Best bets
2.5pts each-way Jon Rahm @ 10/1
1.5pts each-way Tom Kim @ 25/1
1pt each-way Joaquin Niemann @ 25/1
1pt each-way Rory McIlroy @ 8/1
Place FIVE pre-tournament bets and get an in-play matched FREE BET! T&Cs apply.
Just when we thought the Olympic gold medal for golf might turn into a Parisian shootout for world supremacy between world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele, Open champion, PGA champion and defending champion, along comes the half-forgotten deserter to LIV, Jon Rahm, to throw his sombrero in the ring with his first victory since last year’s Masters. He has timed this return to winning form just right.
Winning LIV’s only UK tournament might not have meant much to the golfing world at large who tend to be very snotty about the Saudi-backed breakaway circuit but it meant a helluva lot to the beleaguered Spaniard who cost LIV a fortune, at least $400m, but had failed to deliver in nine completed starts since joining at the beginning of the year.
Moreover, his form in the Majors dipped, only a Troon seventh being anything like the Rahm who had reigned supreme at the top of the world rankings and racked up four wins with dazzling speed in the early part of 2023. Confidence got lower and lower as defeat followed defeat. It wasn’t that he was playing badly but he wasn’t winning and the Saudis were not getting value for their money.
‘Along comes the half-forgotten deserter to LIV, Jon Rahm, to throw his sombrero in the ring.’
Sunday’s victory, not maybe as emphatic as he would have wished but he did hold off three of LIV’s best, Tyrrell Hatton, Joaquin Niemann and Cameron Smith, was a great confidence-restorer for his return to the Paris National course where he won his first Ryder Cup point by beating none other than Tiger Woods in the 2018 singles.
The fearsome Albatross course may play an important part in deciding who gets gold as the vibes for the Americans are bad. They got well and truly stuffed 17.5 to 10.5 in that Ryder Cup. True, none of the current Olympic squad, Scheffler, Schauffele, Collin Morikawa and Wyndham Clark played but the scars remain.
The USA, the only one of the 31 nations with four qualifiers, should have found a spot for US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau. Nobody else has more than two in what is not a team event but normal individual 72-hole strokeplay, reintroduced as an Olympic discipline for Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Golf was part of the 1900 Olympics in Paris and at St Louis four years later before being ditched for 112 years. Justin Rose won it for GB eight years ago, beating Henrik Stenson and Matt Kuchar; Schauffele triumphed for USA in 2020, edging out a pair of outsiders, Rory Sabbatini and CT Pan, in Tokyo. The US-based South African Sabbatini adopted his wife’s nationality to represent Slovakia, the only way he could have realised his Olympic dream.
Le Golf National at Guyancourt on the south-west outskirts of the city is a water-strewn stadium course and has been the home of the French Open since it was unveiled in 1991. This week it plays as a 7174-yard for the 60 men, teeing off on Thursday; next week when the great Nelly Korda defends her title, the women play it as a 72 par measuring 6374 yards in a Wednesday-Saturday tournament.
Over the years the course has produced so many unlikely winners – who remembers Graeme Storm, John Bickerton, Malcolm MacKenzie or Phil Golding, to name but four? – that there has to be a clear possibility of a turn-up. This year’s winner Ryo Hisatsune was not a name that sprang off the page either. It is not a course for bombers but for straight shooters who can keep it on the cut-and-prepared.
Players like Graeme McDowell and Alex Norén thrive there and Noren could be an each-way play as he is not only a past French Open winner (2018) but beat DeChambeau in the final singles to complete the Ryder Cup rout.
Also with fond memories of National has to be Tommy Fleetwood. He won the 2017 French Open, then teamed up with Francesco Molinari to post four out of four in the Ryder Cup pairs matches the following year. Like Noren who is a longtime PGA Tour maiden, the Southport man does not find winning easy. Nor does Shane Lowry whose French Open record is no recommendation. Viktor Hovland has not been at his best and wonder boy Ludvig Aberg is looking underpriced at 11/1 on recent evidence.
Rory McIlroy represents Ireland – he once had the choice of playing for GB – and if you forgive him the missed cut at Troon where he had the worst of the draw and his head went down rather quickly, it’s possible to make a sound case for him. McIlroy’s year has been of a consistently high standard and his record in Paris by no means bad – fourth and third in his last two French Opens and a tower of strength in the Ryder Cup pairs events.
