Best bets
1.5pts each-way Adam Scott @ 22/1
1.5pts each-way Min Woo Lee @ 25/1
1pt each-way Tom Kim @ 25/1
1pt each-way Si Woo Kim @ 16/1
0.5pt each-way KH Lee @ 40/1
Place FIVE pre-tournament bets and get an in-play matched FREE BET! T&Cs apply.
It’s hard to believe in these ultra-competitive days when so many star golfers go winless for years that in 1945 Byron Nelson, whose name is perpetuated in this tournament in his home state of Texas, won 11 consecutive tournaments and 18 in all that momentous year when World War II mercifully came to an end.
Of course, the fields Nelson beat were weakened because of the war but it was still an amazing feat by an all-time great. He retired at 34 to be a rancher so his time at the top was shorter than contemporaries Ben Hogan and Sam Snead but this Lone Star State legend was some golfer.
His tournament is being staged for the fourth year at TPC Craig Ranch at McKinney, north-east of Dallas, a veritable birdie-fest of a golf course where hot putters can pick up the lion’s share of the $9.5m prize fund. With Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy not involved, it’s a 14/1 the field take-your-pick week.
‘Par golf is no use at all particularly on the front nine where every hole is a birdie invitation.’
The past three editions have been won with scores of 25 and 26 under when it was a par 72 measuring 7468 yards and 23 under last year when a shot was shaved off the par and the length reduced to 7414. So par golf is no use at all particularly on the front nine where every hole is a birdie invitation and fairways generous to a fault.
Designed by 1973 Open champion Tom Weiskopf, it has proved a godsend to the South Korean KH Lee who started at 200/1 and 125/1 and won back to back in 2021-22. In 163 PGA Tour starts, he has never won anywhere else. There was to be no hat-trick as he could finish only 50th to 18/1 shot Jason Day last year.
There was no rhyme or reason for Lee’s victories as he was not showing anything coming into the Nelson in either year but top-class iron play plus a liking for Bentgrass greens proved a winning combination. Lee showed enough when tying for 11th with partner Michael Kim behind Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry in New Orleans at the weekend to fancy his chances here.
At the top of the betting are Jordan Spieth, runner-up in 2022, and last year’s winner Day. Normally I’m all over Spieth but he’s missing a lot of six-footers and too many cuts (three of his last five) to rate such a short quote. Day’s form since an impressive February has been no more than ordinary and I am happy to take them both on.
Day will even have a tough job to be top Australian as Adam Scott and Min Woo Lee are both preferred.
A triple winner on Bentgrass greens, stylish Scott was eighth last year just four behind Day and super-consistent play this year, courtesy of a big improvement on the greens, suggests the 43-year-old still has a win in him when the big cats are away.
It could be a one-two for Australia as Min Woo Lee, an explosive type of player who can run up a long sequence of birdies, looks ready to post his first win in the States. The Cognizant Classic runner-up can shoot some really low numbers.
There’s not much between last year’s runner-up Si Woo Kim and his exuberant Presidents Cup partner Tom Kim and both should contend. Young Tom is now starting to putt better after a shaky spell. He has not turned out to be quite the superstar he looked when rattling off three wins as a new boy but it’s easy to forget he’s still only 21. A top 20 last time out at Heritage was encouraging.
Mackenzie Hughes, third at the Valspar last month and 14th at Craig Ranch last year, and Christiaan Bezuidenhout, third in Japan on Sunday, both putt well enough to make matters interesting in a week where the weather could play a major part with heavy rain softening the greens and maybe even disrupting play.
Best bets
1pt each-way Louis Oosthuizen @ 16/1
1pt each-way Joaquin Niemann @ 8/1
1pt win Jon Rahm @ 6/1
The LIV bandwagon moves on from Adelaide to Singapore basking in its most successful promotion yet with record gate receipts and claims of crowds totalling 94,000 over the breakaway tour’s three days in Australia.
It will be interesting to see how many turn out for LIV’s annual visit to the U.K. in July to a little-known golf course in Uttoxeter the week after the Open.
British interest in LIV seems as lukewarm as ever and results like last week with no Brits involved in the finish of the team or individual events, none even in the top ten, and victory going to a 41-year-old Californian we had long forgotten about in Brendan Steele won’t help.
‘You couldn’t have written a better script and beer sales were booming.’
As for punters, a case for 66/1 chance Steele was impossible to make given that his form figures leading up to Adelaide read 21-53–22-34-18 (out of fields of 54). Luckily, Aussie fans still had something to celebrate as their Ripper quartet won the team prize in a playoff. You couldn’t have written a better script and beer sales were booming.
Moving on to the tropical paradise of the Serapong course at Sentosa, we have LIV’s biggest drawcard Jon Rahm as 6/1 favourite to get off the mark at the seventh attempt – or eighth if you count his T45 in his Masters defence – after a closing 64 lifted him to a never-threatening share of third place on Sunday.
