Best bets
2pts each-way Jordan Spieth @ 66/1
1.5pts each-way Justin Thomas @ 14/1
1pt each-way Will Zalatoris @ 40/1
1pt each-way Collin Morikawa @ 12/1
0.5pt each-way Justin Rose @ 125/1
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It’s no wonder golf is in decline as a TV-watching sport when the final threeball takes a stultifyingly laborious five-and-a-half hours to get round as it did in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines – and there’s more of that to come this week when 80 well-heeled amateurs and minor celebs hack it around with their long-suffering but trying-to-please pro partners in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
For 20 million bucks, the professionals are well rewarded for putting up with anything and it’s only for half the tournament since Pebble became one of the PGA’s elite Signature events – goodness knows why – and the star names who had studiously avoided the gig in the past now come out to play.
Sheriff Scottie Scheffler, fit again after hand surgery, has ridden into town along with his posse, headed by Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Hideki Matsuyama, Tommy Fleetwood, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, to rescue the game and how relieved we are to see them after the tedium of last week.
Only punters with a financial interest could have faced with enthusiasm the last day of the Farmers or the Ras Al Khaimah Championship, two tournaments fought out, with the greatest respect, by names they barely knew, names like Sam Stevens, Andrew Novak and Kris Ventura in America and Alejandro Del Rey, Marcus Armitage and David Puig in the UAE. Thank goodness for betting in-running to keep punters awake but for non-gamblers it would have been time to turn off.
Time being the operative word because slow play makes it almost impossible for Sky’s struggling golf presenters to make these endless sessions entertaining. Often they seem exasperated. CBS on-course commentator Dottie Pepper, once a superstar herself, hit the nail on the head saying: “We are starting to need a new word to talk about the pace of play issue and it’s respect for your fellow competitors, for the fans, for broadcasting – it’s just got to get better.”
No doubt Scheffler and Co. will do what they can but it’s out of their hands until the weekend when the amateurs go home and the 80 pros (there’s no cut) can strut their stuff at spectacular Pebble Beach, scene of eight US Opens, more than any other course and happy to be the world’s most expensive public course, a round there setting you back $725 with a compulsory buggy or a whole heap more with caddie + tip.
Half the course is quite ordinary, the other nine, along the cliffs and those ocean vistas, magnificent. Only 6816 yards, very short these days for a par 72, it switches to difficult only when the wind protects it. As an example, the tiny downhill 107-yard seventh, the
shortest on the PGA Tour, is a lob wedge most of the time but can require up to a 3-iron when the wind howls. And its greens are the smallest to find on the circuit.
Sharing duty for the two pro-am days is Spyglass Hill, a tougher, tighter, tree-lined proposition, a par 71 of 7035 yards, with holes named after Treasure Island characters. The sixth, eighth and 16th are the most difficult but it is Blind Pew, No. 4, that was designer Trent Jones’s favourite.
With weekend winners Harris English and Del Rey priced at 100/1 and 125/1, the vast majority of punters were licking their wounds, the mystery bug that forced 16 to quit during the four days wrecking the chance of our Torrey tip Ludvig Aberg. The Swede led after round one with a 63 but looked like death the rest of the week after the virus struck. A 79 on Sunday took him outside the top 40 and it remains to be seen how much that brave effort has taken out of him.
Although Aberg was runner-up to Wyndham Clark last year when heavy rains washed out the final round with him just one behind – he was our selection then too – it’s best to hold fire on backing him until we see whether he’s 100%.
Not only Scheffler but also the charismatic Jordan Spieth make their 2025 bow after injury breaks. Scheffler cut himself badly when carving Christmas dinner while Spieth has been facing a long recuperation from wrist surgery in August, the problem dating back to 2022.
No coincidence then that he went winless through the next two years. It was less about physical pain, he said, than a subconscious fear that it might dislocate.
Expect a more confident version of Spieth this year as he bids to regain his Ryder Cup place. It’s ridiculous that a man of his talent has not won since the Heritage in April 2022. He won at Pebble back in 2017 when in his prime, was only a shot out of the playoff in 2021 and beaten only by Tom Hoge in 2022. It’s not hard to imagine Spieth and his great pal Justin Thomas figuring this week.
JT we know to be in fine fettle having just finished like a train for the runner-up spot to Sepp Straka in the AmEx and here’s another multiple Major champion/former world No. 1 itching to get an overdue W on his CV, not having won since the 2022 USPGA. He was T6 last year and can confidently be expected to improve on that.
Of course Scheffler may simply outclass them like he did all last year. He shared sixth place with Thomas 12 months ago but hasn’t played for seven weeks and has had an interrupted preparation. Besides, course and format are unlikely to bring the best out of him.
