Golf expert Ben Coley returns from a break with four selections for the Nedbank Golf Challenge, where Tommy Fleetwood goes in search of a hat-trick.
Golf betting tips: Nedbank Golf Challenge
3pts e.w. Justin Rose at 20/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
2pts e.w. Aaron Rai at 25/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
1pt e.w. Sean Crocker at 80/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Jason Scrivener at 100/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
Tommy Fleetwood and Max Homa share plenty in common: popular not just because of their achievements on the golf course, but because of how they handle themselves off it; seemingly grounded despite their success, perhaps because each has stared into the golfing abyss and refused to be swallowed by it.
This week, they share something else: favouritism for the Nedbank Golf Challenge. Or at least they did. Unsurprisingly, arriving as he does in search of a course hat-trick, Fleetwood has just about edged to the top of the betting, despite the fact that, unlike last year, he is not the top-ranked player in the field – a mantle held instead by Homa.
And there's another thing that binds them. Homa knows what it's like to go for a hat-trick, or a three-peat as they call it where he's from, having attempted the feat at the Fortinet Championship in September, coming up just shy. Fleetwood will likely give it a good go himself and there's neither a looming Ryder Cup nor realistic Race to Dubai ambitions, allowing him to focus on this tournament alone.
The trouble is, he's as short as 7/1 having been an 11/1 shot last year and this is demonstrably tougher. The 2022 Nedbank was a weak event in many ways, despite its historical significance and the position it holds on the DP World Tour schedule, whereas the 2023 renewal is more like it and means I can't quite bring myself to back the most likely winner.
Justin Thomas, Ryan Fox, Adrian Meronk and JUSTIN ROSE take the tally of top-50 golfers to five, up three from last year, and I'm very happy to take the biggest-priced option among the class acts on display.
Rose is a player whose name would make sense on this roll of honour.
Although the Nedbank produced high-class champions in a self-fulfilling way until a decade ago, the field limited to eight or 10 of the best in the game, since the expansion of the field this trend has remained. Names like Alex Noren, Lee Westwood, Thomas Bjorn, Marc Leishman, Branden Grace and Danny Willett have won 'Africa's major' and you simply won't find a surprise champion.
These are either major winners or major contenders, players of Ryder and Presidents Cup calibre, and while the larger, thinner field will at some stage throw up someone who doesn't quite fit that description, Rose appears to be in a good place to delay that inevitability for at least one more year.
Granted, his form figures might tell you otherwise, but either side of his display of avuncular brilliance in Rome, he's driven it well and hit high-class approach shots only to produce two of the worst putting weeks of his career. That might be alarming to some, but he holed plenty in the Ryder Cup, and it's far too early to diagnose a player whose putter has become a strength late in his career.
Rose's long-game really has been excellent, similar to the levels he was showing when contending in the PGA Championship and finishing ninth at Sawgrass, or when he really ought to have won the British Masters he helped to host. It's been an excellent, back-to-form year for a player with plenty more to offer, and based on the evidence of this autumn his swing is right where he needs it to be.
The former US Open champion was of course born in Johannesburg and won his first professional title in South Africa, so there's an added dimension to his profile for this event, one in which he was seventh when last making an appearance a decade ago.
"It’s been ten years since I last played the Nedbank Golf Challenge and I’m really looking forward to getting back," Rose said when his place in the field was confirmed.
"I am a proud Englishman but South Africa holds a special place in my heart as the country of my birth and also where I won for the first time as a professional.
"To play in front of South African crowds who love their sport is always good fun so I am really looking forward to it."
As for the here and now, at 91st in the Race to Dubai rankings he needed an invitation to play in this, and he'll need something like a top-three finish in order to extend his season one more week at the DP World Tour Championship, an event held at a course he adores.
Sun City is just as suitable and while hat-trick seeking Fleetwood is firmly the man to beat, perhaps Rose can land his own hat-trick of titles on South African soil.
Rai smile
Regular readers will I'm sure know plenty about this course, but the short version is that it's the longest on the DP World Tour, up now to 7,855 yards. Of course, it doesn't play like that given the thin air and the heat, nevertheless we've seen some of the finest drivers of a ball win this title down the years and that club is called upon often. It powered Fleetwood's first win, too, if not quite so much his second.
Quality approaches to clover-leaf greens are a must, particularly given that it's very easy to find yourself short-sided, and four par-fives have to be taken advantage of despite the peril that can be found at the ninth in particular. Fleetwood played them in 16-under back in 2019, which meant he could go through the remaining 56 holes in four-over yet still capture the biggest prize of his career.
These details lead nicely to Jordan Smith, the most metronomically reliable ball-striker on the circuit, but I marginally prefer AARON RAI, whose form at a higher level reads really well, and who clearly also has the game for this course.
