Best bets
2.5pts each-way Jordan Spieth @ 16/1
1.5pts each-way Viktor Hovland @ 12/1
1pt each-way Justin Rose @ 66/1
1pt each-way Tommy Fleetwood @ 40/1
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The 125/1 victory of little-known Matthieu Pavon at tough Torrey Pines, the first ever by a Frenchman in the USA, completed a wretched January for punters who specialise in the PGA Tour as he was the shortest-priced winner in a month of shocks over there.
To rub salt in the wound, a quick recap shows that Sentry winner Chris Kirk went off at 150/1, Sony champion Grayson Murray was available at 400/1 and Alabama college amateur Nick Dunlap was on the “500/1 others” list when he whupped 156 professionals at the AmEx.
Let’s hope sanity returns this week in a triple-header that features an all-cast in the $20m Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the debut on Friday of $500m signing Jon Rahm in LIV’s opening tournament in Mexico and the chance for Danish sizzler Rasmus Hojgaard to bring home the bacon and go one better than last week in the first Bahrain Championship for 13 years.
For the big each-way treble, try linking Hojgaard with Jordan Spieth in California and Rahm at Mayakoba – just to play up the 30/1 place double winnings from the Hojgaard twins, both runners-up playing almost 14,000 miles apart, Nicolai at La Jolla, Rasmus at Al Hamra. And remember they’re only 22, two years younger than the more-talked-about Ludvig Aberg. How great is that Scanda trio going to become? Lucky Europe!
Dealing with Pebble Beach first, many eyes will be on young Dunlap who is an amateur no more. He turned pro the day after that mind-boggling performance at Palm Springs and plays for prize money for the first time – and what money it is, bumped up from $9m to $20m since Justin Rose’s majestic victory stroll 12 months ago. The 20-year-old US amateur champion will be the story this week for the American media no matter what big names like Rory McIlroy and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler come up with.
One thing for sure: Dunlap will be playing all four days in a new format, just 80 players and no cut. Just two courses, instead of three, so only 36 holes for the hackers and celebrities, one on the legendary Pebble Beach Golf Links, the photogenic scene of six US Opens, and one at Spyglass Hill. Then the pros go it alone for the final two rounds at Pebble, at 6972 yards one of the shortest 72 pars on the circuit.
It’s a public course, so for the small consideration of $625 plus another $50 for the obligatory buggy you can test yourself against this spectacular challenge on one of the most famous golf courses in the world. It’s not desperately difficult – one hole is barely 100 yards long – but if the winds really blow, so will your score. If anything, Spyglass is slightly tougher and at 7041 a tad longer but perfect for a pro-am.
With the strongest field the tournament has ever had – 18 of the world’s top 20 are there – we’re looking at a winning score of around 20 under even though there will be heavy rain over the first two days and very un-Californian temperatures of 13C.
The tournament, in its early days a bit of fun called the Crosby Clambake when ‘Old Groaner’ Bing lent his name to it, is now serious business, one of the elite Signature events set up to combat the threat of the Saudi interlopers. It is surely no coincidence that the 14-tournament LIV Golf League tees off a day later when they’ll be showing off their prize asset Rahm along with two other European captures, Rahm’s Ryder Cup partner Tyrrell Hatton and hot Pole Adrian Meronk, runner-up to McIlroy in Dubai two weekends ago.
As for finding the winner, there has to be every chance of a fifth straight PGA Tour upset as none of the last six champions absolutely leapt off the page and stumpy plodder Ted Potter Jr in 2018 was a 500/1 “impossibility”. Then Phil Mickelson, 48 and well past his sell-by so we thought, dotted up the following year. As a five-time Pebble champion, he was a great advert for the horses-for-courses theory.
I see Spieth as the nearest thing we have to Mickelson now, a magician who can roll three shots into two from the most unlikely spots on a golf course although he gets in less trouble off the tee these days than Lefty did. And as winner here in 2017, runner-up in 2022 and third in 2021, his profile encourages a serious interest at 16/1, particularly in light of his impressive start to the year, that close third at Kapalua.
There’s little value in taking single-figure odds about Scheffler who is making his Pebble debut and has yet to convince with the flat stick this year while McIlroy has no course pedigree apart from a ninth in the 2019 US Open at a different time of year and on a course set up not for pro-am birdies but to a Major’s level of difficulty.
There are other Europeans possibly worthier of consideration. Justin Rose, a 25/1 winner for us last year, is putting well enough to repeat that masterful display and at a tasty 66/1 against tougher opposition this year would continue the trend of unexpected winners. He loves the course and was third in that US Open there, won by Gary Woodland.
