Best bets
Most of the joy of tipping a 40/1 winner in Keegan Bradley was taken away by the gut-wrenching circumstances surrounding the US Ryder Cup captain’s unlikely Travelers Championship victory in Connecticut. It was horrid to see the hugely popular Tommy Fleetwood blow what would have been his first win on American soil in 159 attempts, not even getting into a playoff after being two ahead with three holes to play.
Full credit to the pride of Southport for fronting up and facing the world’s media in his anguish but for any golf-loving Brit it was a sight we wish we’d never seen. The 34-year-old Ryder Cup hero has waited so long for that elusive W. This was the 42nd top-ten on the PGA Tour for the seven-time DP World Tour winner and his sixth second place.
If you’d given him second place at the start of an elite event that had Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy atop the betting, laid-back Tommy would probably have jumped at it. He hadn’t been in great form after all. Missing the cut at the US Open had been a shock to one of the world’s most consistent performers. But this second, tied with Russell Henley, was painful. You could see the hurt in his eyes. It was his to win and he couldn’t do it. Two bogeys in the last three holes, three putts at the last. Desperately hard to bear.
Fleetwood might have got a second chance but, like the good pro he is, Bradley stepped up to the plate, hit a career second shot to six feet when he saw the leader’s come up short and exultantly canned the winning birdie. If Fleetwood was mortified, what about Henley? He called a penalty on himself when he sensed his ball had moved as he addressed it in the rough in round two and, Sod’s Law, it was by that one shot he was deprived of a playoff.
Now Bradley, now up to No. 7 in the world, his highest ranking ever at the age of 39, is talking of being a playing captain and delegating some off-course duties like pairings to his lieutenants, Jim Furyk, Brandt Snedeker, Webb Simpson and Kevin Kisner. The idea has not got me rushing to take Fitzdares’ 8/11 about the Americans regaining the trophy on their own patch at Bethpage Black, New York, in September. It’s a very big ask.
Bradley may be in decent form but many of his regulars aren’t. Even the great Scheffler played some bizarre shots that a 10-handicapper would turn up his nose at in rounds two and three last week. Remember he went winless through the last Ryder Cup. The old guard Schauffele, Morikawa, Spieth, Thomas, Cantlay, Burns, Clark are very in and out, DeChambeau flopped at the US Open, Henley and new US Open champion JJ Spaun don’t frighten anybody. And the raucous New Yorkers will be brutal if their men don’t deliver.
While Sunday’s blip was undoubtedly a blow, European captain Luke Donald nearly had two more to add to Europe’s astonishing total of nine PGA Tour victories this year with Bob MacIntyre going close at the US Open and Fleetwood so near and yet so far at River Highlands, where McIlroy came through to share sixth place with Scheffler after a torrid start.
He will have two weeks at home now before trying to win the Scottish Open for the second time in three years. Then it’s The Open in front of his adoring Irish fans at Royal Porthcawl. Can’t wait!
European involvement in this week’s Rocket Classic (formerly the Rocket Mortgage Classic) at the Detroit Golf Club in Michigan is not strong but Matt Fitzpatrick is getting his act together at last and Sunday’s 17th at the Travelers following his eighth at the PGA Championship suggests better things are round the corner.
Alex Noren should have won this four years ago but, like Fleetwood, wilted with the winning post in full view. Like Fleetwood, he is a multiple DP World Tour winner who makes a fortune in the States without winning.
I’m getting fed up with tipping name players who don’t live up to their reputations – Morikawa and Cantlay are two – so I’ll take a chance on the dynamic new kid on the block Luke Clanton who first grabbed our attention when tenth as world No. 1 amateur in this very tournament a year ago.
The 21-year-old Floridian went on to finish runner-up at the John Deere and RSM Classics and fifth at the Wyndham to become America’s Ludvig Aberg, a generational talent surely destined for the top. Aberg is four years older and two wins further along the line but there’s every indication Clanton, who plays at a similarly fast pace but seems to have a bit more fun about him, has as much potential.
Having gutsily earned his tour card by making the cut on the mark at the Cognizant in March, cool hand Luke made his debut as a pro at the Canadian Open just this month. Last year’s eyecatching effort in Motor City – he had a serious winning chance going into Sunday and was beaten only by four – can be improved on now that he knows he belongs in the big league.
The man in the best form is Ben Griffin who goes from strength to strength. We knew little about the North Carolinan until he shared in the pairs triumph in New Orleans but he quickly won again as a solo at Colonial after creating a stir with a top-ten at the USPGA, a feat he repeated at the US Open. In between there was a second at Memorial and he’s just posted another good one – 14th at River Highlands. If he has any petrol left in the tank, he’s the one to beat.
Cameron Young let us down after a bright start last week, such a disappointment after this big hitter had impressed with a brace of fourth places at the US and Canadian Opens. He’s still winless but given his Detroit record (T2 in 2022, T6 last year) we might regret giving him the push just yet.
Surely Bradley hasn’t any adrenaline left after last week’s titanic effort but Asian stars Hideki Matsuyama, Si Woo Kim and Tom Kim have claims on some form. Temperatures in the high 20s, little wind but light rain expected the first two days.