Since the event was expanded to feature 30 players at first and now as many as 66, only one champion has got away with ranking outside the top 10 in greens hit and ultimately this is an unrelenting test of ball-striking. It's made for Smith, but the same could be said of Rai who is deadly straight and certainly long enough to compete.
He's shown it here, too, finishing eighth on his debut when an out-of-form rookie, and then 13th a year later, his second-best performance of a solid but unspectacular year. Throughout both he showed that ball-striking reliability which has become his trademark, ranking second and first for greens hit, and seventh and third in fairways. Across the two renewals nobody was more accurate.
With 2019's strokes-gained data further emphasising how well he hit it, Rai now returns a far better player, buoyed by how well he's slotted in on the PGA Tour and how gamely he battled for second place at Wentworth in September. Although never really on Luke Donald's Ryder Cup radar, the overall strength of his form probably merited a place in the conversation; equally true is he didn't quite do enough.
Rai does look ready to take the next step up having moved to a career-best 61st in the world following ninth place in Qatar last time (now down to 63rd). That number also represents his Race to Dubai ranking, all of which means that hitting the frame here could achieve twin goals of qualifying for the DP World Tour Championship and moving into the world's top 50.
This will feel like a free shot at it, too, given that he finished birdie-birdie-eagle in Doha, without which he wouldn't have made it to Sun City.
With his overall form excellent bar a now standard dip in the Open de France, played at a course which continues to outwit him, Rai looks a rock-solid each-way contender. We'll need the putts to drop, but I have a little more faith in him than I do Smith and Rasmus Hojgaard, the latter having contended here on debut, driven the ball very well again lately, and performed to a good level at courses which may correlate.
Hojgaard is easier to get a handle on than former champion Grace, a course specialist whose LIV Golf efforts lately don't amount to much. Still, 33/1 about a class act like Grace may appeal to some and helps to highlight that while Ewen Ferguson's long-game looks in excellent shape, the value has surely gone when he's on the heels of players who have performed at a considerably higher level than he has.
Whenever a end-of-year tournament relies on a season-long points list for its field, we're likely to get a number of players who are here because of something they did a long time ago and that helps explain what feels like a pretty steep drop-off from around the 50/1 mark.
With the greatest of respect to him, the fact that Marcel Siem has been backed at 50/1 in a field which features four Ryder Cup players says a lot and in general my view is that the value is with those at shorter odds.
Exceptions can be found and if the short-games of Dan Bradbury, Callum Shinkwin or SEAN CROCKER hold up, any one of them could muscle in at the top of the leaderboard given their driving prowess.
My vote goes to Crocker, a real sleeping giant on the DP World Tour in my view; a quality amateur who was taken under Sergio Garcia's wing at first and whose long-game holds similar potential, only for his troubles on and around the green plus one or two injury niggles to continue to hold him back.
Still, he's turned a corner of late, ranking sixth and third in strokes-gained tee-to-green the last twice, and a continuation would make him a live one. These numbers represent a stark turnaround from 12 months ago, when a post-win hangover saw his long-game stats fall off a cliff, and at his best I'd be near certain this is a good course for the Zimbabwe-born American.
He had a chance to win at a similarly demanding course in South Africa back in 2020, coming unstuck on the 18th hole at Leopard Creek, and after Fleetwood won this title despite losing strokes with the putter last year, I don't mind chancing one of the out-and-out flushers of the DP World Tour.
Crocker was ninth last time in Doha, 20th in Spain two weeks before that, and after an injury-hit first half of the season now has a chance to reach the DP World Tour Championship from 67th in the Race to Dubai. To do so will require a run at the places and I'm convinced he has that in him if he can hole something like his share of short putts.
Aussie at home in Africa's major
JASON SCRIVENER is one place ahead of Crocker at the moment and despite three-figure prices, the case for him is easier to make.
Scrivener played here in 2018 and 2019, much like Rai, and performed to a similar standard: 16th on debut, then third in 2019, when he ranked second in the tee-to-green stats but didn't make much.
Again like Rai, his old-school stats show fifth and 12th for greens hit, first and 15th for fairways, so he's really taken to Sun City. Seven of Scrivener's eight rounds have been under par, no small achievement at such a long and fearsome course.
Scrivener is another whose game has come around lately, ninth place alongside Crocker last time his reward for several months' worth of good play, and he too is suddenly within sight of the season-ending DP World Tour Championship.
The Australian, who was in fact born in South Africa and lived there until he was 10, can take heart from the fact he overcame a similar predicament on his last start at Sun City. Back in 2019, he ranked 59th on the Race to Dubai, needed a big week, and produced his best golf of the year to share third place.
Three years on, something similar is possible and at 80/1 or bigger, I don't mind taking on board the fact that he remains a maiden at this level.
Posted at 2000 GMT on 06/11/23
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