But it’s in-form Tommy Fleetwood at 40/1 that catches the eye more. His birdie-birdie finish to turn McIlroy over at Dubai Creek will have done wonders for this self-effacing golfer whose wins-to-runs ratio doesn’t anywhere do justice to his ability.
He’s not a Pebble regular and did no more than make the cut at the 2019 Open but his dead-eye iron play and scrambling skills in the anticipated unfriendly weather could see the Southport star outrun his odds. He’s long overdue to break his duck in America and that recent success in Dubai will have done his self-belief a power of good.
A more logical choice on course form would be Viktor Hovland who won the US Amateur at Pebble and was 12th as an amateur in the US Open the following year – 13th to Rose too in his first Pebble Pro-Am last year. He rates my main danger to Spieth.
With a Frenchman winning from a Dane and a German in California last week, Europeans are certainly trending and Hovland, Fleetwood, Rose, McIlroy, Ludvig Aberg and Matt Fitzpatrick (6th in 2022) should make their presence felt, but last week’s top two, Pavon and Nicolai Hojgaard, will find this much harder.
Expect a good showing from Justin Thomas and Collin Morikawa among the Americans. Oh yes, and watch out for a young lad from Alabama called Dunlap making his pro debut. Quite a nice prospect and 80/1 … good luck to him.
Best bets
2.5pts each-way Rasmus Hojgaard @ 9/1
2pts each-way Keita Nakajima @ 18/1
1pt each-way Harrison Endycott @ 60/1
0.5pt each-way Alex Fitzpatrick @ 28/1
0.5pt each-way Manuel Elvira @ 80/1
0.5pt each-way Frederic Lacroix @ 33/1
The withdrawal of Sunday’s Ras Al Khaimah winner Thorbjorn Olesen has left the coast clear for his closest pursuer Rasmus Hojgaard to justify favouritism for the Bahrain Championship when Europe pays its first visit to the Colin Montgomerie layout at the Royal Golf Club for 13 years.
Paul Casey won the Volvo Golf Champions event there in 2011 that was due to be played again the following year only to have it switched to South Africa because of political unrest in the Kingdom where King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, we are told on Wikipedia, is “a passionate practitioner of the game” and “the foremost athlete in the Kingdom”. Don’t know about that but he certainly has the best PR in the business!
The 7261-yard Montgomerie, a links-style layout in the desert with fast-running fairways and open approaches into huge contoured dance floors, had its detractors back then mainly because of the greens but they have matured and a bigger problem may be the wind.
Neither of the Hojgaard twins brought their A-games with them on Sunday otherwise we might have landed a 532/1 double instead of having to settle for the 30/1 place part of the wager, with Nicolai in California and Rasmus in the UAE both finishing second.
Well though Rasmus putted at Ras Al Khaimah he was completely outshone in that department by Olesen who had a couldn’t-miss weekend with the flat stick.
As 16/1 Olesen and 12/1 Hojgaard were both tipped, it didn’t matter too much which one won but with Olesen and the dangerous Thriston Lawrence not in the Bahrain field, the 9/1 for Hojgaard looks fair enough in an easier assignment.. He preceded last week’s second with a brace of 11th places in Dubai and playing four weeks on the spin shouldn’t be a worry to a fit 22-year-old who has known how to win ever since joining the tour as a teenager.
He was a better prospect than Nicolai in the early days but there is much less between them now and the rivalry is keen. Only Nicolai made the Ryder Cup last year but both have their names on a spot at Bethpage Black next year.
The biggest danger could be Japan’s exciting Keita Nakajima, fourth in Ras and a four-time winner on his home tour, a former world No. 1 amateur (for 87 weeks, no less) who could soon be making as big an impression as Ludvig Aberg and Nick Dunlap.
Shrewd judges speak highly of Germany’s Yannik Paul and with good reason but his putting under pressure does not always convince and at nearly twice the odds I would sooner chance Alex Fitzpatrick. Matt’s kid brother has yet to win at DP World Tour level but he was runner-up last year in the World Invitational, a grand name for an admittedly ordinary tournament, and more eye-catchingly 17th at Hoylake in the Open, a finishing position that looked like being a great deal higher for much of the week.
After rounding the year off with a top-ten at the Australian Open, he has opened 2024 with a pair of nice 16ths in Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah. A reader has suggested I should follow up my Hojgaard double with a similar bet on the Fitzpatrick brothers, Matt at 33/1 at Pebble Beach, Alex at 28/1 in Bahrain. A 985/1 double – and it’s not impossible. Nothing seems to be in golf these days.
