Ben Coley previews the Alfred Dunhill Championship, where a pair of South African major champions can remind everyone of their class.
Golf betting tips: Alfred Dunhill Championship
5pts win Louis Oosthuizen at 14/1 (General - note PP/BF 18/1 win-only)
3pts win Charl Schwartzel at 16/1 (General - note PP/BF 18/1 win-only)
1.5pts e.w. Zander Lombard at 50/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
1pt e.w. Alejandro del Rey at 200/1 (Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
If it's not LIV Golf causing a stir in 2022, it's the Official World Golf Rankings, and together they fittingly combine to help shape the best event remaining on the golfing calendar this side of Christmas: the Alfred Dunhill Championship.
LIV defector LOUIS OOSTHUIZEN is now ranked 51st in the world, which puts him on the brink of stateside major extinction. The former Open champion can still add that event to his schedule, but playing in the other three requires either a big performance this week, or something beyond his control to change.
Oosthuizen was 15th in the world after the PGA Championship in May, having ended 2021 inside the top 10. Since then he's been in free-fall except for a couple of occasions when he's been able to do something about it, such as finishing eighth in the BMW International Open and then 10th in the Dunhill Links, performances I'll return to later.
There are big questions to be answered about the world rankings in their current form, what they tell us, and what they should determine. But for the purposes of this preview they play a part in highlighting an error at the front of the market. Even now, Oosthuizen is the highest-ranked golfer in the field. In my mind, he is still the best. Why is it that he's not the favourite?
Partly it's because we've got more tangible form to go at when it comes to Christiaan Bezuidenhout, and because he won a weak renewal of this tournament in 2020. Having wisely skipped last week at an ultra-long course, this short-game maestro is certainly a danger to everyone, but you have to take a very favourable view of his form, and an unfavourable one of Oosthuizen's, to have them five points apart.
As I've written before, it can be hard to assess how LIV golfers are actually playing, and where Oosthuizen is concerned there is definitely an argument that in joining the upstart tour, he effectively conceded that his priorities lie away from golf. That's an accusation made even at his peak, and he's a family man who has always been happier on his farm than he has been grinding it out in tour-level golf tournaments.
Still, he's a better player than Bezuidenhout. Their head-to-head reads 26-9 in his favour and it's 15-8 since the start of 2020, Bezuidenhout's only resounding 'win' having come at the quirky Harbour Town. In South Africa, Bezuidenhout is yet to finish in front of his compatriot, who did not feature in this event two years ago. And while Bezuidenhout is a course winner, Oosthuizen has been runner-up three times, twice in far stronger fields.
It's true that his record here is feast or famine, having missed six cuts in a row from 2006, but he was seventh the only time he's played it within the last five years, and two of his last three starts have been top-10s. Leopard Creek is a tough golf course and when his mind has been on the job, Oosthuizen has often shown that his major-winning game operates really well around it.
Motivation is another big plus. I'm honestly not sure how desperate he is to play Augusta National again, but having been a heartbreaking runner-up there a decade ago I'd imagine he doesn't want to have played it for the final time in April, where he had to withdraw after an opening 76.
What I am sure of is that he'll want this title: it's a tournament run by his friend Johann Rupert and the big thing missing from his CV. His friends have won it, his idols have won it, and I reckon that's really what brings him here again.
We're thrilled to be back at @LeopardCreekCC for the 2022 #dunhillchamps this week
— Alfred Dunhill Links Championship (@dunhilllinks) December 5, 2022
Here's a little reminder of why this unique golfing venue is so stunning ✨ pic.twitter.com/IgILRczdRi
And then we return to his form. Whatever you make of his LIV Golf performances, which include a good effort at Doral when that circuit was last in action, we've seen him play two standard DP World Tour events since making the switch. He's been eighth and 10th, both times in fields considerably stronger than this one, with Thomas Pieters among the stars in Germany and Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry and Tyrrell Hatton in Scotland, not to mention champion Ryan Fox.
The absence? Not a worry, because Oosthuizen won his first start of the year on four separate occasions during his pomp, all here in South Africa. His free-flowing swing speaks to a natural, fluid game which he can turn on when he really wants to. And I do think he will really, really want to here, even if he's not interested in prolonging his career by another decade.
Again I don't know whether turning 40 in October will have done anything to his mindset, but I consider Oosthuizen to be the best player in the field, with the most to play for. His course form isn't on a par with CHARL SCHWARTZEL but it seems clear to me which of them has the best body of work to their names over the last however long you want to measure: a year, five years, or 10.
Schwartzel is still the one I'm most worried about, as a four-time champion here. He's won it by four strokes twice and by a whopping 12 in 2012, when he arrived on the back of victory in Thailand. This time he comes to Leopard Creek having been ninth in the South African Open, where a poor closing nine on Friday (+4) saw him tumble from inside the top five to outside the top 60.
