Ben Coley's golf betting tips: Scandinavian Mixed preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: Scandinavian Mixed

3pts e.w. Alex Noren at 18/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

1.5pts e.w. Marcus Kinhult at 50/1 (bet365, BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1.5pts e.w. Andy Sullivan at 80/1 (bet365, BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

Sky Bet odds | Paddy Power | Betfair Sportsbook

The Scandinavian Mixed has been a wonderful addition to both the DP World Tour and the Ladies European Tour, an event that has lived up to its name and provided a bit of everything – without so far having struck the balance that both operations would prefer to see.

Strictly speaking it's one win each, Jonathan Caldwell capturing the inaugural edition before Linn Grant produced a stunning display which will have inspired thousands of young girls hoping to follow her lead. Caldwell's win changed his life, but Grant's nine-shot demolition job might one day be recognised as having changed far more than that.

First came the stage, a tournament with men and women playing alongside each other for equal prize money, proof that golf has an advantage over so many sports in being able to create a level playing field. Then came the star. Grant was sensational, birdieing five of the first six holes on Sunday and never looking back.

As far as betting on the event goes, we shouldn't let her achievement hide the fact that for the second year running, the balance was actually tilted heavily in favour of the men. Grant, now established as world-class and back then arriving bang in-form, overcame it in the way that brilliant players always can; she was the anomaly rather than the embodiment of a sea change.

Whether it's down to course set-up, respective field strengths, experience or more likely a blend of all three plus more besides, the bottom line is that Grant was the only female golfer inside the top dozen. Her colleagues Gabriella Cowley and Carolina Megrati were the only others in the top 25. In 2021, just one of the top nine places went to the LET, Alice Hewson this time leading the way.

No doubt all this has been factored into the set-up at another new venue, Ullna Golf & Country Club, which is listed as a short 6,819 yards for the men and 5,548 for the women. That distance of of more than 1250 yards represents around a 50% increase on both Halmstad and Varda and should help bring closer together the leading men and women, creating a more varied leaderboard than has so far been the case.

Unfortunately, I don't think it'll be quite enough, partly because Ullna is just so short for male players as a par 72. They'll have four par-fives to eat alive, one of them a drive and a wedge for several of the longer hitters, and only Lake Ullna itself poses an obvious threat ahead of what should be a relatively low-scoring week.

OK, this course isn't your typical Jack Nicklaus set-up, having been redesigned rather than created by the Golden Bear's team, and it should keep driver out of the men's hands for the most part. But while again that will help narrow the gap, my belief is that there will remain a gap nonetheless.

There's also a chance that Grant is not quite at her best. The standout LET player in this field and a winner again in France last month, she's since made her first venture to the USA and performed with great credit. That journey however denied her the chance to defend a title, as did one to Singapore in March, so she'll do so here for the first time.

Noren ready to win again

Grant could laugh off such concerns and her semi-final run in the Bank of Hope Matchplay is very strong form, but I'd have ALEX NOREN as favourite and he's readily preferred this time.

• CLICK HERE to back Noren with Sky Bet

It's not been a great year for the Ryder Cup hopeful, not on the PGA Tour at least, but whereas he was a 10/1 shot on the back of successive missed cuts this time last year, he returns having improved for 29th at Colonial and played all four rounds last week, so his very immediate form is a little stronger.

Prior to it, three of four missed cuts came only narrowly and he was a factor in the Texas Open on the eve of the Masters, and while his weak driving is exposed over there in the US, here at Ullna he might not be at a significant disadvantage for just about the first time all year.

That's a bonus, but the main argument for Noren is how well he's played on the DP World Tour post-pandemic shutdown. His first start back in Europe came in the 2021 Open, in which he missed the cut, but since then he's gone 27-12-15-30-2-2-5, persistently threatening to take his career tally to 11 wins and recently missing out on three big-money, big-name titles.

That figure means he's nine ahead of co-favourite Alex Bjork and I can't get my head around them being the same price. How do you think Bjork, a similar player but never as good, would fare out in the US? Would he not also find that he cannot overcome being short and not always straight off the tee, his precision iron play and hot short-game seldom enough to get him out of jail?

I strongly suspect he would, but we don't have to speculate in order to compare these two. Five times they've played in the same event over the past couple of years and the score is 4-0 to Noren, with one tie. Over their careers it's a landslide 25-6 in Noren's favour (two ties). Bjork is a fine player, but Noren remains a superior one.

Now, all this doesn't necessarily make Noren a bet, but I do think this course could be ideal for a Crans specialist whose finest displays have come at more technical layouts where power doesn't help much. He's also been there and done it at home, winning two of his last eight starts in Sweden, with five more top-15s within this run. And I don't know as he's played in a field as weak as this one at any point since his Challenge Tour days.

