Ben Coley bagged an 80/1 winner and place money with a 175/1 shot in his last Challenge Tour preview. Get his best bets for this week's event.
Golf betting tips: Indoor Group Golf Challenge
1pt e.w. Benjamin Hebert at 50/1 (General 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)
1pt e.w. Kristoffer Broberg at 80/1 (Unibet 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)
1pt e.w. Hamish Brown at 80/1 (BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
1pt e.w. Romain Wattel at 100/1 (bet365 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)
1pt e.w. Oliver Gillberg at 200/1 (Unibet 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)
The Challenge Tour is extremely difficult to price up and that task might have been made slightly more complicated this week.
Without exchanges or reliable player ratings, most bookmakers tend to lean on a very small group of golf odds compilers and go from there. Those compilers often depend on their own databases along with websites like tour-tips, which provides searchable course form and a one-click look at how each player has performed at that venue.
The trouble is, that website has a rare gap in its coverage of the Indoor Golf Group Challenge, played at Vesterby Links at Landeryds Golfklubb, where there are three courses in total.
One of them used to host a Nordic Golf League event until 2020, when Vesterby took over. Not only are tournaments from prior to 2020 incorrectly listed as having taken place at the Links, when they were played at the adjacent Classic, but subsequent tournaments at Vesterby (2021-2023) have been missed from player profiles.
This is only a small advantage in favour of the punter, but it's an advantage nonetheless. Adam Blomme for instance doesn't just have course form figures of 3, they are in fact 3-9. Charlie Lindh's MC-MC-MC, complete with a round of 83 at an entirely different layout, should in fact read MC-MC-5-20, having played well in each of the last two Nordic Golf League tournaments held here.
The most recent of them was just a couple of months ago and saw OLIVER GILLBERG finish in second place, something surely not all firms have managed to cotton onto.
Last week, Gillberg was around the 100-125/1 mark, finished 29th after a slow start (his final 36 holes were among the top half-dozen in the field), and yet he's in at the same price generally and bigger in a place. That seems to me to reflect the fact that bookmakers have not take his recent course form into account.
Gillberg was a top-20 amateur once upon a time, the best in Sweden, but only during summer has the penny dropped. He's ninth on the NGL's order of merit but that after a desperately slow start to the campaign. More recently, his form figures read 1-13-2-11-9-6-4 before he stepped up and played well amid last week's weather-related chaos.
This is a player who once beat Wilco Nienaber to land the South African Amateur Stroke Play so he has serious pedigree and, having bagged top-30s on a couple of Challenge Tour starts in his native Sweden, he might just be able to apply the benefits of a very recent appearance at this week's course and step up further on that.
Granted, he had plenty of experience at last week's course too, but the way he performed over the final couple of rounds should have him even better placed to go well here at the Links. Anything three-figures represents value about a player with a bright future.
Not quite Nyfjall...
David Nyfjall is even earlier along his own path and as you might expect, there's been an up-and-down nature to results since he turned pro this summer, best summarised by Challenge Tour form of 20-MC-17-MC.
Still, his second-round 65 last week represented a nice fightback, ending with successive birdies to miss the cut on the number, and it strikes me that there's potential upside to a player who performed to a high level as an amateur and qualified for the US Open back in June.
Nyfjall is yet to play a tour event at this course but did feature in an amateur tournament five years ago and won by a massive 12 shots. The name of the player in second may sound familiar – Ludvig Aberg – while there were other promising types like Christofer Rahm and Hugo Townsend in what was a good event for the grade.
It could be too soon for Nyfjall but he did threaten the places in Finland a fortnight ago, despite a slow start. Everyone else inside the top 20 bettered his opening 72, winner Lauri Ruuska by fully 13 shots, but there was very little between them thereafter.
Having shot 21-under here in that amateur event, he was first on the shortlist but I'm of the view that 100/1 is short enough. Were he to be put up here that price would go and he'd suddenly be ranked alongside someone like Sebastian Friedrichsen, a youngster with three top-fives this season, and Nyfjall just hasn't been missed in the way I had hoped.
Watch out too for Albert Hansson, the top-ranked amateur in Sweden at the moment but also short enough as a 19-year-old with limited experience. Christian Jacobsen has excellent course form (3-12) but has struggled on the Challenge Tour, while Christopher Feldborg, who started brightly enough last week and was 10th in France in July, won at the course two years ago.
Lindh and Albin Bergstrom are other young Swedes worth noting but I'll cross over to Denmark for the next best, HAMISH BROWN.
Another with somewhat hidden course form, Brown was runner-up here when still an amateur last summer, closing with an excellent 68 on a tough day of scoring in what was his first four-round tour event.
He had been contending every week at the time so it isn't form I'd get carried away with, nevertheless it's going to help him to come to a course he knows. Brown, a Challenge Tour rookie, has had to learn fast during these past six months.
