Best bets
2pts each-way Rasmus Hojgaard @ 12/1
1pts each-way Thorbjorn Olesen @ 22/1
1pts each-way Niklas Norgaard @ 22/1
1pt each-way Victor Perez @ 20/1
0.5pt each-way Tom Vaillant @ 60/1
0.5pt each-way Haotong Li @ 100/1
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What do Graeme Storm, John Bickerton, Malcolm MacKenzie and Phil Golding have in common? They are all virtually forgotten English golfers who won the French Open earlier this century but had never achieved anything on that scale before or did much afterwards.
Two of them never won again – and it took Storm ten years before he got his next victory buzz, this time beating Rory McIlroy, no less, in a playoff for the 2017 SA Open. Which goes to show what an all-embracing course Le Golf National, situated in Paris’s south-western outskirts at Guyancourt, is as it has gone on to host a Ryder Cup and the 2024 Olympics where all-time greats Scottie Scheffler and Lydia Ko struck gold.
‘This eight-time tour winner is good at Le National, having finished runner-up to Tommy Fleetwood in the 2017 French Open and top-ten last year.’
So this water-strewn 7247-yard par 71 Albatros course, home to the national Open for three decades with its demands on straight driving and positional nous, rewards the greatest and gives the not-so-great their moment in the sun too.
It was again the turn of the not-so-great last year when Japanese youngster Ryo Hisatsune made his DP World Cup breakthrough. He too has not won since but surely will. Barring his path to a successful Open de France defence are world-class stars like BMW PGA champion Billy Horschel, a regular visitor from the States now, 2013 US Open champion Justin Rose and local hero Matthieu Pavon, a winner on both sides of the Atlantic in the last 12 months, good tournaments too – the Spanish Open and the Farmers Insurance on the PGA Tour.
But I’m taking Denmark’s Rasmus Hojgaard to beat them all. He’s joint course record holder, his 62 in 2022 just failing catch Italy’s Giulio Migliozzi, and he was right up there again last year when fourth to Hisatsune. Missing the cut at last week’s Dunhill Links wasn’t the greatest advert but it is only a few weeks since he won the Irish Open with a third place at the British Masters in the lead-up to that.
Hojgaard, disappointed to be overlooked for a Ryder Cup debut last year when twin brother Nicolai was preferred, will see this week as an ideal opportunity to build up a bank of points for next year’s Cup showdown in raucous New York.
Belgian veteran Nicolas Colsaerts, Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen and Anglo-South African Robin Williams have earned a late place in the line-up for their top-ten finishes at the Dunhill, Colsaerts almost pulling off a 400/1 shock before just giving best to our 10/1 headline selection Tyrrell Hatton. This is a totally different test but it was to Colsaerts’ liking five years ago when he landed what proved to be the third and last success. The Dunhill, with all that waiting around and amateur partners to entertain, will have drained the 41-year-old and he may have to wait a while before adding to his total.
After being tipped up at 100/1, Neergaard-Petersen is very much in our good books for his T4 on Sunday – 20/1 for the place is not to be sniffed at – and this triple Challenge Tour winner is one for the notebook.
He is part of a strong Scandinavian team which features not only the Hojgaard twins but big-hitting recent winner Niklas Norgaard and Thorbjorn Olesen, who holed some spectacular putts when steering billionaire Irish financier Dermot Desmond, now well into his seventies and one-time owner of 2000 Irish Grand National winner Commanche Court, to his second Links pro-am title.
On his own ball, Olesen finished T12 – he filled the same position in the Irish Open shortly before – but the 14th on this week’s layout at the Olympics could be even more relevant. This eight-time tour winner is good at Le National, having finished runner-up to Tommy Fleetwood in the 2017 French Open and top-ten last year.
Bernd Wiesberger is a course winner and therefore of some interest but I don’t think this is in-form Matteo Manassero’s course. Even in the days when he was the tour’s new golden boy, he never did better than 17th in Paris.
Victor Perez, fourth at Le National at the Olympics, and Pavon spearhead the home challenge and it’s been a big year for French golf with David Ravetto and Frederic Lacroix back-to-back first-time winners in Prague and Denmark. Young Tom Vaillant, only 5ft 6 but no slouch off the tee, could be their next champion. He’s been seventh at Dunhill, 18th in Spain and 17th at the British Masters in the last six weeks and looks a winner waiting to happen.
Another outsider with a squeak is Chinese No. 1 Haotong Li whose first top-ten since Dubai at the beginning of the year came in Scotland last week. Never the most consistent and more than likely to hit a few wides, he does have form in Paris having finished T7 to Fleetwood in 2017. Spectacular and fearless at his best, he needs following on the few occasions he hits form and 100/1 is tempting.
Jordan Smith has tip-top course form but seems to have problems getting the job done and preference is for Matt Wallace, Thriston Lawrence, Norgaard and Rose.
