Best bets
1.5pts each-way Sepp Straka @ 33/1
1.5pts each-way Daniel Berger @ 33/1
2pts win Rory McIlroy @ 7/1
1pt each-way Chris Kirk @ 33/1
1pt each-way Shane Lowry @ 28/1
0.5pt each-way Adam Svensson @ 40/1
0.5pt each-way Padraig Harrington @ 12/1 Top 20
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For 41 years it was the Honda Classic, now almost unrecognisable with a clumsy new title and new sponsor but still on the formidable Champion course at PGA National at Palm Beach Gardens and the first leg of the Florida Swing.
Not quite same PGA National that’s been its home since 2007 because it’s now a par 71 not a 70 and a tad longer at 7147 yards now that the long par-four tenth has been turned into a short par five. In theory, that should mean that the 14 under par which enabled winner Chris Kirk and rookie Eric Cole to fight out the playoff will be improved upon even though gusts of up to 25mph are forecast at times over four otherwise warm and bright days in the Sunshine State.
The 2002 Jack Nicklaus redesign of the 1981 Fazio original that hosted the 1983 Ryder Cup and 1987 PGA Championship saw the notorious Bear Trap introduced, two fiendish short holes (15 and 17) sandwiching a long par four that’s only marginally less frightening. With water on 15 holes (and each of the last six) and exposed to winds coming in from the Atlantic, it’s a proper test of nerve that rewards accuracy over power and a flat stick that can cope with fast Bermuda greens that are difficult to putt on.
It’s a headache that many of the top names avoid. For the last three years no top-ten player has entered. Last year only eight of the top 60 signed up. This year, a marked improvement: Rory McIlroy, No. 2 in the world, and Matt Fitzpatrick (9th) return, Rory for the first time since 2018, Fitzy an even longer absentee, since 2017. Plus six more of the world’s top 30.
But when you see that the next three in the betting after McIlroy are Cameron Young, Ben An and Cole, three gentlemen without a single PGA Tour victory between them, it’s not being jingoistic to think this could be a bumper week for European golf.
The unconsidered Frenchman Matthieu Pavon got the Euros off the mark at Torrey Pines and Finn Sami Valimaki almost made it two last week when runner-up in Mexico but what we really need with Players Championship and Masters not far away is a declaration of intent from some of our big guns.
While the course is not an obvious choice for McIlroy’s exceptional length, the fact that he’s a course winner, 12 year ago when he claimed the scalp of none other than Tiger Woods, speaks even more in his favour than it normally would. Two years later he almost made it two, losing out to Russell Henley in a four-man playoff.
Subsequent visits have been less positive but as a proven PGA National performer who has won this year, in Dubai, the Northern Irishman merits full respect and 7/1 is not unfair given the opposition. And the Florida resident will be sleeping in his own bed this week!
I am also seeing big weeks from his Ryder Cup mates Sepp Straka and Shane Lowry, neither in great nick this campaign but backable on course form, a more important ingredient in this instance as the Champion is a one-off that doesn’t suit everyone.
Austrian heavyweight Straka has particularly fond memories as two years ago it was the scene of his first tour triumph. His victim by just one shot? Lowry. He’d shown little in the run-up to that success, so not too much need be read into a modest season so far.
‘It’s a proper test of nerve that rewards accuracy over power.’
Straka and Lowry were locked together again last year when sharing fifth place behind Kirk and those two results add up to compelling reasons for supporting them again.
Justin Rose, 11th at Pebble last time out and a three-time top-five finisher at PGA National back in the day, is putting well and another European with a fair chance, along with Pavon, one of the year’s many surprise packets, and Mexico runner-up Valimaki.
The pick of the Americans could be defending champion Kirk, 150/1 winner of The Sentry at Kapalua, and course specialist Daniel Berger, happily back on tour again after 19 months away from the game after severe back problems left him wondering whether he had any future at all in the game.
Neat-and tidy Kirk surprised us all at Kapalua, a wide open track not obviously his cup of tea. This week’s test brings his accuracy and putting wizardry far more into play – he was also seventh there in 2022 – and making a case for him is far easier.
Berger, pipped by the redoubtable Padraig Harrington here in 2015, is harder to justify as he has played only ten competitive rounds since his long layoff but this is his local course and he knows it like the back of hand.
Form figures to date of 39-MC-28 tell us nothing more that his rebuilt swing works but on the few occasions we’ve seen him on TV, Berger has looked his old self. The 2021 Ryder Cupper who pulled out of the game in constant pain after the US Open in June 2022 is back and means business.
