Best bets
2pts each-way Sam Burns @ 11/1
1.5pts each-way Brian Harman @ 20/1
1pt each-way Doug Ghim @ 40/1
1pt each-way Maverick McNealy @ 50/1
1pt each-way Jordan Spieth @ 14/1
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World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler did the business for the second year running in a magnificent Players Championship at Sawgrass. Now his best pal on tour, Sam Burns, can’t wait to follow him in by winning his third Valspar title at the tough Copperhead course at Palm Harbor, the fourth and final leg of the Florida Swing.
Every time Scheffler – a confident 4pt win selection here at 11/2 – doesn’t play, the rest heave a massive sigh of relief as he is, by some distance, the best golfer in the world and last week’s eighth victory, and his fifth in the month of March, was almost Superman class. No wonder folk are starting to compare him to Tiger Woods but there’s a heck of a long way to go.
Scottie had to overcome a seven-hole spell in round two when he had a movement-restricting neck pain which required hole-by-hole physio to get him through the round. So it’s clear why Fitzdares tightened his Masters odds to 9/2. Nobody will be in a rush to back Rory McIlroy after his fifth straight disappointment (T19 but the best of his last five) while the other obvious danger, Jon Rahm, has failed to justify his $40m signing-on fee in three anti-climactic LIV outings.
The ground Scheffler lost in that pain-racked spell on Friday must have cost him at least two shots so you can mark him up as worth more than the wafer-thin one-shot triumph over three of America’s finest – two reigning Major champions, Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman, and the Olympic gold medalist Xander Schauffele, who starts as an opposable favourite to gain compensation at Innisbrook this weekend.
‘I am never going to back a player who consistently screws up winning opportunities.’
Even in a relatively weak field, I am never going to back a player who consistently screws up winning opportunities so the 8/1 for windy Xander is not for me. And while Woody Allen’s line “90 per cent of success in life is just showing up” applies in spades to Scheffler it emphatically doesn’t to near-namesake Schauffele, a non-winner for almost two years since the 2022 Scottish Open.
Schauffele had one hand on the trophy on Sunday but blew it by bogeying the 14th and 15th then missing a straight 6ft birdie putt on the short 17th. Yet he still had the chance of a playoff until two mediocre shots to the 18th put the kybosh on that.
Take the 8/1 if you must but there are plenty waiting to pounce if Schauffele has an understandable hangover from the one that got away.
And why should Harman who shared second with him at Sawgrass be at two and a half times the price? The diminutive left-hander boasts superior course form to Schauffele, fifth two years ago on this 7340-yard par 71 where birdies have to be well and truly earned (8 and 10 under the winning scores in three of the last five years), and rates a danger to all.
He had a good week at Bay Hill (T12) before Sawgrass and his trusty putter is forever making up for any lack of length. Mark him down as the biggest danger to course specialist Burns, a back-to-back Copperhead winner in 2021-22 and not that far off the hat-trick when sixth to Taylor Moore last year.
Burns’s 2024 demands close inspection, four consecutive top-tens at AmEx, Pebble Beach, Phoenix and Riviera followed by three good rounds at Bay Hill and Sawgrass spoiled by disastrous Sundays when trying to be too ambitious on unrelenting courses that demanded more respect.
On terrain this week full of great memories – Copperhead was where he claimed his breakthrough win in 2021 – he should feel much more at home, so play it again, Sam!
Jordan Spieth, winner in 2015 and T3 last year, missed the cut last week but there was plenty before that to suggest he was back to something like his best. I am less sure about his buddy Justin Thomas, who also failed to make the weekend, in his case for the second time in his three latest starts.
I have put both up in recent weeks and will give Spieth one more chance while suggesting a bigger-priced option in little Doug Ghim, like Spieth a short-game wizard but with his game in arguably better shape. Without every threatening to win, the former world amateur No. 1 has amassed well over a million dollars in placing 16th at Sawgrass and PGA National, 13th at Torrey Pines, ninth in Mexico and 12th in Phoenix.
He is steady as a rock on tough courses and faces another one this week. His 27th at Copperhead wasn’t bad and as he is currently playing with much more confidence, his tour card for next year all but secured early in the year, the 40/1 makes plenty of each-way appeal.
Also of interest after his top-ten at Sawgrass is Ghim’s Las Vegas roommate and fellow Walker Cup star Maverick McNealy, a great amateur who is 0 from 122 as a pro which isn’t the greatest recommendation. But we need to cut him some slack as he missed a huge slice of last year with a shoulder tear which he recklessly tried to play through until forced to stop in June and didn’t return until November.
Fully recovered now, he posted two eyecatching efforts, sixth at Phoenix and 13th in Mexico, before his Players’ ninth and although he has no great form at the Valspar, don’t let that put you off. More off-putting is the weather forecast: rumblings of thunder on Friday after a rainy Thursday. The good news: fine and sunny for round four.