Rahm and McIlroy might easily serve it up to Scheffler and Schauffele in a dress rehearsal for next year’s Ryder Cup in New York. Not counting the unofficial Hero World Challenge last December, Scheffler has never won in the second half of the year. In 2023 his four victories ended in April with the Masters and the last of his six this year came when he edged out Tom Kim at the Travelers in June. While playing decently enough since, Scottie has stopped looking in a class of his own.
Schauffele is perhaps harder to dismiss because he is right at the top of his game, more so even than when he won gold four years ago. His last-round 65 at Troon was a masterpiece and he arrives in Paris with confidence at an all-time high. His father might have been an Olympic decathlete but was blinded in one eye in a car accident at 20. He passed on decathlon ethic to his son’s golf: you don’t need to be outstanding at everything, just solid at all things. That’s Xander to a T.
I’ve followed Tom Kim over a cliff this year but there’s a very real possibility of getting a return from the hugely gifted 22-year-old who finished sixth in last year’s French Open, presumably in an Olympic scouting mission. As a Korean he has a special reason to win a medal – he would be exempt from military service and not have his career interrupted.
While his golf since taking the mighty Scheffler to a playoff at River Highlands has been underwhelming, there have been viable excuses and he has the perfect game for Le Golf National. He was a birdie machine there until stalling on that getting-to-know-you visit. He and classy Chilean Joaquin Niemann who is in pole position on the LIV circuit, twice a winner this campaign and rarely off the leaderboard, rate the main dangers to the big guns. Niemann just failed to catch Rahm on Sunday and a LIV one-two is not impossible.
Of the really big prices, Thomas Detry (50/1) and Matteo Manassero (100/1) make most appeal. There have been much bigger-priced winners on this daunting course in the past but this is different, this is Olympic gold at stake not big bucks but pride, and the four names at the top are the creme de la creme of the game.
Half the field can be ruled out – they’re in Paris for the supreme honour of representing their country. Taking part will be enough. And the weather, after a thundery opening day, will be hot (28-29C) and sunny. Bring it on!
Best bets
5pts Morikawa @ 19/20 Top Ten
2pts Norén @ 19/10 Top Ten
1pt each-way Schauffele @ 12/1 Rd 1 Leader
3pts Schauffele @ 13/10 to beat Scheffler 72 holes
The Olympic golf field is top-loaded with great players but there are heaps of big-name golfers NOT competing mainly because numbers are restricted – no country can bring more than four and only the USA has that many qualifiers – and among the stars you won’t see are US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, Tyrrell Hatton, Patrick Cantlay, Bob MacIntyre, Adam Scott, Cammie Smith, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth.
Their absence means it should be much easier to bag a top-ten finish – after all, outsiders Rory Sabbatini and CT Pan won medals in Tokyo last time – and that makes betting on Fitzdares’ Top Ten market a more tempting prospect than usual for a big tournament.
Scheffler and Schauffele aren’t the only Americans boasting two Majors – Collin Morikawa had two by the time he was 24 and won both at the first attempt. Although disappointingly only 16th when I put him up for The Open, his consistency has been off the scale since finishing third at the Masters – six top-tens and nothing worse than 23rd in 11 starts. The magic W has been missing which is why the 19/20 for a Morikawa top-ten looks the right way to go as the tight course will surely be right up this tidy operator’s alley.
I also want to be on veteran Swede Alex Noren at 19/10 in the same market. He arrives after 10th at the Scottish Open and 13th at scary Troon. Further back, a 12th at the PGA Championship, so big occasions and tough courses are where his accurate driving and iron play earn him a more-than-good living.
His record at Le Golf National is the clincher – French Open champion on that severe test the last time he won a tournament back in 2018 and possessor of plenty of credit there previously with two top-tens and two top-20s. The 42-year-old has since been plying his trade on the US circuit where he’s lost 181 times. We are not asking him to win but to make the top-ten. He’s done that 24 times and is in the sort of form for No. 25 this hot weekend.
Schauffele opened with a course-record 62 on the way to his PGA Championship victory and is in such a good place after nabbing Major No. 2 that the 12/1 about him being first-round leader makes strong each-way appeal. It’s not as if that was an isolated incident as he shot a 62 on day one of the 2023 US Open.
The 13/10 about him finishing ahead of the mighty Scheffler also looks fair. Xander brushes aside recent knee-jerk comparisons with the world No. 1 who, lest we forget, is a six-time winner this year, saying: “Scottie is on top of this mountain and way ahead of us climbing up on the side”. But don’t underestimate this quiet assassin. A second Olympic gold would be a big statement when it comes to the Player of the Year vote.
For all your bets on the golf, visit our dedicated golf betting page.
