Ben Coley's golf betting tips: Hainan Open preview and best bets
The Challenge Tour returns to China for the first time in four years and golf expert Ben Coley is relying on the experience of two class acts.
Golf betting tips: Hainan Open
2pts e.w. Brandon Stone at 25/1 (BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
2pts e.w. Tom Lewis at 30/1 (William Hill 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)
1pt e.w. Wenyi Ding at 50/1 (William Hill, bet365 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)
The Challenge Tour is back in China for the first time in four years and while any opportunity to play has to be welcomed by those striving for promotion, it's probably not ideal that a co-sanctioned event is the final chance to earn spots in the Grand Final.
Almost half of this field is made up by players from the China Tour and that means only the top 75 Challenge Tour players were invited – some of whom have, bizarrely on the face of it, decided against travelling to Danzhou Ancient Saltern Golf Club for the Hainan Open.
Jacques Kruyswijk for instance is 46th on the Road to Mallorca standings yet isn't here, despite the fact that at the conclusion of this week's event, only the top 45 will secure spots at the Grand Final and the opportunity to earn DP World Tour membership. Kristoffer Broberg isn't far behind and this former winner in China has also opted against making the journey from the south of France.
It's all slightly bizarre and I think the same is true of the market, which has shunted TOM LEWIS down from favouritism after he missed the cut by one shot at a fiddly golf course last week.
Lewis should be much more comfortable here and while it's a new venue, at close to 7,400 yards and with the anticipated receptive conditions in mind, it should play soft and pretty long.
That's often the way in this part of the world and you only have to look as past renewals of the event to get a feel for what we might expect again: Erik van Rooyen, Grant Forrest, Adrian Meronk, Pep Angles, Tapio Pulkkanen, Sean Crocker, Wil Besseling, Niklas Lemke, Adri Arnaus and Sebastian Heisele all feature, and all are big hitters.
Lewis has a past top-five finish in Shenzhen to his name and for a while now he's been threatening to win again at this level. In fact prior to last week's narrow missed cut he'd been inside the top 20 at halfway in six consecutive starts, including when going on to sit eighth through 54 holes on the DP World Tour in Northern Ireland.
Second in Abu Dhabi at the beginning of the year, he has more experience travelling than many of the market leaders, including favourite Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen who was still playing in Scotland late on Monday afternoon. The young Dane is the form choice, but won't have long to acclimatise and has to be taken on.
Two of the last four Challenge Tour courses have been sub-7,000 yards, another of them longer but no less fiddly, and I'm really keen to side with some strong drivers. They don't come much stronger than Lewis, certainly not at this level, and with four par-fives plus a short par-four to go at I wouldn't have him any bigger than 20/1.
Also of note is that this is his time of year. Twice a winner of the Portugal Masters (October and September), he's also won the Korn Ferry Tour Championship and the Bridgestone Challenge, both in September, and another big finish to the golfing year awaits.
The strength of the Chinese challenge is always hard to weigh up but home advantage can be a big deal, as Bobby Bai demonstrated when holding off Marty Dhou in the 2019 Foshan Open. Both those players had big potential, which Dhou has since realised in the USA, and Linqiang Li might be good enough to follow in their footsteps.
Linqiang made history in this event six years ago when making the cut still a few weeks shy of his 14th birthday and while that tells us he's not yet turned 20, his age and lack of experience only serve to make the fact he tops the China Tour's order of merit all the more impressive.
This year he's won three times in seven starts, including each of his last two, and hailing from Hainan this is a home game in the purest sense. It's very difficult to get a firm handle on his achievements and he'll do for many, however I don't know as bookmakers are taking any chances at 25/1 and am not prepared to play at that price.
More appealing are odds of 50/1 about WENYI DING, younger still at 18 and clearly a player of significant ability, one who contended on the Asian Tour in April having been the halfway leader in the DP World Tour's Singapore Classic before then.
The first Chinese player to capture the US Junior Amateur, Wenyi has a very bright future and in terms of how his price stacks up with Linqiang, it could pay to remember that his own form on the China Tour was similarly impressive – he went 2-4-1-5-3-5-2-3 over a 12-month period when just 16 years old.
Since spring he's started to work on establishing himself as an elite amateur at Arizona State while gathering more experience at levels higher than this one including when taking part in the US Open after making the cut in the KLM Open.
He's already shown form of a standard high enough to go close on the Challenge Tour and I like the fact he played in the Asian Games a couple of weeks ago, held here in China. That event saw Sungjae Im finish second and various other established players take part, so a closing 65 for 15th place is good form on Wenyi's part.
Yanwei Liu threatened to hit the frame in the Australian PGA late last year following a good run at Q School and is also of some interest. Yanwei hasn't had a good season on the Challenge Tour but has been better the last twice, starting well in Portugal and then in the Swiss Challenge.
Preference though us for the established class of BRANDON STONE, who could seal his DP World Tour return this week and looks a fair price to do so.
Stone is up at 13th in the Road to Mallorca having taken advantage of opportunities at home to begin the season. Second in the B-NL Challenge Trophy is his standout effort since landing in Europe and he's barely put a foot wrong since, even if he failed to kick on having led at halfway last time.
Having taken a week off he should be raring to go and, as with Lewis, this course looks like it could be ideal. Both are at their weakest when chipping but big, receptive greens and an emphasis on good driving should serve them well, as will their past visits to the Far East.
Stone was second in the 2016 Shenzhen International and with two events to go, it's time he showed us all his class and won again.
It's undeniably difficult to get to know players while they're plying their trades on the Challenge Tour, in the absence of statistics, but Sebastian Friedrichsen is certainly promising and we know Marco Penge fits the bill in terms of finding a good driver as does Filippo Celli.
Ben Follett-Smith won at a massive price in Cape Town to end a miserable few years and six top-10s at this level since then show how dangerous he can be, but big numbers are seldom far away and the Zimbabwean seems likely to find some of the various trouble spots lurking as this stunning-looking course.
Penge and Celli would be the two tempting options and both have something to play for, Celli looking to make the Grand Final and Penge nudged down to 22nd in the Road to Mallorca, but I'm hoping experience and class count for a lot as the Challenge Tour returns to the Far East at last.
Posted at 0745 BST on 10/10/23
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