Ben Coley's golf betting tips: KLM Open preview and best bets
Ben Coley has found DP World Tour winners at 18/1, 22/1, 50/1 and 100/1 this season. Don't miss his selections for the KLM Open.
- Following a site outage on Tuesday, this week’s PGA Tour preview will be published at 2pm today
Golf betting tips: KLM Open
1.5pts e.w. Romain Langasque at 40/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1.5pts e.w. Marcus Helligkilde at 45/1 (Sky Bet, bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Niklas Norgaard at 60/1 (Sky Bet 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Guido Migliozzi at 66/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Sami Valimaki at 66/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Ewen Ferguson at 66/1 (Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
0.5pt e.w. John Axelsen at 500/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
It's a Ryder Cup year and a handful of potential European team members can't afford to miss the opportunity to impress in the KLM Open, despite having been involved in last week's PGA Championship in New York.
Adrian Meronk led the field in birdies there as his career took another step forward while Victor Perez made an early charge on his way to 12th, and with both inside the top three here last year, they were always going to jostle for favouritism.
Weighing up the likelihood of either or both suffering some kind of physical or mental let-down is difficult, particularly when you consider than Ryan Fox ought to have beaten Perez to the title a year ago. Fox had been from Belgium to Oklahoma and back to the Netherlands, yet showed no ill effects and was downright unfortunate not to win.
Lucas Herbert was perhaps fortunate to in Japan as he defied a round-the-world trip from the US, whereas Nicolai Hojgaard managed a top-five in Italy having arrived from Texas, but got going too late. Playing in the PGA Championship can't be a good thing, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, either.
What we do know is that Bernardus, a Kyle Phillips-designed links/heathland hybrid, has favoured those with links credentials. More specifically, we had a play-off between former and subsequent Dunhill Links winners, and Kristoffer Broberg went on to finish inside the top 10 of the Dunhill Links after his shock victory here in 2021, as did the runner-up.
That's a really encouraging connection while we ought to also consider that Perez has gone on to win at Yas Links, another faux links course designed by Phillips. Fox was in the mix there at halfway, Meronk has played well on both visits, and Bernardus fifth Sebastian Soderberg was runner-up behind Perez, too.
Less clear is whether there's a more precise statistical formula. Each of the two renewals so far had one, but each was very different: Broberg drove the ball everywhere, putted the lights out, and was pursued by a host of quality approach play performers; Perez, Fox and Meronk were three of the very best drivers on a big-hitting leaderboard.
With just a steady breeze in what's a generally good forecast, bar perhaps Friday where it could blow more significantly, my view is that powerful players with links form are the way to go. Broberg might've been wild but he's always got it out there and runner-up Matti Schmid is a beast off the tee. Alex Bjork might've placed here last year, a short and sometimes crooked driver, but he had an astonishing short-game week.
Frenchman to Romain a factor
In the circumstances I'm in no rush to put up one of the favourites and with Antoine Rozner just a fraction below his best including in a US Open qualifier for which he was favourite, I'll stick with ROMAIN LANGASQUE after his runner-up finish in Italy.
Langasque confirmed there that he's in excellent form, his approach play the only slight weakness as he took Meronk the distance. His clutch birdie at the 17th was deeply impressive and it was a performance that had been coming all year.
Backing it up is now the task but he tends to do that, going 9-8 last May and then 7-5 in June. His 2020 victory in Wales was the culmination of three good, improving performances after returning to action and in 2019 he bagged three top-six finishes in a run of five events, before adding another soon after in the Scottish Open.
His third place on that modern links in Scotland might in itself be a nice pointer, just as third place a couple of months earlier in Denmark is, and we know these are favourable conditions for Langasque. He's a former winner of the Amateur Championship with plenty of coastal form and several strong starts to his name in the Dunhill Links.
On his sole start at Yas Links so far he finished 12th in Rolex Series company, leading the field with his approaches, and he's played perfectly well here with 22nd on debut and 31st last year. Although the latter followed a top-10 at the Belfry, the former came amid a miserable run of form and was his best result in six months.