That’s why I’m putting up Harrison Endycott and Manuel Elvira, two big outsiders at 60/1 and 80/1. Endycott, a 27-year-old from Sydney, won the PGA Tour Qualifier with a degree of swagger and ease while rookie Elvira, younger brother of DP World Tour winner Nacho, looks a young man going places. He graduated from the Challenge Tour after three second places at that level last year, and shared the halfway lead with Hojgaard at Ras last week after shooting a second-round 62.
Unfortunately, the weekend wasn’t kind to him but the experience he gained from going out last on Saturday was worth the subsequent disappointment.
Zander Lombard let us down last week and might struggle on the greens but Callum Shinkwin looks overpriced at 40/1 after his T4 with Nakajima at Ras. Two other Japanese stars are more than capable of getting into the mix, Rikuya Hoshino and Masahiro Kawamura. And Frenchman Frederic Lacroix, third at Ras and fifth in the SA Open before Christmas, will be spurred on by compatriot Matthieu Pavon’s sensational US victory on only his third PGA Tour start. But Hojgaard is the man to beat.
Best bets
3pts win Jon Rahm @ 7/2
1pt each-way Joaquin Niemann @ 14/1
1pt each-way Brooks Koepka @ 18/1
It’s a momentous week in the short history of LIV Golf as the mega-rich Saudi-backed tour launches its second full 14-tournament season in Mexico by not only showing off their most expensive signing Jon Rahm, reported to have cost them at least $500m, but also two more new big names from Europe, Tyrrell Hatton and Adrian Meronk.
Rahm’s the big draw and Fitzdares’ hot favourite at 7/2 in a field increased from 48 to 52 now that Rahm’s Legion XII squad has been added to the lucrative team competition which LIV are so anxious to push. That carries $5m prize money on its own.
It’s on a course close to tour commissioner Greg Norman’s heart as he designed El Camaleon, a gentle 7116-yard par 71 used since 2007 on the PGA Tour for the Mayakoba Classic and the World Wide Tech Championship until LIV snaffled it and the PGA Tour switched to Los Cabos.
It’s a perfectly orchestrated starting point for Rahm who, being a Spaniard, speaks the lingo and feels very much at home as a past winner and runner-up of the Mexico Open albeit on a different course.
The Masters champion and winner of three more tournaments last year, all before April 9, has always been a fast starter – his first two PGA victories came in January and he won the Tournament of Champions first time out in 2022 – so there can be no excuses, other than it’s just a 54-holer (Friday to Sunday) with a shotgun start on an easy-enough course that will bring a good few others into the equation.
Charles Howell III won LIV’s first sortie down Mexico way last year when the tournament was also their opening salvo which came as a shock as the best days of ‘Chookie Threesticks’ seemed behind him.
Last year LIV placed their tournaments away from the big PGA events to ensure maximum exposure for themselves but there are so many $20m and more bonanzas on that circuit that they are pitching in at the deep end this year. Next week’s LIV Las Vegas goes against the biggest, booziest crowd outside the US Open at Phoenix. That’s not far away and in the same time zone, so it will be interesting to see how many turn up for LIV in LV.
The problem of getting more interest from Europe has also been addressed with the three new signings, all good names and one a masterstroke. Only Henrik Stenson has been a LIV winner for Europe in 35 attempts up to now and they have been depressingly far down leaderboards. Even Sergio Garcia has struggled to make an impact but that will surely change with his pal and compatriot Rahm to spur him on.
Chile’s Joaquin Niemann is Fitzdares’ second favourite along with Hatton and Bryson DeChambeau, both explosive, both unpredictable. Niemann, winner of the Australian Open in December and fourth to Rory McIlroy in the Dubai Desert Classic, is surprisingly without a LIV victory yet but for me he rates the main danger to Rahm as he is one of the few – Meronk and Hatton are two more – we know are competition-fit. Only a modest 11th last year, he can improve on that and give Rahm a fright.
One who looks too big is Brooks Koepka at 18/1. He’s the second-best golfer in the line-up, a triple LIV winner, a five-time Major champion and just about the toughest in the game. Keep him on your side now that he has a decent team with Talor Gooch, last year’s top man, switching from Dustin Johnson’s all-American outfit. Gooch replaces Koepka’s brother Chase, a third-division golfer who should never have got into LIV in the first place but was obviously part of the deal in getting Brooks to sign.
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