to the experience of Lahiri as the most likely winner. At 36 he is not of their vintage but has been around for a long time, a comment that also applies to Bernd Wiesberger, 38, the six-time-winning Austrian who has recently rejoined the DPWT after an unhappy spell with LIV.
But let’s deal with Lahiri’s credentials first: he was playing the PGA Tour for several years before LIV so had been an absentee since finish fifth in 2017 on this week’s test but has since proved himself at top level, winning twice in Europe, one of them in the 2015 Indian Open but on a different Delhi course, finishing top-five in a Major, and four time runner-up last year, twice on the LIV circuit and twice in the Asian Tour’s International Series.
So while getting first past the post has not been his strong suit, it is a CV that gives Anirban every chance in a line-up not overburdened with star names. Favourite Rasmus Hojgaard is probably the one with the most potential but he was all over the place in Singapore last week when down the field behind 66/1 winner Jesper Svensson and is passed over.
Well ahead of him on Sunday came Sharma whose bogey finish took him back to seventh, easily his best performance of the year (although his 16th at the Dubai Desert Classic promised more). It was the perfect prep for an eagerly-awaited return to a course where he was 13th last year and seventh in 2018 as well as the home adulation from the Delhi fans.
Wiesberger may not be the player who won Ryder Cup honours in 2021 but a brace of 16th places in Bahrain and Singapore on his two latest outings suggest he is not far away and this won’t take too much winning.
He’s a definite place prospect as is Matteo Manassero whose third on this week’s course in 2017, by far the best finish of a wretched year when his once-dazzling game was starting to crumble and he was powerless to halt the decline, takes on some
significance in light of the Italian’s resurgence as an emphatic winner in South Africa earlier this month.
Best of the British contingent could be Glaswegian Ewen Ferguson who hasn’t quite found top gear this campaign but is a model of consistency with seven top-25s from eight starts and knows how to win. Expect him to improve on last week’s 11th in easier company.
It was wonderful to see popular Thai veteran Kiradech Aphibarnrat back to his exciting best in Singapore but enthusiasm for backing him is tempered by the mental and physical exhaustion that will have accrued from a combination of the sweltering 102F heat and the disappointment of losing out in a lengthy playoff to Svensson.
Yannik Paul and Joost Luiten, second and third last year, are greatly respected but Jordan Smith and Richard Mansell continue to cost punters money by not matching their undoubted ability with the last-day lust for a fight every winner must possess.
One more to have a look at is Laurie Canter, a perennial bridesmaid but undoubtedly talented. Fourth in the Australian Open followed a second in Mauritius at the end of last year but he has been held back by a nagging injury and this will be his first start for a while.
For all your bets on the PGA Tour, visit our dedicated golf betting page.
