Jazz Janewattananond can be opposed with confidence in Northern Ireland, while our golf man also has four selections for the Finnish Challenge.
Golf betting tips: Specials & Challenge Tour
2pts Rikuya Hoshino to be the top Asian player at 7/4 (General)
1pt Kazuki Higa to be the top Asian player at 9/2 (bet365)
1pt e.w. Romain Wattel to win the Finnish Challenge at 45/1 (William Hill 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)
1pt e.w. Kristoffer Broberg to win the Finnish Challenge at 55/1 (bet365 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)
1pt e.w. Lauri Ruuska to win the Finnish Challenge at 80/1 (BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
0.5pt e.w. Sebastien Gros to win the Finnish Challenge at 175/1 (bet365 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)
Jazz Janewattanond was one of the form players on the DP World Tour back in April but alarm bells are ringing loudly after the run he produced throughout June and July.
With the exception of 27th place in the Scandinavian Mixed, an event that once again produced a male-heavy leaderboard, the Thai has been no kind of factor. Even more concerning are the numbers behind his results: Jazz has lost 47 strokes from tee-to-green across his last four starts.
At both the Barbasol and in the Open afterwards, he gave up an average of six shots per day from the tee. Given that there's no water in play at Hoylake, this means any number of shots hit out of bounds and, at 22-over, he ended the week at the very bottom of the leaderboard.
Perhaps a month away will have helped but that seems unlikely and given his struggles I'm a bit surprised he didn't choose to take part in one of the All Thailand Golf Tour events that have taken place since the Open. They're low-key, low prize money, but Jazz might have benefited from a fact-finding mission.
So, the message is we should explore ways to oppose him, and I had expected that to be via three-balls. Unfortunately, he's in with James Morrison and Matteo Manassero, and though favouring Morrison's top-20 on the PGA Tour over Manassero's excellent Challenge Tour campaign, the pair are difficult to split.
We do have the top Asian market as an alternative, and I'll be surprised if it isn't won by RIKUYA HOSHINO or KAZUKI HIGA.
Yes, they're the top two in the betting, but there's simply no depth here. Chenyao Ma ranks last in strokes-gained total on the DP World Tour, Yeongsu Kim isn't far in front and neither is Aguri Iwasaki, who has missed eight cuts in a row and never yet finished better than 60th at this level.
Asaf Cohen and Yanwei Liu are massively up against it, and while money for Manu Gandas is understandable given that he hasn't been disgraced, the Indian has needed red-hot putting displays to make two cuts in his last 10 appearances on the circuit.
With Jazz's struggles clear along with the others in this heat, Jeunghun Wang would be the only feasible threat to the front two and yet he withdrew from the British Masters when last seen. He's not broken 70 in his last 11 rounds and averaged 76.80 in June and July.
Hoshino is inside the top 30 on Tour in strokes-gained total and made the cut after a fine second-round 69 in the Open. Third in Germany four starts back and again making the weekend after that at the Belfry, he's probably only going to have to achieve something like 50th to win this market.
If he fails to, Higa ought to capitalise. His form hasn't been great but he bagged a top-20 finish back home in Japan two weeks ago and wasn't disgraced before that in the Open. Unlike several of these he's contended at this level back in the spring and his scores lately make him competitive, especially around Galgorm Castle, which isn't dissimilar in look to some courses back home.
Tempting though it is to weight stakes in favour of the 7/4 favourite, I'll take two against the field at 5/6. The only other two proven DP World Tour golfers both arrive here with serious questions to answer.
Dutch the Dutch Open winners
It's also worth a good look at this week's Challenge Tour event, which is weaker than usual with so many players taking part in the corresponding ISPS Handa World Invitational on the main circuit.
The result is that we have Oihan Guillamoundeguy, an 18-year-old whose Challenge Tour form in 2023 reads 35-MC, towards the top of a market packed with players whose hopes of graduating to the DP World Tour appear slim.
Jesper Svensson is one exception and having been runner-up here at Vierumaki last year, he's the one to beat, but I think the market is underestimating KRISTOFFER BROBERG and ROMAIN WATTEL above all others.
Broberg has been in the mix in two of his eight Challenge Tour starts this year, all of them stronger than this, and a missed cut at St Mellion is easy to excuse. That tight, fiddly, difficult course is anathema to this wild but talented Swede, who will be far more at home in Finland.
Winner of the 2012 Finnish Challenge at a different venue, Broberg's potential suitability to this course is perhaps highlighted by his Dutch Open win at Bernardus, where Marcus Helligkilde contended soon after he'd won this title.
Darius van Driel, who held the course record here at Vierumaki, has been fourth at Bernardus and while a little more links-like in nature, there are definite aesthetic similarities. The best argument for Broberg however is his class, the fact he finished 24th when hitting the ball superbly in the main tour's Made in HimmerLand last month, and prices which don't reflect his ability.
That HimmerLand effort could also be a good guide via both Svensson and Helligkilde, who battled for a Nordic Golf League event there once, and Broberg's putting issues are worth taking on board at the odds.
Wattel is the form horse with two top-fives in four starts as he gets his career back on track. Another former KLM Open winner, his victory coming at The Dutch, Wattel climbed to 41st on the Road to Mallorca with his runner-up finish in Scotland last week, having been outside the top 200 until recently.
