Ben Coley's golf betting tips: DP World Tour Championship preview and best bets
Ben Coley previews the final event of the DP World Tour season, where Rory McIlroy can outclass a weaker-than-usual field in Dubai.
Golf betting tips: DP World Tour Championship
8pts e.w. Rory McIlroy at 9/2 (bet365, Betway 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
When you look back, it's been one heck of a season on the DP World Tour, hasn't it?
Think about the way it began in earnest, with Tommy Fleetwood picking Rory McIlroy's pocket, then McIlroy capturing the Dubai Desert Classic. Think about its biggest events: Robert MacIntyre in Scotland, McIlroy versus Rasmus Hojgaard in Northern Ireland. McIlroy versus Billy Horschel just a few days later. Spaniards in Spain, Koreans in Korea. Nicolas Colsaerts salvaging his entire playing career even in defeat. Dan bloody Bradbury. It has been an exceptional year on the world's greatest golf circuit.
The ending could be better, much better in fact, but that in turn leads me to believe the ending will in fact be fittingly glorious: RORY MCILROY has a golden opportunity to put the seal on a sixth Race to Dubai by winning the DP World Tour Championship for a third time.
Why could the ending be better? Because of who is not here. There is no Jon Rahm, who qualified but elected not to play. There is no Matt Fitzpatrick, who would love to play but didn't qualify. Between them, these two major champions have won five of the eight renewals since McIlroy's latest win here at the Earth Course, way back in 2015.
McIlroy is left as the only course winner in this field. We don't have a defending champion because Nicolai Hojgaard didn't qualify, we don't have Collin Morikawa who seems not to be interested in collecting more than one Race to Dubai. Tom Kim played here last year but isn't a member and neither is Byeong Hun An, a proper player who loves this course but has seemingly elected not to capitalise upon the rewards earned with that emotional win on home soil a few weeks ago.
Ludvig Aberg returns from minor surgery to defend his RSM Classic title next week, but he's not coming to Dubai. Viktor Hovland has gone AWOL after a largely miserable year. This is the weakest renewal of the DP World Tour Championship that McIlroy has played in at least since he last won it, possibly ever, and I couldn't believe he opened at 9/2 generally. Did the words 'swing changes' really affect this market? Surely not.
The market though has certainly not adjusted for the quality of opponent and the golf course and if you're in need of convincing, consider this: McIlroy was 5/1 last year, when Rahm and Hovland didn't just play, but were arguably better golfers than him at the time. Fitzpatrick was also in the field as a last-time-out winner and fourth in the betting, meaning Tyrrell Hatton and Tommy Fleetwood were about 12 and 14/1 respectively.
Hatton and Fleetwood, demonstrably similar golfers 12 months on, have both halved in price – yet McIlroy opened at about the same. Could it be that there's a lower limit, a price he can't dip beneath given that, as we all know, he does make the odd mistake others perhaps wouldn't when seemingly set to win, the kind of mistake that certainly cost him the Irish Open and, infamously, the US Open before that?
Maybe that is the answer, but I am adamant the standout golfer in this field is value at anything bigger than 3/1 in this field, 40% smaller than last week's, on a golf course he much prefers, after he finished third in Abu Dhabi despite having prepared not on the golf course but in front of a golf simulator.
Those swing changes he spoke about a week ago aren't irrelevant – in fact, they must be the one biggest worry. Did idle conditions at Yas Links, whose fairways are generous, allow him to produce a flattering performance? I don't know the answer to that, though one way or another he ranked first in strokes-gained off-the-tee. Were these swing changes not ready to be winning golf tournaments, I doubt he'd have done so.
The truth is most golfers are working on little tweaks to their technique, we just don't hear their every waking thought as we do McIlroy's. So that fact alone is not enough to dissuade me, not now he comes back to a course at which he's a two-time champion; a course where driver can take you much further into the tournament than it can at Yas Links, where he'd never been a factor on his sole previous visit.
One final thing to note is that McIlroy's two course wins came when he'd played somewhere, anywhere, over the previous fortnight. The introduction of a season-ending play-off system to the DP World Tour has already proven a roaring success after Paul Waring's sensational win. For Rory, it might be a factor in his return to winning ways in an event he should've won at least once more, maybe two or even three times.
But the single biggest factor is far simpler: this is not the same tournament as last year. McIlroy, tweaks to his swing notwithstanding, is broadly the same golfer, with the same ability, and this is not reflected in the market. The way I see it, there really is no other option but to back him and hope that he either eliminates those silly mistakes we sometimes see, or that 29 birdies, the tally he reached in Abu Dhabi, are enough this time.
Who are the key dangers?
I understand of course that there will be those who won't consider backing golfers at short odds, to which my advice is either not to bet, to find 'without McIlroy' markets, or to speculate with a smattering of dual forecasts involving the favourite.
Matt Wallace could so easily have won the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, where he was the best player in the field from tee-to-green, but he's 18/1 from 33s as a result. Suddenly he's only a few points bigger than the world-class Joaquin Niemann, whose putter was really the only problem last week, and from whom there could be improvement forthcoming.
For my money the most appealing alternative is Robert MacIntyre, who also didn't make a great deal at Yas Links. MacIntyre, twice a winner in 2024, contended here in 2020 and 2021 and returns with his whole game in good shape. If his irons are on this week, he looks very likely to give his running and having beaten Fitzpatrick to win in Italy and Aberg and others to win back home, he's one who would relish the chance to get revenge on Rory.
It's 50/1 that these two run it back and finish first and second as they did in last year's Scottish Open, which would be the pick of the speculative options, but let's face it: finding the winner of a golf tournament is tricky enough. Finding the runner-up as well is probably not something to pursue before a ball has been struck.
At bigger odds, Dubai resident Adrian Meronk has a previous top-10 finish here and course form has been hugely important in this event. That keeps him on the radar after a third-round 64 at Yas Links and suggests as well that the likes of Rasmus Hojgaard, Laurie Canter and 125/1 shot Andy Sullivan are all worth noting for various reasons, including the fact that the latter was greenside to celebrate with Waring on Sunday.
Sullivan will be out early in Dubai having only just sneaked into this field, as will Meronk and the bang in-form Johannes Veerman. Cases can be made for these players setting the target for others to pursue, but come the end of the week the likelihood of McIlroy being right there in the mix is extremely high. Let's act accordingly.
Posted at 1700 GMT on 11/11/24
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