The final positive as I see it is that there's no Henrik Stenson and no course member Joakim Lagergren, making Noren the focus on the men's side. That should be a role he relishes and we saw recently at the Soudal Open how Thomas Detry stepped up in the absence of Thomas Pieters, that is until the final round at least.

Noren, a class act who has always been reliable under the gun and can be deadly from off the pace, would take some beating were he to feature in one of the final few groups on Sunday. With his recent improvement in mind, that's where I anticipate we'll see him.

There are a handful of others in this field who would hope to be on the radar of Luke Donald, not least Robert MacIntyre, but most of them will be disadvantaged by every passing hole that prevents them hitting driver, including his compatriot Ewen Ferguson, the Danish pair Marcus Helligkilde and Niklas Norgaard, and Antoine Rozner.

The most appealing options from somewhere near the top of the market were instead the maidens Matthew Southgate, Julien Brun and Mike Lorenzo Vera, all of them having played well at the Soudal Open which might be the best recent form guide.

Of the trio, Brun's form is strongest and he's a French version of Noren and Bjork, one who has not found the Sunday formula lately but is playing really well for the most part.

He's well worth considering at 50/1 but I'm a sucker for MARCUS KINHULT and will give the young Swede another go, not so much because he's playing at home, but because he's playing on the type of course he relishes.

• CLICK HERE to back Kinhult with Sky Bet

Kinhult's form across shorter layouts includes his win at Hillside, sixth at Valderrama and eighth at Muthaiga, and if the wind does pick up then his efforts at Le Golf National, Doha, Al Mouj, St Omer and The Renaissance all point towards his likely comfort, as well as that British Masters success.

He's been playing well lately, too, hitting his irons especially nicely, gaining strokes off the tee through accuracy rather than power, and demonstrating how dangerous he can be with the putter across four of his last five starts.

As mentioned, I like the fact he's among those to have featured to a degree in the Soudal Open, an event for which I selected him and where he might've placed but for an off week with the driver. I also like the solid nature of his overall profile, having been making cut after cut in generally deeper fields than this one.

Where playing in Sweden is concerned, he was the first-round and halfway leader in the Nordea Masters while still an amateur and flew from the cut line to 20th in the Scandinavian Invitation before being forced to miss the first edition of this event. Last year's 51st came after three missed cuts in four and he'd go on to miss the next three, too, so having been happy risking him at a similar price I've no hesitation trying again.

With his form certainly stronger now and having had plenty of time to adjust to a difficult health diagnosis, Kinhult is a player who can go on to feature regularly under the right conditions. Ullna may well provide them so at 40/1 and bigger he looks worth having on-side once more.

Sulli makes sense at massive price

Frederic Lacroix's ball-striking has been impressive of late and he's respected along with Oliver Bekker, who might've challenged for favouritism here at various points over the past couple of seasons and whose putter hides some decent enough hitting of late.

The best outsider I could find however was Angel Hidalgo, whose approach play can be superb and whose 15th place in Belgium certainly caught the eye. Mikael Lindberg is bigger still in the betting but does have some course experience to weigh against the fact he's been poor with the exception of 12th place in the KLM Open a fortnight ago.

All are passed over in favour of a three-pronged attack of confident selections, the last among which is in fact considered the best value: ANDY SULLIVAN at 80/1.

• CLICK HERE to back Sullivan with Sky Bet

Sullivan has a solid record in Sweden, recording finishes of 14th, eighth and 20th from only five starts, latterly charging home with rounds of 65, 66 and 65 after a slow start to the Scandinavian Invitation.

He's a winner at a Nicklaus-designed course under low-scoring conditions, one which played short and saw his main strengths, approach play and putting, power him to a runaway victory over some dangerous rivals (Adrian Otaegui, Rasmus Hojgaard, Wilco Nienaber, Min Woo Lee) as golf came out of the pandemic three years ago.

That's one of four wins and we know he's a class act at his best, once threatening the world's top 20 and making the 2016 Ryder Cup team, so I must confess I was pretty astonished at his price at what could be a perfect course and having shown some real signs of improvement lately.

Sullivan ranked eighth in strokes-gained approach at the KLM Open and produce more solid numbers in that department last week, only for his putter to go cold in Germany. But for that he'd have finished significantly higher than 39th at a brutally long, unforgiving course where he's never yet been any kind of factor. This is bound to suit him more.

Three times in his last six starts he's sat first or second after round one and after the most recent of those hot starts, he made no secret of the fact he feels like he's getting there as he works with his coach on getting his swing back to where it was at his best.

"Shooting low scores, starting to feel like things are really coming together," he told Sky Sports. "It's just about putting that together for four rounds. I feel like that's close."

Combine the relative drop in grade with the definite drop in distance and there's every chance he'll find himself in the mix early on once more. Perhaps with a behaving putter – Sullivan is 35th in strokes-gained putting this season, just worse than 10th among this lot – he can stick around for the entire week this time.

Posted at 2005 BST on 05/06/23

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