Best bets
2pts each-way Max Homa @ 9/1
1pt each-way Harris English @ 40/1
1pt each-way Collin Morikawa @ 9/1
0.5pt each-way Jason Day @ 22/1
0.5pt each-way Nicolai Hojgaard @ 40/1
0.5pt each-way Ludvig Aberg @ 18/1
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While it was Fairytale Sunday for the 20-year-old amateur who put 156 professionals (including world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler) to shame on the PGA Tour, Nick Dunlap was Horror Story II for punters who had been knocked sideways by 300/1 Grayson Murray the week before.
Now they had to suffer an even more unpredictable setback at the hands of a “college kid” from Alabama who was among the “500/1 others” with the bookmakers and goodness knows what price on the betting exchanges.
The French have a saying for it “Jamais deux sans trois” so who’s going to send the layers laughing all the way to the bank for the third week running when the West Coast Swing moves to San Diego for the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines? By the way, this is the only Wednesday-to-Saturday tournament of the year, leaving Sunday clear for NFL conference championship games, so get your bets on early!
After “a life-changing 24 hours”, US amateur champion Dunlap has withdrawn from the Farmers to spend the week with family so his fifth tour start (the first three were missed cuts) is delayed but he’s odds-on to be joining the pro ranks himself soon as he will be flooded with lucrative offers that will speedily make up for the $1.512m American Express cheque he was not allowed to accept. The lucky recipient of that was the runner-up, South African Christiaan Bezuidenhout, compensation for being denied a long-awaited PGA Tour breakthrough. He didn’t look too upset.
In the States, Dunlap was the first amateur winner since Phil Mickelson in the 1991 Northern Telecom Open. The last am to win in Europe was subsequent Open champion Shane Lowry who landed some tasty 250/1 and 300/1 bets for family and friends when landing the rain-lashed 2009 Irish Open at Co. Louth. Then 22 and the 16th-ranked amateur in the world, Lowry saw the €500,000 first prize presented to his playoff victim, Robert Rock.
All the fuss over Dunlap, so ice-cool when most of us expected him to crack – instead it was co-leader Sam Burns who lost the plot with a shocking 5-6 finish and two tee shots into the water – could spur last year’s great recruit from the college ranks, Ludvig Aberg to step up on two rather ho-hum starting efforts, 47th and 30th, in Hawaii.
Torrey Pines, a demanding US Open layout with tight fairways and lush rough where his precision play off the tee should be rewarded, will be more to the liking of a superstar-in-the-making who has, in just a few short months, won on both tours and played Ryder Cup.
Aberg renews rivalry with Ryder Cup opponents Max Homa, Patrick Cantlay, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele but already looks totally at home in the highest company and I think Torrey Pines where 15 or 16 under gets the job done suits him far better than birdie-fests like Kapalua.
Although it is a municipal course, the South at Torrey, toughened up in 2001 and again in 2019 by Rees Jones to make it more worthy of Major status, is a 7765-yard monster that takes no prisoners. This is where Tiger Woods, with one dodgy knee, took 91 holes to see off the stubborn Rocco Mediate in a spellbinding five-day 2008 US Open in the days when the playoff was 18 holes on a Monday.
For the first two days the 507-yard-shorter North shares the load with the South and it is there that the flashier scores are typically compiled.
In this instance course form is more important than current and a past top-ten at Torrey has regularly been a significant clue. Although it falls at a different time of year and on a layout more rigidly set up to identify the best golfer in the field, the form of the 2021 US Open, won by a past course winner in Rahm, bears close inspection.
Only a dozen beat par but among them Harris English (3rd), Morikawa (4th) and Schauffele (7th) are worth further investigation as Morikawa was third to Max Homa in last year’s Farmers, Schauffele was T2 behind Patrick Reed in 2021 and English took Jason Day to a 2015 playoff in the Aussie’s heyday.
This year’s limited exchanges suggest all three are in good nick, Morikawa with fifth at Kapalua, Schauffele with a T3 to new star Dunlap on Sunday and English with a tidy 14-10 return from his two-week trip to Hawaii.
While rarely keen to put up a defending champion, Homa has done it before with the Fortinet Championship and I am a big fan, particularly when he’s in his home state as he’s a four-time winner in California. He was one of the very few Americans to do himself justice in the Ryder Cup and then wowed Sun City with a classy Nedbank triumph on his debut there.
A fair 14th at Kapalua to start his year, Homa surely has to come into the conversation as must Day, twice a Farmers winner and a runner-up too. Not as dominant these days perhaps but he’s still a force on this course as a T3 and T8 in the past two editions amply demonstrate.
Sahith Theegala, just edged out by Chris Kirk at The Sentry and T4 at Torrey last year, has an obvious claim and although this is not a regular port of call for Justin Thomas, there was much to admire in Saturday’s 61 on the way to a share of third behind the boy wonder. It miffed JT that he was beaten to low score of the day by a 60 from a “college kid”. It won’t be the only time, Justin!
Dubai runner-up Adrian Meronk, making his first start as a full PGA Tour member, and Ryder Cup quartet Nicolai Hojgaard, Justin Rose, Aberg and Sepp Straka look the pick of a numerically strong European raiding party and there’s a temptation to go for a little each-way Hojgaard twins double – Nicolai at 40/1 in California and Rasmus, the 12/1 favourite in Ras Al Khaimah on the DP World Tour (see below). The win part alone pays 532/1.
Nicolai finished last year on a high by winning the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai then chasing Homa hard at the Nedbank. And although there was plenty of room for improvement, his T7 on Sunday in the Desert Classic has sent him off on this assignment with his tail up. He’s going to be a big star too.
