Where there’s a Will there’s a way…

If a Champion Hurdle 1-2-3 at 25/1, 150/1 and 66/1 (how did we manage to miss that £4432 Trifecta?) had potless punters drowning their sorrows in Guinness, the thankfully unscathed Constitution Hill wasn’t the only favourite to fall as Scottie Scheffler’s down-the-field Players Championship flop in a tournament he had won the previous two years left his legion of supporters puzzled and poorer.

Like Cheltenham, the Players didn’t entirely go the bookies way because 11/1 second favourite Rory McIlroy rode to the rescue with his third career St Patrick’s Day victory by obliterating 80/1 shot JJ Spaun in a Monday morning shootout at a storm-affected Florida that had belied its Sunshine State status for much of the week and forced the tournament into a fifth day.

It wasn’t Rory at his best but it showed the gulf between him and most of the others that he was still able to come out on top. Fitzdares reacted by trimming him to 6/1 for the Masters, the one Major he needs to complete a career Slam. This year he has won on two championship courses, Pebble Beach and Sawgrass, and with Scheffler looking rattled and well beaten in four of his five starts, there’s every chance that the Northern Irishman will go off favourite at Augusta such is his merited popularity.

Beaten but unbowed, resilient punters will pick themselves off the floor and be ready to go again. Facing them this week as the PGA Tour stays in Florida is the Valspar Championship on the tricky and testing Copperhead course at Palm Harbor, all a bit after-the-Lord-Mayor’s-show without the two best golfers in the world, Scheffler and McIlroy, but still a lively heat with a strong European element.

Scheffler continues to mystify. Where has the unstoppable Scottie of the last three years got to? Has becoming a first-time dad softened his ambition or dedication to trampling opponents underfoot? The body language was unconvincing and his bid to win three Players titles in a row never got out of third gear.

With only two more tournaments before the Masters, Scheffler’s form is a concern as is that of Xander Schauffele who as world No. 3 heads the Valspar line-up ahead of dual course winner Sam Burns, Ryder Cup pals Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth, and Euro aces Tommy Fleetwood and Shane Lowry.

Schauffele barely made the cut on his two comeback starts since aggravating a rib injury at Kapalua. His short game is still rusty and the X man looks a worried man. Of the market leaders he is the least attractive although the most talented.

It may pay to forgive Will Zalatoris the quadruple-bogey eight and the subsequent carnage which scuppered his challenge just as he was hitting the top of the leaderboard at Sawgrass. Best to remember his 66 the previous day and the superb play that had taken him into a share of the lead. 

He was putting together a memorable Players before the fall from grace and has been gradually working his way back after a long injury lay-off to the force he was a couple of years ago, pipped at the post in three Majors before finally opening his PGA Tour account at St Jude in 2022. It’s a long haul back but I’m sure he’ll get there. Where there’s a Will there’s a way…

Burns’s back-to-back victories in 2021-22 make him of interest as he has been posting some good numbers again recently. He is a player I thought was going right to the top but the expected improvement never came and he has become a bit unreliable, occasionally brilliant but not strong under the gun. When and if he wins again it will probably be at Copperhead.

Since the Burns double we’ve had two curious winners in Taylor Moore and Peter Malnati so expect the unexpected. But if current form means anything, Akshay Bhatia and Corey Conners must come into the equation if an exhaustingly long, weather-delayed Sunday has not done them in. Lucas Glover comes in the same category.

Fleetwood had a good week without getting close enough to the lead to feel the same pressure as the likes of Bhatia and Conners. He looks Europe’s best bet but Austria’s Sepp Straka is in just as good form while there is better to come from Denmark’s Hojgaard twins.

Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth have Copperhead form – JT T3 in 2022, Spieth T3 the following year – but you never quite known what’s coming next with them.

Thomas shot the low round of the week at Sawgrass, a 62, then followed it with a 78. They both seem to be experimenting with Augusta in mind.

Amateur star Luke Clanton is full of ambition with ability to match. He is already outplaying most of the pros. This lad will soon follow last year’s amateur breakthrough man Nick Dunlap on to the podium.

Get past a wet and windy opening round and the last three days should be warm and rain-free. We need some warm tipping forecasts as well after last week’s blowout. Hope springs eternal!

On Sunday Bob MacIntyre was in Florida playing for ten times the prize money on offer at this week’s Singapore Classic – and got a fat share of it for finishing T9 – but there’s no money that matches the sensation of having a ‘W’ on your CV and the Ryder Cup Scot has an outstanding chance of adding this DP World Tour title to his growing tally.

Last year MacIntyre moved into the big league by winning on both sides of the Atlantic, in the Canadian Open with his dad on the bag in June, a lovely story, then avenging a defeat by Rory McIlroy the previous year at the Scottish Open in July.

He arrives on the back of a fine performance at the $25m Players Championship at Sawgrass so the $2.5m purse at glorious Laguna National isn’t the reason for his appearance in this otherwise humdrum affair, although the opposition has been bolstered by the participation two LIV aces, Paul Casey and new signing Tom McKibbin, who were in Singapore anyway after competing in the LIV tournament at Sentosa, a tournament dominated by the formidable Chilean Joaquin Niemann who is looking more and more a serious Masters contender.

At least punters won’t have to worry about the jetlag problem with the LIV contingent. The 12-hour time difference could be a bigger problem to MacIntyre than any human rival but players seem to cope with the after-effects of long-haul travel far better these days.

McKibbin at just 22 is the one with the potential, Casey, a quarter of a century older, has the marginally superior recent form, fifth in Hong Kong and tenth at Sentosa, and once reached the giddy heights of world No. 3 during his European Tour days before he decamped to a new life in Arizona.

McKibbin has started brightly in his new shotgun-start life, posting a sixth and a seventh in Adelaide and Hong Kong as well as getting that winning feeling as a key member of Jon Rahm’s all-conquering Legion XIII squad, a licence to print money if ever there was one.

They look the main threats to ‘Bobby Mac’ on this long-established course known locally as ‘The Beast’, a 7420-yard par 72 redesigned by Andy Dye, a relative of the eccentric genius who created Sawgrass and the daunting Whistling Straits.

Somebody called it “like Pete Dye course when he was high”. With 146 bunkers, five water hazards and severe undulations, it is certainly no pushover particularly in the grim forecast weather (hot, humid, wet and thundery) but the winners of the first two Singapore Classics, Ockie Strydom and Jesper Svensson, both coped well enough to post 17 under par, a total matched by Sami Valimaki and Kiradech Aphibarnrat, their victims in sudden-death playoffs.

Three of those four are massive hitters not always noted for their straightness off the tee so I’m topping up my staking plan with Haotong Li and Alejandro Del Rey, both wayward at times but creative too and both recent winners, Li in Qatar and Del Rey at Ras Al Khaimah.

The Chinese star is showing more consistency than usual this year having made all seven cuts and there was plenty to like about his T16 last time out at the SA Open.

Spaniard Del Rey is unpredictable but is on a course he enjoys – T3 last year and T7 in 2023 – and this could be one of those weeks when he clicks.

England’s Sam Bairstow looks best of the rest but has yet to win and is proving frustrating. Yet it is impossible to ignore his last three form figures 10-11-9 In South Africa anf Qatar or his third place in Singapore last year. Play it, Sam!