2pts each-way Paul Casey @ 12/1
1pt each-way Matteo Manassero @ 80/1
1pt each-way Bernd Wiesberger @ 40/1
1pt each-way Rasmus Hojgaard @ 14/1
1pt each-way Thriston Lawrence @ 25/1
The DP World Tour’s five-tournament Asian Swing tees off this week with a field boosted by world-class names in Shane Lowry and Paul Casey for the Singapore Classic before heading off to India, South Korea, Japan and China.
For Lowry it comes after three heavy weeks in Florida on the PGA Tour, for two of which he had outstanding victory chances but faded on Sunday. Yet while finishes of second at the Cognizant and fourth at Bay Hill showed what great nick his game is in, they must have taken plenty out of the bluff Irishman as he never got in a blow at last week’s Players Championship.
Still a share of 19th place with a final-round 66 to send him on his way to Singapore with a smile on his face wasn’t a negative either. He has to be favourite but, fatigued after a 25-hour, 10,000-mile flight, might be worth taking on.
Late-blooming Mathieu Pavon is accorded maximum respect after winning at the 185th attempt on the DP World Tour in the Spanish Open last October, then finishing fifth at the Tour Championship finale in Dubai to earn his PGA Tour card and straight away making the most of his dream to play in the States with a 500/1 victory at tough Torrey Pines.
To show that was no fluke, the 31-year-old from Toulouse followed up with a third at Pebble Beach and although blotting his copybook by missing the cut at Sawgrass last week, it would be reckless to underrate him.
I narrowly favour Arizona-based Englishman Paul Casey who, unlike the possibly weary Lowry, comes in fresh from his best performance yet on the LIV Tour, runner-up to Abe Ancer after a playoff in Hong Kong. It was his closing 64 that got his Crushers squad led by Bryson DeChambeau the team prize, a $750,000 consolation for that narrow individual defeat.
This is Casey’s first DP World Tour start since defecting to LIV almost two years ago and he’s here as an ambassador for sponsors Porsche and a keen user of their upmarket product. They will be expecting him to do well and now that the injury issues that dogged him throughout his first LIV campaign have been sorted, the 46-year-old ex-Ryder Cup star and winner of 21 tournaments worldwide (including back-to-back triumphs in this week’s US event, the Valspar, in 2018-19) has to have a serious shout.
It’s surprising to see Matteo Manassero dismissed as a 80/1 shot after his emphatic victory, admittedly at a somewhat lower level, in South Africa on his last outing. That out of-the-blue triumph ended an 11-year drought for the Italian who was being hailed as a future Ryder Cup star after winning the prestigious BMW PGA at Wentworth a month after turning 20 in 2013.
The precocious ‘Manny’ had by then racked up four quickfire wins that started when he was a lad of 16. He had everything bar length and power and it was in searching for those two missing components that his game fell apart.
It has taken a long time to put it together again but, as they say, form is only temporary, class is forever. It’s relevant that one of his four early victories came in Singapore in 2012 (though not on this week’s course) when he beat Louis Oosthuizen and Rory McIlroy, two notable scalps.
Whether he’ll be as effective on the heavily bunkered Laguna National’s 7420-yard test which was upgraded and lengthened in 2017 is the issue. It seemed to favour sluggers in last year’s first edition but I like the fact that Manassero has enjoyed success in this part of the world, not only in the 2012 Singapore Open but earlier when runner-up in the Hong Kong Open.
Austrian ace Bernd Wiesberger is back on the DP World Tour prowl after struggling to make an impact with LIV and judging from his first three comeback starts there’s still plenty left in the tank of this eight-time winner. He would have been one of the favourites a few years ago so 40/1 holds each-way appeal.
I haven’t given up on Japan’s Rikuya Hoshino, runner-up in the Australian Open and Aussie PGA, but I’m keener on Thriston Lawrence and Rasmus Hojgaard. Lawrence finished T2 to Manassero last time out despite throwing in a lot of bogeys and occupied the same position behind Dubai Invitational winner Tommy Fleetwood in the opening tournament of the year. He is preferred to defending champion and fellow Springbok Ockie Strydom who misses too many cuts to be fancied for a repeat.
Hojgaard has been around so long it’s hard to believe he’s only just 23. The Dane is a smart operator who disappointed when fancied for the Puerto Rico Open last time out but on his 2024 DPWT form (6-8-2-11-11) has to be on your short list.
Although he’s been favourite for some of these, don’t give up on Ras. He knows how to win, having done so four times in a faster start to his burgeoning career than twin brother Nicolai made but now he’s playing catch-up as it was Nicolai who got the Ryder Cup call. That will drive Ras on and he looks sure to contend in a steamy but wet week (32C) likely to be interrupted by electrical storms on Friday.
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