It was in 2022 that we last saw him at PGA National finishing fourth to Straka, a repeat of the position he took in 2020 when Sungjae Im won in a tough scoring week and the third year in a row when the winning score was single figures under par. It’s a course for grafters all right, and McIlroy will have to graft, not showboat, this week if he is to justify his ranking. We shall certainly see what the 2024 version of Rory is made of.
Tom Kim has the right game for this but is making his debut and his putter hasn’t been great this year, Fitzpatrick has been disappointing and the fact that he hasn’t been back since finishing 68th in 2017 gives us a clue as to his seemingly generous price, Im is not at his best, it’s a good course for An who shared fourth with Berger four years ago but, like Young, he’s a serial loser and best of the rest could be Adam Svensson.
Although Canadian, this is almost a home game for Svensson who went to college nearby and shot a 64 on the Champion on the way to dominating Q-School and winning his Korn Ferry card at age 21 back in 2015. Arriving on the back of tenth place at Riviera, he’ll be raring to get stuck into familiar territory.
And if you’re looking for a real big one, old man Harrington wouldn’t be the worst 250/1 shot. PGA National was where he won his last PGA victory but at 53 he’s still ambitious, he’s the best on the senior circuit, he hits it further than when he won the Open and he‘s upbeat after making the cut in Mexico. Twice a winner of this tournament (the first at Mirasol in 2005), bet Pod at 12/1 on Fitzdares’ Top 20 market or even at 33/1 for Top Ten. The more wind the merrier and thunder on Sunday won’t faze him.
Best bets
2pts each-way Dustin Johnson @ 9/1
2pts each-way Brooks Koepka @ 10/1
1pt each-way Sergio Garcia @ 25/1
Expect golfing superstars Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson to put on a helluva show for their Saudi paymasters when the breakaway tour goes home to its roots for the third leg of LIV’s 14-tournament year in Jeddah.
Not quite Jeddah as the Royal Greens club at King Abdullah Economic City is a 60-mile drive north of the Saudi port but it has been a drive well worth making for Koepka as the five-time Major champion has won both editions since the young rebel circuit teed off in 2022. Can he make it a hat-trick?
The short 54-hole, shotgun start format with its $25m payout ($20m individual, $5m team money) has not stopped the cream coming to the top – DJ, their Golfer of the Year in 2022, bounced right back to his best last time out in Las Vegas three weeks ago – and LIV’s most prized asset, reigning Masters champion Rahm, will be desperate to get his name on the roll of honour if only to justify his enormous signing-on fee, reputed to be $400m.
That fee dwarfs everybody else’s and must be the cause of some jealousy. Johnson, in receipt of a mere $110m, will have taken much satisfaction from lowering Rahm’s colours in Sin City – and must have every chance of doing so again at Royal Greens where he has such positive vibes from past pre-LIV appearances.
Tempted by generous appearance money, DJ won two Saudi Internationals in 2019 and 2021 and found only Graeme McDowell too good in between. So it came as a surprise when he was only fifth and sixth in the first two LIV tournaments on this 7010-yarder, a course that’s short for a par 72 but with problems to solve, particularly on the tough dogleg sixth, a 470-yard par four.
‘That fee dwarfs everybody else’s and must be the cause of some jealousy.’
Plenty of lakes too and risk-reward holes. Its modest length accounts for the victories there by G-Max, Abe Ancer and Harold Varner III, none of whom plays a power game but rely on piercingly accurate irons, so don’t be put off a less powerful striker such as Talor Gooch, last year’s No. 1 with three wins, or Cam Smith.
It was Gooch who Koepka pipped in a playoff last year and he needed extra time again to quell the challenge of Peter Uihlein in 2022, so Koepka’s course supremacy has been far from overwhelming.
It has also been a good tournament for Sergio Garcia, T3 in both editions and a luckless playoff loser in a late-night marathon with Joaquin Neimann in the LIV curtain-raiser at Mayakoba.
If Garcia could putt, he’d be more than a match for any of these and as he got hammered by Anthony Kim in the 2008 Ryder Cup, the Spaniard will be more interested than most in the unexpected comeback of his charismatic Valhalla conqueror who, dogged by a leg injury, suddenly quit golf in 2012 as a three-time PGA Tour winner and has been lying low ever since.