Best bets
Tyrrell Hatton was in a four-way tie for the lead at the US Open until he lost his rag with the “unfair” Oakmont course and dropped shots at the final two holes. In the end he was beaten by JJ Spaun and Ryder Cup chums Bob MacIntyre and Viktor Hovland but it was a step up on his LIV form and the volatile Englishman looks each-way value at 8/1 for this week’s edition of the 54-hole, 54-man, shotgun-start alternative to golf as we used to know it.
Teeing off on Friday (5.15pm our time) at the Maridoe course outside Dallas, it’s a new venue for the LIV circus and a very long one, up to 7800 yards, if they play it from the tips. Regarded as “extremely challenging but fair”, it was designed by Steve Smyers and Patrick Andrews, known for producing difficult golf courses, at the behest of Texas oilman Albert Huddleston who asked for a test for avid golfers on prairieland surrounding a 31-acre lake, the biggest in Dallas County, and seems to have got one.
The most interesting hole is the double dogleg par-five seventh with the pond biting in at the front. Built in 2017, few will have played it before this week and will be wary of the lake which comes into play on four holes.
At Oakmont, Hatton finished ahead of the trio leading him in the betting here, Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Joaquin Niemann, and if he takes a shine to Maridoe – the nickname of the owner’s wife Mary – he may notch his first win since the Dubai Desert Classic at the start of the year and Brooks Koepka, who turned in a decent effort for 16th at Oakmont, might be overpriced at 25/1 on that effort.
Getting Koepka to put it all in is the problem in these lesser tournaments but the talent that won him five majors is still there.
Best bets
1.5pts each-way Francesco Laporta @ 25/1
1pt each-way Edoardo Molinari @ 66/1
1pt each-way Marcel Siem @ 60/1
1pt each-way Eugenio Chacarra @ 28/1
0.5pt each-way Brandon Robinson-Thompson @ 60/1
It’s no help to finding the winner of this week’s Italian Open at new Tuscan venue Argentario but I walked all 18 holes with its co-designer Baldovino Dassu on the last day of the 1976 Dunlop Masters when, as a barely-known 23-year-old, he stunned the golfing world by defeating top American Hubert Green, the following year’s US Open champion.
Dassu was a tall, dark and handsome Florentine with a penchant for white suits, motor bikes and fast cars but a big-priced outsider with little to recommend him against some tasty opposition. At St Pierre, Chepstow, it was one of the biggest tournaments on the European calendar in those days and a couple of weeks later Dassu dotted up by eight shots in his national Open, played that year at Is Molas. Then he was done. One golden October, then nothing.
I mention Dassu because this Italian Open is full of Dassus, one-month wonders rarely figuring again. And what weird and wonderful names: Jordan Gumberg, Elvis Smylie, Angel Hidalgo, Nicolai Von Dellingshausen (third on the course in Italian Challenge last year) Alejandro del Rey, Marco Penge, Martin Couvra, Ryggs Johnston, John Parry won at Argentario on the Satellite Challenge Tour last year and Eugenio Chacarra says that on a good week he’s one of best golfers in the world (there’s a few still ahead on you, Eugenio).
Then there are the old dependables, Larrazabal, Campillo, Zanotti, Wiesberger, Ferguson, defending champion Marcel Siem who won it in Ravenna, and Jordan Smith, maybe the most gifted of the lot but virtually impossible to get past the post in front. He’s Fitzdares’ favourite this week at 20/1 and will probably look like the winner at one time or another.
After them, the young wannabes for whom much is predicted but are yet to fully flower – Angel Ayora, Wenli Ding, Jayden Schaper, Casey Jarvis and more. It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle whose week it is, and there’s a new-to-the-main-tour course, opened in 2005, to muddy the waters further.
We know it’s short (6857 yards, par 71) with five par threes and the heftiest of the par fives, the 12th, measures 632 yards. Italians taking part include Guido Migliozzi, Edoardo Molinari, Francesco Laporta, Renato Paratore and Andrea Pavan but sadly no Francesco Molinari or Matteo Manassero. Maybe it’s none of these but the highly-touted Japanese Keita Nakajima or one of the American PGA Tour rejects Brandon Wu or Troy Merritt.
I’ll opt for a home win by going for the swarthy Laporta, a triple Challenge Tour winner who deserves to open his main-tour account. He’s enjoyed another solid year, seventh last time out in the KLM, sixth at the Nedbank, 11th in Belgium and 13th in Bahrain. No world-bearer at 34 but he won’t need to be.
Molinari qualified for the US Open, a feat in itself, and, though missing the cut, two 74s at fearsome Oakmont was good golf. Top tens in India and China earlier in the year show the Ryder Cup vice-captain is no back-number. He and fellow old-stager Siem could outrun their big prices. Siem won’t lightly give up the title won in a playoff with Tom McKibbin and when he’s hot, as when shooting a last-round 63 for fifth place in Austria, the eccentric German can be lethal.
On recent efforts you couldn’t have the man from the Isle of Wight, Brandon Robinson-Thompson, on your mind but he showed more than enough in four top-tens between February and May to contend at a big price. He has plenty of game in the right surroundings and he’s proven on the course as he finished 12th last year on the satellite circuit.
And let’s see if Chacarra, a winner at LIV and on the DP World Tour after an exciting college career in the USA, is as good as he thinks he is. The aggressive Spaniard has lots of class and could thrive in the hot, steamy weather.
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