Having missed the opening four events in South Africa he's done well to climb to 72nd on the Road to Mallorca standings and it's no coincidence that two of his better efforts have come in Scandinavia, including when he shot a final-round 64 to share 17th in Finland.
Three rounds of 67 on last week's artificially shortened course don't give us much to go on but he's made four cuts in five and evidently has the talent to contend at this level.
Perhaps it'll happen now he isn't so handicapped by inexperience, especially with links-style golf likely to suit – not only is Brown half Scottish, as the name suggests, but along with his club pro dad he comes to the UK to play links golf regularly, citing Carnoustie as his favourite.
Home comforts count
Whoever you're betting on in Sweden, I do think paying close attention to the home squad and those from Denmark, Norway and Finland is a must. By my count 10 of 23 events so far this season have gone to a member of the home team, if we group the UK and Ireland lot together, and at this level there's clear potential for comfort to play a big part.
These are generally aspiring pros, many of them struggling to end a normal week in front once flights and accommodation have been paid for, and anything that eases that pressure must help. That's to some degree why we've seen so many French winners in France, Scottish winners in Scotland, and so on. This event was won by a Swede last year and last week's leaderboard, absent of any locals, will likely prove the exception.
Denmark's Jeppe Kristian Andersen, a former runner-up here, is another for the shortlist along with young compatriot Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, Jesper Svensson and Blomme head up the home team, while course form figures of MC-7-MC-15 combined with last week's 13th give Niclas Weiland a squeak albeit he's halved in price already.
Sticking with the idea that last week's washout can be considered of limited use, I'll go back to KRISTOFFER BROBERG, eighth when selected for the Finnish Challenge at shorter odds and worth sticking with at 66/1 and up.
This is a better field but that performance confirmed my belief that he could win at this level during the coming weeks and I like the links aspect, as he has top-10 finishes in the Scottish Open and Dunhill Links and of course won the KLM Open on a modern version in 2021.
More recently he hit the ball superbly for 24th place in Denmark, again under conditions somewhat similar to these, and was also 27th in the Scandinavian Mixed. Along with his Finnish top-10, that's a strong book of local form and a no-show at the waterlogged Dormy Open helps to hold up the price of this one-time prolific Challenge Tour winner.
Big numbers are the issue but if Broberg can keep those off the card he'll go really well, a comment which might also apply to Lucas Bjerregaard. This powerhouse Dane has been in the mix at halfway twice recently, wasn't far off the pace after two rounds last week and, like Broberg, has stacks of coastal and links form to his name.
Two French fancies
It was tempting to side with Bjerregaard at a course where he might not need to hit many drivers, but he was poor by the sea in Northern Ireland recently and clear preference is for the rock-solid BENJAMIN HEBERT.
Like Broberg, Hebert used to find winning at this level fairly routine and though unable to convert the 54-hole lead back in May at the B-NL Challenge, he looks ready to earn himself another crack sometime soon.
Hebert was 25th in the British Challenge, 17th in the Scottish Challenge and then 35th in Finland, latterly on a course which might've been a bit easier than he'd like. His team won the pro-am that week and after opening with two 67s, there were plenty more signs that he's close.
Once a play-off loser at The Renaissance, a modern links layout, Hebert also has a top-five in the Dunhill Links to his name and contended for the Irish Open at Portstewart, finishing eighth. This might just be the right kind of course for this classy Frenchman to complete his return from injury and it's no bad thing that he missed last week.
Jonathan Caldwell's DP World Tour win came on a links-like track in Sweden and he has to be respected but the value on offer at the British Challenge earlier this month has gone and I'd be more inclined towards ROMAIN WATTEL, a drifter in the betting after a narrow missed cut in Finland.
Wattel made a solid start to that event on the back of second place in Scotland a week earlier, which was his second top-five in four starts since the middle of July. Although he'd go on to miss the cut, there's no reason to abandon the idea that this class act has rediscovered his game.
He's now twice the price in what's an admittedly deeper field but with a strong record in Sweden on the DP World Tour, plus several good efforts in the Scottish Open and the Dunhill Links, he might just find Vesterby to his liking.
That suspicion is strengthened by the fact that his sole win came on a modern links course in the Netherlands, again somewhat akin to the test that awaits here, and were it not for a missed cut last time he would've been chalked up far shorter than he has been.
One more go feels absolutely necessary at this level and again, like Hebert, I don't mind the fact that he wasn't at the Dormy Open.
Finally, a word on Ruuska. He was seventh here in 2020, followed his victory parade on home soil with a good effort last week, and remains one of the circuit's form players. He's the same sort of price as when we were on a fortnight ago and while this field is stronger, he was a class apart in a win that had been coming.
At 25th in the Road to Mallorca standings his focus will now be firmly set on getting inside the top 20 so there's plenty to like, except for the possibility that he needs a break now. Backing lightning to strike twice isn't the worst idea in the world but on the Challenge Tour, it generally pays to move right along.
Posted at 1005 BST on 30/08/23
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