LIV have granted him a wild card this week having presumably parted with a suitably large amount to tempt the 38-year-old Californian back, but 2012 is a long time ago and not too many punters today will care whether he’s there or not.
Considering he has botched his first two LIV opportunities, bogeying the last two holes in each case, Rahm may struggle to make it third time lucky. He’s not enjoying the background music and all the razzmatazz when he’s putting and rates poor value at 5/1 on a course not notably made for his game.
DJ and Koepka, both with far more course experience, should not be so far behind him in the betting and may face more threat from Gooch, Niemann and Garcia. At 25/1, the last-named rates the value each-way alternative on a steamy weekend when the wind will blow.
Remember, punters, it’s a Friday start and an early-morning one at that, the action on LIV+ kicking off at 8.15am.
Best bets
1.5pts each-way Jayden Schaper @ 33/1
1pt each-way Ryan Van Velzen @ 50/1
1pt each-way Ugo Coussard @ 60/1
1pt each-way Ewen Ferguson @ 16/1
0.5pt each-way Manuel Elvira @ 40/1
The St Francis Links on the Eastern Cape has a wonderful address, 1 Jack Nicklaus Drive, St Francis Bay, but the second leg of South Africa’s low-key spring trilogy on the DP World Tour has no Golden Bears in a line-up that closely resembles Kenya’s last week.
The winner there, Dutchman Darius Van Driel, is not bidding for a quick follow-up but nearly man Zander Lombard returns to the fray after a much-needed break and the highly-regarded Keita Nakajima, a longtime world No. 1 amateur before turning pro in 2022, adds much-needed spice to an all-too-familiar line-up.
Both Lombard, who had played six in a row and some of the most consistent golf of his career before taking last week off, and Nakajima figure prominently in the market alongside the same trio that failed to fire on all cylinders in Kenya, Rikuya Hoshino, Ewen Ferguson and local hero Thriston Lawrence, while 60/1 Van Driel was plotting his way to a breakthrough win after years of trying.
As punters know from the gaping holes in their pockets, it has been the very opposite of a stellar year for favourites so, while fearing Ferguson in particular as he was T3 to runaway winner Matthew Baldwin – yet another massive outsider – in last year’s inaugural SDC, hopes are being pinned on three at tastier prices.
But first of all, the course: it’s a 7192-yard par 72 a mile inland from the coast, over rugged, sandy terrain and displaying links traits without quite being a genuine links. Nicklaus designed it in 2007 with substantial bodies of water to negotiate as well as trees, clumps of bushes and strong bunkering. Those hazards apart, there will be wind to deal with too and only five players finished double figures under par last year.
Baldwin is back to defend the title he won by seven fat shots but is once again an outsider after opening his 2024 campaign with three missed cuts and two mid-table finishes. But Liverpool’s Cup Final win over Chelsea on Sunday was a good omen for the Southport golfer as he is a big fan.
‘Hitting it straight is going to be key.’
My main bet is Jayden Schaper, a confident South African youngster who seems to save his best golf for home soil. In November and December he seemed to be on every leaderboard, finishing fifth in the SA Open, ninth in Joburg, seventh at Leopard Creek and sixth in Mauritius. True, he missed the cut at the SDC last year but the 22-year-old has come on a ton and wouldn’t be returning to St Francis Bay if he didn’t fancy the job.
Current form points me to Frenchman Ugo Coussard, runner-up to Hoshino in Qatar after a 12th in Bahrain, and another SA prospect in Ryan Van Velzen who was in the thick of it for three days in Kenya. That 11th followed a spectacular Sunshine Tour success and a playoff second on the Challenge Tour for this 22-year-old who is going places.
Bahrain runner-up Lombard keeps threatening but for a guy who never gets over the line the price is tight and a poor performance at St Francis Links last year is another negative although to be fair he’s a far more reliable operator 12 months on.
Young Tom McKibbin, fourth in Qatar, comes into the conversation along with Nakajima, Antoine Rozner, who shared a distant third with Ferguson last year, has claims but Connor Syme, 14th on first visit, showed with a shaky Sunday performance in Kenya why he promises more than he delivers.
The Elvira brothers Nacho and Manuel finished second and fourth on Sunday but the younger one is fancied to turn the tables. Manuel couldn’t buy a putt on the final day at Muthaiga but still looked an excellent prospect. He did well in SA before Christmas with a debut 12th in the Joburg Open. No world-beater but he won’t need to be.
Hitting it straight is going to be key on a cloudy, windy and, on Sunday, rainy weekend.
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