In the end, he made the cut on the number and then played the second-best golf in the field over the weekend, so in some ways it was a big opportunity missed. I maintain that 28/1 was an absolute gift but unfortunately you still need the player to produce and, for three hours in round two, Schwartzel didn't.
However, with a clear head it now looks like an ideal prep run ahead of his favourite home event, one in which he boasts such a fabulous record, and that justifies the shorter price. It's worth saying that Schwartzel isn't just a four-time winner in 14 tries, but he has six further top-five finishes. It's an extraordinary return and dates back to well before he became an established, world-class, major-winning golfer.
With Bezuidenhout helping to shape the market, this is an extremely rare instance where I think the second and third players in it just have to be backed. They're the two standout South African golfers of their generation, and not only do I not consider their compatriots here to be capable of reaching the heights they have, but in Oosthuizen's case I don't think any of them are on a par with him in the here and now, either.
Lombard worth an insurance play
Enthusiasm for the Stinger GC teammates is also in part a reflection of what follows them in the betting. Dean Burmester has a poor record here, Branden Grace has fitness and form questions to answer, Thriston Lawrence was put through the ringer on Sunday, and Antoine Rozner was a little disappointing when last seen a month ago. Playing a South African warm-up is an advantage he's missed out on, too.
That also applies to Eddie Pepperell who might be along for the wine and the wildlife as much as he is the golf course, for all that he's played well here in the past, and the European challenge looks quite weak. Typically, these events go to a classy home player or one of the raiding party, but the only compelling candidate among the latter is Rozner and like so many of them, putting issues are another concern.
As such the other realistic winners on my list were Wilco Nienaber and ZANDER LOMBARD and I'll switch back to the latter among these two talented rogues.
Nienaber would've placed last week but for making a nine at the par-five 14th, prior to which he'd done as expected and bossed the scoring holes. There are a couple of short par-fours to add to the equation here and he's progressed since finishing 12th in 2020. A year earlier, when ranked 1636th in the world, he'd been 25th on debut.
He's got an excellent chance again but Blair Atholl ought to have been made for him and, while the putter was primarily to blame, it was disappointing to see him capitulate in the way he did. These are lessons which will serve him well in time and his first win may not be too far away, but at Leopard Creek it's Lombard who is preferred.
Lombard made an eight and two sixes on par-fives last week, but otherwise played beautifully, dropping shots at just two other holes at a long and difficult course. It was an ideal warm-up in some ways, not least because his record in the South African Open is pretty horrible, and sets him up for a return to a course we know he loves.
Lombard was third here in 2018 having rallied brilliantly to make the cut on his previous appearance, and then finished seventh in 2019. That deserves marking up, too, as he came to the risk-reward 18th hole needing eagle and therefore took on a risky shot which resulted in a triple-bogey. Had he played it to finish second, chances are he would've done, and we'd be talking successive top-threes.
A missed cut in a pandemic-hit 2020 doesn't need dwelling upon as it came during a run of seven in 10 and he didn't do anything of note all year, whereas I like the state of his game right now – and so does he. Lombard wrote "Putter was cold last week but rest of the game was superb!" on Instagram after the Joburg Open, and while the strokes-gained data from last week isn't reliable, only three players in the field hit more greens.
Any kind of improvement from his putter and Lombard looks a major threat to the favourites. I really do get the sense that a first DP World Tour title is close and when it comes, chances are it's in one of these co-sanctioned events, of which there are even more in 2023.
Del Rey to hit the right note
Of the overseas players, Marcus Armitage has contended here and missed the cut narrowly after a good second round last week so would be towards the top of the list. Sean Crocker comes with greater risks but he too likes the course, while Niklas Norgaard Moller has Nienaber-like power and if he's ready to go could be a factor along with young compatriot Christoffer Bring.
Joel Stalter's improvement was missed in opening quotes of 750/1 but less so if revised prices continue to attract attention, and the one I like most is Spain's ALEJANDRO DEL REY at 200s or so.
Alvaro Quiros, Pablo Martin and Pablo Larrazabal are all winners here, combining for four of the 15 renewals played at Leopard Creek, and their Madrid-born compatriot has the talent to at least threaten to join them on the roll-of-honour.
A borderline top-class amateur whose Eisenhower Trophy romp saw names like Hovland, Morikawa, Suh, Hojgaard (x2), Lee and Kanaya left behind, Del Rey should've got his card through his first full Challenge Tour campaign only to run out of steam towards the end of it and miss out narrowly.
To his immense credit, he bounced back in style with fifth place at Qualifying School, carding six rounds in the sixties including a best-of-the-day 63 to finish, and he's since defied quiet opening rounds to finish 30th and 23rd in the first two events of this Sunshine Tour swing.
Fatigue is a slight concern but he's only 24 and despite his size, this Arizona State product hits the ball a heck of a distance, which is always a positive at this course for all that Larrazabal had to go about things a different way.
This is a slightly stronger field and it is his course debut, but Del Rey has a lot of ability and can make a run at the places granted a slightly better start.
Posted at 1730 GMT on 05/12/22
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