McIlroy has the advantage of a recent spin – finishing strongly for a T4 in Dubai – but will need to step up dramatically from his two previous pro-am visits. He missed the cut in 2018 and tied for 66th last year. But he was T9 there, at a different time of year, in the 2019 US Open won by Gary Woodland. Again, I’m not sure these courses play to his strengths.
Yet Pebble is a place where Europeans have thrived. Graeme McDowell won the 2010 US Open there, Justin Rose played an immaculate last round for pro-am glory two years ago and could well be value at 125/1. And Aberg, Matthieu Pavon and Thomas Detry finished 2–3-4 behind hot putter Clark in last year’s truncated renewal.
Of the other Americans, I like Will Zalatoris and Morikawa, both late withdrawals last week, presumably victims of the bug that was going around. They will be anxious to make up for lost time and we know their games are in good shape, Morikawa runner-up at Kapalua, Zalatoris gradually approaching the form that took him to top-threes in three Majors. As his AmEx 12th encouraged me to put him up last week, I have to stick with him.
It’s going to be cloudy and cool with no sign of the strong winds that played havoc with the San Diego scores last weekend when eight under par was enough to get the job done. Add another ten this week and you’re probably looking at the winning score.
Best bets
2pts each-way Patrick Reed @ 14/1
2pts each-way Laurie Canter @ 18/1
1pt each-way Sebastian Soderberg @ 28/1
1pt each-way David Puig @ 18/1
0.5pt each-way Joe Dean @ 66/1
0.5pt each-way Ewen Ferguson @ 40/1
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After two years of failing to live up to his rich potential, Alejandro Del Rey finally smashed it in at Ras Al Khaimah last week with some electric short-game play and moves on to the Bahrain Championship with confidence in himself fully restored.
He has hated not even being in contention for a long while when he and his Spanish amigos knew he was a good deal better than that, so it would come as no surprise if he went on and bagged another victory in this modest grade.
But it’s another week, another set of challenges and a host of golfers he out-punched in Ras itching for revenge. Among them fellow Spaniard David Puig who was third and 2018 Masters champion, the self-styled ‘Captain America’ from past Ryder Cups, Patrick Reed, in eighth.
Pat is not as sharp on the greens as he was but winning for the first time for four years with a breathtaking display in the Hong Kong Open in November when he shot a 59 has given an already inflated ego a boost to bursting point.
Reed’s effort in Ras added to a T10 at the Dubai Desert Classic is keeping the controversial Texan tuned up for the “day job”, his lucrative contract with the breakaway LIV league whose programme tees off in Saudi Arabia next week. He has yet to win on that circuit but will ride into Riyadh on a high if he can complete a hat-trick of big Gulf finishes on the DPWT.
Puig is one of LIV’s most promising signings and will have been inspired by Del Rey’s victory. He will feed off that and could even make it a LIV 1-2. The man most likely to spoil the LIV party is England’s Laurie Canter, who is having a ball in the Gulf. The 35-year-old from Bath took his time landing a breakthrough win but it eventually came at the European Open, where his driving was a feature, and he has never looked back.
Canter ended the year with a solid 14th at the Tour Championship in Dubai, then opening his 2025 campaign by taking three points from four as GB & Ireland annihilated the Continentals in Abu Dhabi before placing third behind Tyrrell Hatton in the Desert Classic at a much higher level.
This is his Bahrain bow at the Royal Golf Club (7302 yards, par 72) which from the limited information available – this only the tournament’s second year – favours big hitters. Jesper Svensson, Zander Lombard and Ockie Strydom all made the frame behind Dylan Frittelli 12 months ago and they give the ball a mighty lash.
Frittelli is back to defend and on his Desert Classic T10 would have every chance. But he missed 12 cuts during the year after impressing in Bahrain and is unreliable.
I’d sooner have Sebastian Soderberg on my side. The Swede is back in the game after a T5 on Sunday and had bags of good form at this time and in this neck of the woods last year. A three-time runner-up last year, Seb has course form too – T6 to Frittelli last year.
Sharing fifth to Soderberg at the weekend was Sheffield newcomer Joe Dean who was doing deliveries for Morrisons between Qualifying School and making his main-tour bow in Qatar to pay for his tour travel. Judging by what we then saw, second places in Kenya and Holland, this 30-year-old late bloomer has a victory at this level well within his capabilities.
With eight career wins under his belt, Thorbjorn Olesen is a worthy-enough favourite and I couldn’t put you off while Ewen Ferguson looked the biggest threat to Hatton in Dubai until the wheels came off on the Sunday. The Glaswegian has been a strong finisher before as a three-time winner so if we can excuse that blip he could also be in the mix on his Bahrain bow. There are plenty more who could upset the applecart but Reed and Canter are the two to beat for me.
Four days under a cloudless sky in prospect but temperatures around 20C and just enough breeze to make it interesting.
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