Best bets
2.5pts each-way Christiaan Bezuidenhout @ 10/1
1pt each-way Andy Sullivan @ 40/1
1pt each-way Matti Schmid @ 25/1
1pt each-way Romain Langasgue @ 28/1
0.5pt each-way Jayden Schaper @ 28/1
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Having been won by home players for the last three years and in nine of the last 11 renewals, it’s no surprise to find South Africans dominating the market for the Alfred Dunhill Championship at the strikingly colourful Leopard Creek Golf Club overlooking Kruger National Park.
With the Crocodile River running through the Gary Player-designed layout, there are living hazards as well as sand and water to negotiate and sightings of hippos, antelope and elephants as well as crocs can make your six-iron a multi-purpose tool in an emergency.
We almost had a South African winner at Sun City on Sunday, and a 100/1 surprise one in Aldrich Potgieter, but he triple-bogeyed a short hole on the back nine and that was the 20-year-old’s three-stroke lead gone in a heartbeat.
Had he parred the final hole, Potgieter would still have made it a playoff but he couldn’t, Nedbank victory going in tricky conditions to 33/1 Johannes Veerman, the second American to win in a row on the DP World Tour following 150/1 Australian Open shocker Ryggs Johnston. We shall be hearing more from this powerful young man once he tidies up his bunker play and chipping.
That was only Potgieter’s second main-tour start. He bids to go one better this week but I’m looking at more experienced hands to win us the Christmas turkey money.
Great buddies Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel finished 1-2 last year and Schwartzel conquered 7112-yard Leopard Creek four times back in the day. A shoulder problem has sadly diminished him as a golfer and Oosthuizen, who was ending a five-year losing run when coming good last December, is not quite the force he was either. Eight top-tens this year in the LIV arena is still a fair haul and if anywhere near his best, ‘Shrek’ would take these rivals apart. But is he?
Oosthuizen may give best this time to the man who finished third to him last time, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, as we know his game is in good order – he has just finished T6 at the Nedbank. He too is a course winner and a wide-margin one too in 2020.
Not long but deadly accurate with a putting stroke to die for, Bezuidenhout went winless through the PGA Tour year but was lucky enough to walk away with the winner’s cheque of $1.512m (more than the entire purse on offer this week, by the way). That’s what happens when the man who beats you is an amateur – you get his money – and Bezuidenhout was the runner-up to college boy Nick Dunlap, now a winning professional, in the American Express.
What a way to start the year! The rest was a bit anti-climactic after that for Christiaan with fourth place at Memorial next best. But he’s a very steady earner and perfectly suited to a course like Leopard Creek which is short these days for a par 72.
The top five in the betting are all South African with Dean Burmester and Thriston Lawrence both with obvious chances too but Lawrence is looking jaded after a long year so I’ll take a punt on a trio of Europeans taking the wind out of that duo’s sails.
Chirpy Englishman Andy Sullivan loves it over there, two of his three victories in his annus mirabilis of 2015 coming in SA, including the South African Open. And he kept up the love affair with a T7 at Leopard Creek last year, a fourth at the SDC in March and a big showing at Sun City at the weekend. All he needs is to believe in himself more.
Frenchman Romain Langasque has his game in tip-top order and was only a shot out of the Nedbank playoff. That was his third runners-up spot of the year but third place to Bob MacIntyre in the Scottish Open was probably better class. He missed a sackful of birdie putts last week yet still got agonisingly close.
Germany’s stylish Matti Schmid not only has course form (T4 last year) but has been mopping up the dollars in the States recently with a third in Las Vegas and fifth in the Black Desert Championship. He should have won by now and there’s nothing daunting about this week’s opposition.
Tom McKibbin disappointed last week and may have had enough for the year – massively talented but expensive to follow – and Spanish veteran Pablo Larrazabal, a course winner who looked in good nick at the Nedbank, might be better value.
Angel Ayora, Sam Bairstow, and local youngsters Jayden Schaper (T7 here in a great 9-5-7-6 run in this neck of the woods around this time last year), Potgieter and Robin Williams have plenty going for them but I’ll stick with experience and Bezuidenhout.
Fitness will count as the week will start off killingly hot, 42C or 108F would you believe, but getting more bearable later. Those who fried in Sun City will be roasted by Sunday. Sky’s out-on-the-course Wayne Riley said he needed 16 bottles of water a day to stay hydrated. Hot stuff!
Best bets
2.5pts each-way T Kim/Thitikul @ 11/2
1pt win Finau/N Korda @ 11/2
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While the great Scottie Scheffler relentlessly took apart the Hero World Challenge opposition for a six-shot victory in the Bahamas, his ninth of 2024 if you count his Olympic gold medal in Paris, a clue to the winner of this week’s bit of Christmas fun, the Grant Thornton Invitational, may have surfaced with the startlingly good performance by the man who chased Scheffler home, Tom Kim.
After a bumpy season, the joyfully charismatic Korean shot the week’s low round, a 12-birdie 62, on Saturday and briefly closed to within a shot of Scheffler on Sunday, frightening the lives out of the legion of punters who had lumped on the 5/2 “good thing”.
Kim eventually snatched second spot from overnight leader Justin Thomas, wrecking all the Scheffler-Thomas forecast punters, so he won’t be on many Christmas card lists. Yet he can put himself back in everyone’s good books by keeping the birdies flowing with star partner Jeeno Thitikul in this week’s three-round mixed pairs event on the Gold course at Tiburon, Naples, Florida.
The format for this 54-hole tournament, starting Friday, tests the 16 teams of two in three disciplines: Scramble, alternate-shot foursomes and a new modified fourball in which both players tee off, then swap balls for their second shots with the lower score of the pair going on the scorecard. The men play the course at 7382 yards, the women at 6788 yards, almost 200 yards longer in their case this year.
Thitikul has just won the LPGA’s Tour Championship on the same course, finishing eagle-birdie after being two behind Angel Yin with two to play for the biggest first prize, $4m, in the women’s game. So no pair will be in better form than the exciting Korean-Thai combo who at 22 and 21 are the youngest in the field.
Looking at him at the Hero last weekend, Kim has strengthened up, cut out the junk food and lost his puppy fat. That has added yards to his drive after going winless through the year and if last week’s 19-under is any guide, great things could be in store in 2025. Fitzdares have them 11/2 joint favourites with the marquee pairing of world No. 1 Nelly Korda and big-hitting Ryder Cup star Tony Finau who could finish only fourth to Lydia Ko and Jason Day in last year’s inaugural Grant Thornton.
It should be between these three pairs although the wildly popular Rickie Fowler/Lexi Thompson team and last year’s runners-up Corey Conners/Brooke Henderson may have something to say about that.
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