Significantly, Langasque has been just about the best driver across these two editions, that fact undermined by some poor putting. As with so many it's a department which comes and goes, but he's gained strokes consistently of late and should've drawn great confidence from ranking third in Italy.
He's been cut in price of course but 33-40/1 from 50-66 is appropriate based on the field strength and the way he played. And we also have an added motivational factor, a reason to kick on from Rome: he's third in the DP World Tour's US Open Qualification Series, which will offer two places for the next major on the calendar.
As you may know, I'm a massive fan and at last we've something to play up at what looks an ideal course.
Danish delight?
Pretty much every Danish player in the field bar the shortest-priced, Rasmus Hojgaard, made the shortlist and I particularly like the chances of MARCUS HELLIGKILDE and NIKLAS NORGAARD.
Helligkilde contended all week when finishing 12th here two years ago, at a time when he was a Challenge Tour player. He did so in spite of his driver yet that's clearly his chief weapon and he returns with it firing, having been excellent off the tee in three of his last four starts.
Although missing his last two cuts, his short-game is almost exclusively to blame for that yet this is clearly a player capable of a hot putting week, as he showed when 13th at the exposed Al Hamra in February. That plus eighth at HimmerLand, 12th in Doha and 34th after three months away at Yas Links all point towards the suitability of Bernardus.
Helligkilde fought hard for a career-best runner-up finish on an exposed course in Korea last month and a return to the Netherlands, where he was runner-up on his sole Challenge Tour appearance, might help him to prove that he's not been far from a similar display despite very different form figures since.
Certainly, his power is a potentially huge asset around one of the courses he knows best and has shown that he enjoys, so if he can find small improvements with his approach play and putting then this looks a good chance.
Few hit the ball further than his compatriot NORGAARD, the artist formerly known as Norgaard Moller, who really looks to have settled into life on the DP World Tour now.
He was 31st in this last year despite driving the ball really poorly and went on to be seventh in the Dunhill Links, therefore helping to establish what's already a strong correlation between the two events.
Typically one of the best drivers on the circuit having gained strokes in all bar one of his last 10 starts, the most eye-catching aspect of Norgaard's profile is that he's improved his approach play enormously. Over those last 10 only twice has he lost strokes and while not all of this data is perfect, he ranked a career-best third in Italy based on numbers we can rely on.
With his putter a real strength, he's a bit like Perez and also Schmid in that the one question mark concerns what he does around the green. Perhaps, like Perez, he'll find the greater options of a links-style challenge helps in that department, and I'd take cautious encouragement from the fact he was above-average the last time they played links golf in South Africa, just as he was here.
Regardless, that's seldom an area to dwell upon and off the back of 23rd place in Italy, having been persistently appearing inside the top 25 or so throughout the season, this looks a good week for a breakthrough.
Proven winner sneaks in under the radar
Norgaard narrowly failed to qualify for the US Open last time despite an impressive rally, and at first I was drawn to Wilco Nienaber, who did make it through. He said afterwards that he's seeing 'big improvements' in his game and a mid-pack finish under unsuitable conditions in Belgium a fortnight ago is perfectly acceptable.
Ultimately I'm not sure his 2023 form quite merits being the same price as some proven winners including GUIDO MIGLIOZZI and the Italian looks fantastic value.
Last time out, Migliozzi went off a shorter price in stronger company for two reasons: he was playing at home in Italy, and he'd flown through the field with a final-round 63 for 14th place in Korea.
I had sided with him in the latter event based on an encouraging return to form in Japan and the message from me is that a bad putting week in Rome doesn't change anything. He continued to drive the ball well and his tee-to-green numbers across these three events were virtually identical.
Migliozzi has top-20 finishes at Yas Links and in the Dunhill Links and we know he loves playing in breezy conditions should they arrive here, as he demonstrated when winning in Paris and when second in both Denmark and Doha a couple of years ago, latterly in something close to a gale.
He was 10th on his first look at Bernardus, too, and while that was short-game powered, he was in dreadful form at the time. Migliozzi had gone nine months without a top-10 finish anywhere and his best effort in 12 starts to begin the 2022 campaign had been 52nd in Belgium. He'd missed the cut in eight of those 12.