Watch out for comeback duo Will Zalatoris and Daniel Berger. Both have tip-top Torrey form – Will 2nd in a 2022 playoff with Luke List, Dan T7 at the US Open – and have hit their stride quickly after long injury lay-offs. Both shot all four rounds in the 60s last week with Berger particularly impressive as the AmEx was his first outing in 18 months.
And if you really think an outsiders’ hat-trick is on the cards, try Scott Stallings at 150/1 as he won at Torrey in 2014 and went as close as a playoff the following year. Current form is thin on the ground but he had one near miss in October, again losing out in a playoff, this time for the Sanderson Farms. It’s a massive longshot but so were Murray and Dunlap. In golf you just never know …
Best bets
2pts each-way Zander Lombard @ 20/1
2pts each-way Thriston Lawrence @ 25/1
1pt each-way Haotong Li @ 40/1
1pt each-way Thorbjorn Olesen @ 16/1
1pt each-way Rasmus Hojgaard @ 12/1
0.5pt each-way double N Hojgaard @ 40/1 & R Hojgaard @ 12/1
The bookies rarely make mistakes but I was surprised to see Rory McIlroy well odds- against and not even favourite going into the final round of his beloved Dubai Desert Classic two behind highly-rated but temperamentally-suspect American visitor Cameron Young.
Consider the facts: Young, a longtime non-winner on his first visit to the Emirates, facing proud defending champion McIlroy, a triple course winner who had overcome a ten-shot halfway deficit to get into a challenging position. And going head-to-head in front of a pro-Rory crowd in the last match out in a country where the Northern Irishman is golf royalty.
True, McIlroy had botched it the previous week when Tommy Fleetwood made him pay for his profligacy but there was nobody to take advantage this time, certainly not Young whose putting was woefully inadequate. If we didn’t know before, we know now why he is still a PGA Tour maiden and why we need to be wary of backing him in future, particularly when he’s leading. Forget his last-hole birdie: the game was well and truly up by then.
We stay in the UAE for another week, going from their oldest-established tournament to one only in its fourth year, the Ras Al Khaimah Championship at Al Hamra, little more than an hour up the road from Dubai. No McIlroy or Fleetwood this time, no Young or Open champion Brian Harman, no Dubai runner-up Adrian Meronk and no 2022 Ras champion Nicolai Hojgaard, both Europeans involved in the far-more-lucrative US action at Torrey Pines.
So a good chance of a new winner on a birdie-friendly 7325-yard par 72 Peter Harradine course that was designed for tourism rather than as a fierce challenge to professionals, hence winning scores of 24 under by Hojgaard in 2022 and 22 under by Ryan Fox in the Ras Classic the following week. Al Hamra did double duty that year as a late fill-in when the Qatar Masters was cancelled.
It was windier and tougher last year when 17 under got it done, Daniel Gavins edging out Zander Lombard and Alexander Bjork by a shot. Since then Gavins has not had a single top ten and as he finished stone-cold last with two rounds of 81 in Dubai last week it seems highly unlikely we shall see the Englishman emulate Dubai Desert Classic hero McIlroy by making a successful title defence.
Far more likely to give punters a good run is runner-up Lombard, the burly South African who has been knocking on the door for a few years now but still awaits his DP World Tour breakthrough. The course form is eyecatching – he was also third to Fox in the 2022 Ras Classic – and an overdue first success seems imminent.
Two good efforts in his home country (fourth in Joburg, 12th in the SA Open) when his often-suspect short putting generally held up well gave Lombard the confidence to blossom in Dubai where his 16th on Sunday was a strong follow-up to sixth in the Invitational. So two good weeks in the UAE should be followed by a third.
The equally well-upholstered Thriston Lawrence could be a big threat and a South African 1-2 would come as no surprise. Lawrence shared second place with McIlroy at Dubai Creek and was only denied a playoff by Fleetwood’s last-hole birdie. He’s on a real tear, having placed fifth in Dubai at the Tour Championship in November before posting a 7-10-11 run in three starts in his own country ahead of that near-miss at the Creek. Unlike Lombard he’s a prolific DPWT winner but to counter that he doesn’t have Lombard’s course credits.
While twin brother Nicolai chases bigger bucks in San Diego, Rasmus Hojgaard will be favourite here. He was all over the place on the back nine in Dubai and slid from third to 11th, the third time in a row the young Dane has occupied that position. But 11th in the Tour Championship and in the Desert Classic, plus sixth at the Nedbank, still read very well in the context of this easier grade.
At bigger odds, the entertaining Haotong Li who plays army (left, right, left, right) golf in the spirit and style of Seve Ballesteros is worth sticking with while he’s on a roll. His T7 at the Emirates followed 14th at Dubai Creek, yet his game was so derailed last year that he made only two cuts in 20 starts.
It’s good to have this three-time winner back smiling again as he brings joy and excitement to the game. One of the former Chinese No. 1’s few good performances was his T3 at Al Hamra two years ago, so it is clearly a course where Li can get away with the inevitable wayward driving and show off his flair for making pars and birdies from almost anywhere.
Pablo Larrazabal had a brilliant Sunday to take a share of fourth and has good course form (T3 in the Ras Classic). The veteran Spaniard knows how to win and must be kept onside when he gets a taste for it.
Jordan Smith, a Challenge Tour winner at Al Hamra back in 2016 and runner-up to Nicolai Hojgaard in this tournament two years ago, creates plenty of chances but is difficult to win with, Yannik Paul is a German ambitious for a place on the 2025 Ryder Cup side and has the skill-set to match, while multiple winner Thorbjorn Olesen looks good for a place at least.
The Dane was T4 here last year and arrives in form that encourages an investment. If you look at his 2023 record, this is his time of year too so do stick with him for a bit.
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