Despite having played just seven Challenge Tour events in 2023, Wattel now has a platform to push towards a return to the DP World Tour. His price has been contracting fast, as you'd expect, but his best is a level above most of these and as with Broberg, 40/1-plus looks worth taking.
Remember, this is a former world amateur number one and he's back on track having reunited with his old coach this year. Beginning it with no category and having failed to make Asian Tour Q-School finals, things looked bleak and he's done really well, helped by some invites, to get where he is today.
Trawling the internet for some reaction to Sunday's runner-up finish, the best line I could find via Google translate was Wattel telling golfplanete.com (which translates to golfplanet.com) that "it's easier to have the banana when you make pars and birdies."
What more needs to be said?
Gros-ly overpriced?
His compatriot Benjamin Hebert is another who has a touch of class but low-scoring conditions might not be ideal. He's won in Norway in the past and looks to be edging towards another title challenge while he also won this week's pro-am, but a tighter, stiffer test would probably be more suitable over 72 holes.
Marc Hammer and Conor Purcell are obvious options near the head of the betting along with Svensson, but there's really nothing to fear here and I'd rather take on the favourites.
I'll add big-hitting SEBASTIEN GROS as my speculative wager, preferred to the unproven Jake Burnage who has pedigree and ranges from 66/1 to 200/1 across firms, but is probably a level below this one for now despite a Clutch Pro Tour win in the spring.
Burnage is quite hard to assess as he's been playing minor tours since turning pro following a good amateur career which saw him just miss out on Walker Cup selection. He's looking to emulate Brandon Robinson Thompson, a Clutch winner who is all of a sudden on course to become a DP World Tour member, but his own form at that level has cooled since that victory.
Odds of 200/1 with bet365 are generous after an improved display in the Scottish Challenge, where he carded two 66s for 27th, but Unibet's price is surely too far the other way and the firms splitting the difference at 125/1 probably have it about right.
Gros has proven himself at this level in the past with a couple of Challenge Tour titles to his name as well as one on the MENA Tour, when he got the better of Purcell. He has also shown signs of improvement lately, finishing 11th and 32nd the last twice, and on the first occasion sat second at halfway in the German Challenge.
One bad round under really tough conditions hurt him there before four solid ones in Scotland, at a course I wouldn't have down as especially suitable given how tight it is. Some might say the same of this one given form figures of MC-MC-MC, but his last round at Vierumaki was a 65 and he can build on that.
There's also a potential correlation with Zhailjau, where he won the Kazakhstan Open. Sam Walker and Scott Henry are both past champions there, and Walker beat Henry to this title. Tom Murray, runner-up in 2018, has been fifth at Vierumaki, and the player who finished runner-up to Gros in 2015 went on to be fifth on his only Vierumaki start.
Reinier Saxton, Edouard Espana, Lasse Jensen and Pontus Widegren are among quite a big group of low-ranked players with form at both courses and given we're talking a small number of tournaments, the ties between the two seem strong. It might just hint that Gros is as suited to this layout as his last round here suggests.
Gros has abundant power and has been bullying the par-fives lately. He gets an extra one to go at here and the last few Finnish Challenge leaderboards suggest it's a course that can be attacked with his favourite club off the tee, so take three-figure prices about the Frenchman.
Angus Flanagan catches the eye at 80/1 given the winning run of young English players, including Walker Cup teammate Alex Fitzpatrick, but I wonder whether LAURI RUUSKA might be the one to give home fans something to shout about and he's a better bet at the same sort of odds.
Matias Honkala and Roope Kakko are priced as the pick of the Finns and Honkala, who owns a house nearby, is promising. However, Ruuska's poor course form has probably inflated his price yet it looks far less relevant than the way he's playing right now.
Ruuska played the event as a teenager in 2012, returned when he was just beginning his career as a pro four years later, and missed a third cut in 2017. He fared better in 2018, fighting hard to make the weekend, but failed to do so again in 2019.
All this could be seen as discouraging, but his professional career really didn't get going until 2020, when he was among the best players on the Nordic Golf League. The following year he began to get involved at the top end of Challenge Tour leaderboards in Scandinavia, where he was comfortable, then finally bagged his first top 10 towards the end of the campaign.
Skating into Finland 🏒 #FinnishChallenge pic.twitter.com/eDkjQcy3g9
— Challenge Tour (@Challenge_Tour) August 16, 2023
Last year was quiet and his best form came when contending all week in Sweden, so this is the first time he returns home with some substantive form elsewhere behind him. Over his last three starts, Ruuska has finished eighth, 32nd and 12th in mainland Europe, and this improvement can be traced back to winning a Finnish Tour event at the start of July.
Ruuska also won the pro-am that week and having since made three successive Challenge Tour cuts for the first time, contending in Germany and doing nothing wrong in Scotland, this return to Finland combined with a weak field for the grade looks ideally timed.
Once upon a time, Ruuska was considered the big young hope in Finland. When he won the Finnish Stroke Play Championship by 13 shots, Sami Valimaki was 20 back of him in sixth, around the time he mixed it with Thomas Detry and Marcus Kinhult at the European Amateur.
Close to elite level as an amateur back then, when getting military service out of the way quickly, his career as a professional might be about to take off at last.
Posted at 1205 BST on 16/08/23
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