Now firmly reestablished following his Open de France win and having got his act together since returning from a two-month break between India and Japan, he's a big talent with eyes on forcing his way into the Ryder Cup reckoning and, just as with Perez a year ago, it could begin here.
Play it again, Sami
Brandon Stone and Kiradech Aphibarnrat are two sleeping giants with links wins to their names and both have been in good form lately. Stone bogeyed the last to lose by one here in the Netherlands at the weekend as he tries to work his way back up through the Challenge Tour, while Aphibarnrat hit the ball well for 15th place in Belgium.
Of the two, Aphibarnrat would be marginally the more interesting but he's probably more of a first-round leader or top Asian option, so I'll move right along to SAMI VALIMAKI.
The big Finn beat Stone to the Oman Open title in 2020, defying blustery conditions to do so, and he's added 10th at Yas Links, 22nd in the Dunhill Links and 24th in the Scottish Open since then, the latter in world-class company behind Xander Schauffele.
That suggests to me that Bernardus could be ideal and he hinted as much when missing the cut by a shot last year, his long-game rock-solid. Crucially, he'd missed seven cuts in 13 starts and finished 40th or worse in four more, following on from a nightmare 2021 which featured zero top-20s, so he had no form foundations whatsoever.
This time around things are different. Since coming alive with a top-five finish in Germany after the Dutch Open, he's contended at least four times and been inside the top 10 at halfway on twice that number of occasions.
That includes in Mauritius where again we're talking about an exposed course, ditto Singapore when he was a bit unfortunate to be mugged by Ockie Strydom, and more recently he'd been 24th and 21st until a missed cut in Belgium.
Rarely for one of the strongest putters on the DP World Tour, Valimaki struggled on the greens in the Soudal Open, which is a shame as he'd produced some of his best approach play numbers of the campaign. It looks to be one of those missed cuts he won't have dwelt upon for long and neither should we.
With his driving strong for 12 months now, his approach play capable of high-class levels such as when ranking second at Yas Links and a short-game which usually holds up its end of the bargain, it'll be no surprise if this is the week when it all comes together.
Dan Bradbury denied Valimaki in Joburg with a sensational display and he's looked back in form lately, particularly last time out when the best player in the Italian Open field from tee-to-green.
He's respected, but EWEN FERGUSON's experience makes for a more compelling option at upwards of 50/1.
Last year's Qatar Masters and ISPS Handa World Invitational champion almost landed a hat-trick when second in Denmark, and his links-like form extends to a pair of solid efforts at Yas and 17th in the Dunhill.
He was 34th here last year, too, another who wasn't in great form at the time having gone MC-52-MC-58 following his heroics in Doha. Like so many before him, it took Ferguson time to adjust to what was a surprise victory.
He's been much more consistent since then and has five top-10s since his second victory, two of them coming as recently as March as a return to links conditions sparked immediate improvement in the SDC Championship.
Perhaps found out by his lack of a previous look around Marco Simone, he bounced back from that with a solid, mid-pack finish in Belgium, where for the fourth time in five starts his approach play was of an excellent standard.
Like clockwork off the tee this year, gaining strokes each and every week, he's also putted better of late and it's easy to envisage an improved second go at Bernardus, which he'll certainly enjoy.
Back Axe to grind his way to a place
Finally, forgive me for a small-stakes seventh selection, with JOHN AXELSEN advised at massive odds.
This former star amateur, who won team events alongside the Hojgaard twins and was for a time the player they both had to aim at, has undoubtedly struggled since coming through Qualifying School in November.
However, two of the six players ahead of him there have gone on to win which must be encouraging for a player like Axelsen, and after missing the cut on the number in Italy, he fought back to make the weekend last time out in Belgium.
Having finished 38th there he needs more in this slightly better field, but it's a platform for a serious talent who made winning look pretty straightforward on the Nordic Golf League.
Exposed, breezy conditions should play into his hands just as they did Helligkilde when he first came here, and after a bogey-free 67 to close out the Soudal Open, a round bettered by just four players, I can't resist speculating that he could just build on it.
Posted at 1800 BST on 22/05/23
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