Apart from Colsaerts who gives it the big lash, winners at Le National have generally have been steady Eddies like Alex Noren and Fleetwood but massive hitter Norgaard might just buck the trend. He is in awesome form, following up his Belfry win at the British Masters with strong shifts at Wentworth (T7) and St Andrews (T12). With threcourse softened by heavy weekend rain and more to come, his length may help.
Best bets
2pts each-way Chris Kirk @ 28/1
2pts each-way Lucas Glover @ 28/1
1pt each-way Patton Kizzire @ 40/1
1pt each-way Daniel Berger @ 40/1
0.5pt each-way Patrick Fishburn @ 28/1
0.5pt each-way Peter Kuest @ 250/1
It’s the assignment from hell: find the winner of a new tournament on a new course in a lava field, in a state, Utah, that hasn’t hosted a PGA Tour event for 63 years and with a cast of minor-leaguers most of whom don’t know how to win or are even household names in their own household.
The Black Desert Resort course at Ivins, not far from Utah’s border with Nevada, is 1973 Open champion Tom Weiskopf’s final gift to golf – he died in August 2022 at 79 with only nine holes of his creation ready for use. The second nine, completed by fellow architect Phil Smith, was opened last year and the whole is a dramatic 7371-yard par 71 in black lava rock with a spectacular vermilion cliff backdrop.
So welcome to the first Black Desert Championship. With forgiving fairways, only two water hazards and a couple of risk-reward holes to tempt the gamblers, we look set fair for a riot of birdies – and the weather, with temperatures in the 90s (33C) and very little wind, is playing ball.
‘Don’t rule out another big turn-up…’
The cast is much the same as last week. There’s no Nick Dunlap but instead Chris Kirk, at No. 41 the highest-ranked golfer in the 132-man line-up, makes his first start since the Tour Championship. As an eight-time winner, the 39-year-old is one who does know how to get the job done.
Don’t be put off by the six-week layoff. It was six weeks from his final start of 2023 to teeing it up as an outsider at The Sentry (formerly the Tournament of Champions) at Kapalua in January and the steady Oklahoman was too good for America’s finest including Scheffler, Schauffele, Morikawa and Spieth.
In solid enough form through the year to make the final 30 for the Tour Championship on his most recent outing, Kirk could turn out to be great value at 28/1. He is infinitely more trustworthy than the man Fitzdares have put up as 14/1 favourite. That would be Keith Mitchell, a winner once from 185 starts and crestfallen from having blown the Sanderson Farms in Mississippi on Sunday.
Mitchell had a 25-footer on the 72nd hole for his first victory for five years, knocked it almost 5ft past, missed the one back and suddenly was a loser. If he can get over that embarrassment so quickly I’ll take my hat off to him but there’s no way he should be only half the odds of Kirk and another veteran, Lucas Glover, who tied for third with Mitchell at Jackson.
Admittedly, that was 44-year-old Glover’s first top-ten of a year that will have disappointed him after the glories of the previous August when he rolled back to the clock to his days as a US Open champion – he won his major at ferocious Bethpage Black in 2009 – and mopped up the Wyndham and St Jude titles back to back. His game looked in tip-top order last week with no hint of the putting woes that caused so many barren years and this classy striker looks as good value as Kirk.
Utah is not famed for its golfers and the best-known one, Tony Finau, isn’t taking part.
Flying the flag for the Beehive State are Patrick Fishburn and Zac Blair who teamed up for fourth at the Zurich pairs in New Orleans. With eight top-25s in his first year, Fishburn is the superior betting prospect. Although a letdown last week, it will have set him up for this red-letter homecoming and he’s worth another pop as he was a top-six finisher on three of his previous four outings.
It’s been a long, slow road back for four-time winner Daniel Berger after missing 18 months with a serious back problem and although seventh place on Sunday was his first top-ten of a frustrating year, it hinted at the form that brought Ryder and Presidents Cup honours to a fierce talent once rated in the world’s top 25.
He and Patton Kizzire, winner of the Procore last month and T11 at the weekend, look sound each-way bets while Seamus Power and Ryan Fox both showed enough in Mississippi to fancy their chances in similar company.
We almost saw a 400/1 winner in Scotland on Sunday and we did see a 100/1 one in Kevin Yu in Jackson who birdied the 72nd and the first extra hole to profit while Mitchell and Beau Hossler dithered – so don’t rule out another big turn-up.
How about Peter Kuest at 250/1? Highly unlikely but you just never know. He has played only three times on the main tour and finished top ten in two of them, in Texas and at the Corales. As a Brigham Young alumnus, the university where all staff and virtually every student are Mormons, the 26-year-old has strong ties with the state. Although a native of California, he now lives in Utah at American Fork 30 miles south of the state capital, Salt Lake City.
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