Never worse than eighth in his six LIV starts, the Spaniard might well win but in 7398-yard par 72 Sentosa he faces a course where his length gives no appreciable advantage. The Serapong is not a course that needs big booming drives. It’s precision-over-power week with risk rewards available. The Dragon’s Tail (holes 4-7) with vast lakes, tiny landing areas and fierce bunkering poses a serious skills test.
Designed by Californian Ronald Fream in 1982, it provided a grandstand finish last year when Talor Gooch pipped Sergio Garcia in a playoff with Brooks Koepka just missing out in third place. Garcia has now been defeated in three playoffs and is one of a number of big names, like Rahm, still awaiting his first LIV win.
In the same boat is South African Louis “I love Sentosa” Oosthuizen and at 16/1 he gets the each-way vote having finished closest to Steele down under. He is showing a fine level of form that started with back-to-back DP World Tour victories in his homeland and Mauritius at the end of last year. They should have earned him a Masters invite but didn’t.
Joaquin Niemann has been the LIV star of the year so far with two wins to follow his Australian Open triumph and he could be the one to give Oosthuizen most trouble.
It’s a 2.15am start on Friday if you’re watching in the UK so another one for night owls and a pot of black coffee.
Best bets
2pts each-way Haotong Li @ 22/1
1.5pts each-way Sebastian Soderberg @ 16/1
1.5pts each-way Bernd Wiesberger @ 20/1
1pt each-way Tom McKibbin @ 16/1
1pt each-way Kiradech Aphibarnrat @ 40/1
Japanese golfers swarmed all over the leaderboard when the DP World Tour visited Japan last week with 100/1 shot Yuto Katsuragawa running off with the trophy and five more in the top ten so why not a Chinese winner when the Asian Swing winds up in China this weekend?
The problem is that the Chinese are not proving as prolific in producing world-class golfers and must be casting envious glances at Japan’s growing roll of honour which has seen Hideki Matsuyama, Rikuya Hoshino, Keita Nakajima and now Katsuragawa in the winner’s enclosure since Ryo Hisatsune made his breakthrough last September in the French Open.
Although China has had success over the years through Ashun Wu and Haotong Li – they won back-to-back China Opens in 2015-16 as the first of their multiple victories in Europe – and a promising quartet headed by Kevin Yu are making waves on the PGA Tour, the Chinese could do with a good local story at the Hidden Grace club in Shenzhen to give them a lift. Step forward, Mr Li!
The undulating 7147-yard par 72 course, formerly called the Genzon GC when hosting the 2014 and 2019 China Opens and three Shenzhen Internationals between 2015 and 2017, already has Li’s footprints on it. He made the playoff with the redoubtable Thai Kiradech Aphibarnrat there in 2015 (but lost) when still a teenager and finished fourth four years later.
‘The Chinese could do with a good local story at the Hidden Grace club.’
Admittedly that’s such old form it belongs on the History Channel rather than on Sky Golf but there is more recent evidence that Li, after a roller-coaster career that has seen some unbelievable lows, is back on the path that made him the exciting prospect he was and at top level.
He was, after all, third to Jordan Spieth in the 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale and won prestigious tournaments like the Dubai Desert Classic.
But there have been horror stories too, long periods of missed cuts, drives that went into territory unexplored before. Thankfully he has found the consistency to make every single cut this campaign and on three of this year’s efforts, Li looks as if he’s on the verge of making a serious impact again.
Only last Saturday he shot a 64 in Japan to give himself a winning chance. Unable to take it and slipping back to 17th, it was still a good prep for this nearer-to-home task on terrain where he has prospered before.
The biggest obvious threat is the in-form Swede Sebastian Soderberg, runner-up on his two latest starts and loving his time in Asia. Having been defeated by Nakajima in India and Katsuragawa in Japan, he will be relieved the Japanese presence is only minimal this week with only the evergreen Masahiro Kawamura, seventh on Sunday, a major player. Now that the youngsters have shown him the way, maybe Kawamura will belatedly be inspired to open his account.
While Jordan Smith, Jesper Svensson, Tom McGibbin, Yannik Paul and Joost Luiten will have their supporters, Bernd Wiesberger and Aphibarnrat, if he plays, may offer better value.
Wiesberger won the 2017 Shenzhen International on this course and although not the player who was Ryder Cup level before an ill-fated dalliance with LIV is steadily working his way up the ladder again after being accepted back into the DP World fold.
Nothing special yet but steady improvement and the big Austrian is a multiple winner less likely to crack like the disappointing Paul and others did on Sunday.
Aphibarnrat, who has come off the reserve to snatch a late place, is a class act who hasn’t always been healthy. On a going week as he was when making the playoff in Singapore (beaten by Svensson) earlier this month he can be lethal. There’s plenty of encouragement from his two subsequent outings and he has winning course form.
McKibbin is the player at the top of the market with the most potential outside Li and has the studious game to work out the puzzles that Sentosa sets. Apart from a blip in Singapore he has been high on every leaderboard since the start of the year.
For all your bets on the PGA Tour, visit our dedicated golf betting page.
