Golf betting tips: Challenge Tour and Korn Ferry Tour selections

Golf betting tips: Challenge Tour

1.5pts e.w. Julian Suri at 33/1 (General 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

1pt e.w. Filippo Celli at 66/1 (Unibet 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

0.5pt e.w. Kristoffer Reitan at 150/1 (Unibet 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

Golf betting tips: Korn Ferry Tour

1.5pts e.w. Joe Highsmith at 40/1 (bet365, Sky Bet, Unibet 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

1.5pts e.w. Curtis Luck at 40/1 (Sky Bet 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

0.5pt e.w. Davis Chatfield at 125/1 (bet365 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

0.5pt e.w. Isaiah Salinda at 150/1 (BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

Sky Bet odds | Paddy Power | Betfair Sportsbook

In those entirely fictitious conversations about tour golf that you and I have with other humans, there's a great opportunity to outsmart them with your knowledge of the Swiss Challenge. Ask them who the big home fancy is and they'll probably say Joel Girrbach. 'Aha!' you must then reply, before telling them that the event takes place in France.

It's just great, great stuff, and then you can riff on how Adrian Meronk was born in Germany. Maybe list this wave of Scottish golfers who aren't Scottish: Connor McKinney, Hamish Brown, Hugo Townsend. Ask them to guess the nationality of youngster Darren Strachan and know you have a friend for life if they fire the word 'French' right back at you. Maybe check if they know their Michael Sim from their Michael Sims and their Chris Wood from their, um, Chris Wood, before getting married.

Yes, we're in France for the third year running in this tournament and I do feel that's a significant point. Where they are playing can make a big difference at this level, as we've seen at least 10 times this season. But there's something more tangible that makes this event good for a bet: Golf Saint Apollinaire, the host venue since 2021.

You may not need to live and breathe the sport to quickly get a handle on what's required here. It's a course still in its infancy and while rain and thicker rough made last year's tournament more demanding than the previous one, the outcome was basically the same: one very big hitter beat another very big hitter.

First to win here was Marcus Helligkilde, and he did so at the expense of man mountain Jonathan 'Jigger' Thomson. That renewal also saw Alejandro del Rey make history with a round of 58 and the young Spaniard, despite his stature, has since established himself as one of the longest driver on the DP World Tour. All three give it an almighty rip.

Last year, Daniel Hillier finished strongly to deny Jeong Weon Ko, the Frenchman who, like del Rey, we can now see is up there with the longest in Europe. Hillier isn't all that far behind, either, and the huge-hitting Niklas Norgaard wasn't all that far behind in the Swiss Challenge itself as again the big-hitters held sway.

Frenchman fancied but price is right

This is good news for class acts Tom Lewis and Brandon Stone, but their short-games can be troublesome and there's a lot of chipping to be done to sweep up birdies on par-fives and the short 11th hole. That worries me just a little and on balance I think Frederic Lacroix ought to head this wide-open market, which he now does with several firms.

Lacroix's form is really solid, with five top-30s in his last six Challenge Tour starts. He's been a regular contender at this level since graduating comfortably in 2021, his place on the DP World Tour just about sealed with fourth place here at a time when he was playing beautifully.

He seems to be again after sixth, 28th and 15th across his last three starts and it's hugely significant that he's here. The Parisian would dearly love to have played in the Open de France and his category 18 status on the DP World Tour meant he had that option, but he's instead chosen to focus on the Road to Mallorca with just four events remaining.

Passing up the opportunity to play in the biggest event you can play in can't have been easy and Lacroix should be doubly determined to make sure it proves to be the right decision. As a strong ball-striker who is well above average in distance and has held his own in much stronger events than this recently, he may be able to do just that.

Playing on home soil comes with certain pressures but Lacroix did win in France on the Alps Tour and should draw inspiration from the various players who've managed it during the current season, including Lauri Ruuska in Finland, Alex Fitzpatrick in England, and Matteo Manasseo in Italy.

Lacroix opened up at 28/1 with bet365 and would've been recommended at that price, but with only one firm now offering 22/1 and several going less than 20s, I am going to have to change course and remove him from the staking plan.

Felix Mory has a good record here and, like Lacroix, should draw some encouragement from Martin Couvra's victory a fortnight ago. Mory found form in Sweden at the start of the month after a run of missed cuts and built on it with fourth place in Portugal, matching his similar result in Brittany back in June.

A past champion on the Challenge Tour who contended here two years ago when badly out of form, he's another good French option but I was slightly more interested in Franck Daux at the prices.

Daux is hard to weigh up as a lot of his form is short of the level required and, at the age of 31, it's debatable how much scope he has. However, what's certain is that he's playing some of the best golf of his career at the moment, including at Challenge Tour level, and he topped a First Stage Q-School section in Belgium the week before last.

Beating McKinney there, a player of serious promise, Daux can have a free shot at this given his status and he's been inside the top 10 at halfway in two of his four starts on this circuit this year, plus inside the top 25 in the other two. Three-figure prices are interesting enough but I do suspect he's just not quite up to winning at this level.

Another win for Italy?

FILIPPO CELLI certainly is and the Italian might just love this place.

• CLICK HERE to back Celli with Sky Bet

It's Celli's first professional start in France, where he ended his amateur career last summer, and a course which still has some maturing to do, one that allows players to attack it with driver, is likely to prove ideal.

Helligkilde said it best on his way to winning here, explaining: "It is playing pretty easy if you can carry it 300 yards because then you can carry the bunkers and there’s not really too much trouble from the trees."

I am slightly wary of the fact that it was a couple of shots tougher per round last year but that was played in largely miserable conditions, which are only forecast for Friday this time. Besides, the fact is we have four par-fives, a driveable par-four, and that players like Celli can get very close to the eighth, too.

We've seen already that the youngster is a fabulous driver of the ball, ranking inside the top-five in strokes-gained off-the-tee three times on the DP World Tour from a handful of starts, including in the Open last summer. Above all else, hitting the ball a long way is his strength.

Back to form with top-20 finishes on each of his last two starts, including when climbing to 15th following a poor first round in Portugal, he's well worth backing at 50/1 and bigger to make the most of the scoring opportunities Saint Apollinaire provides.

Maximilian Steinlechner was similarly promising as an amateur and in fact finished alongside Celli in that event in France I mentioned. The Austrian waited a year longer to turn pro and has started to show what he can do, with finishes of fifth, 18th and 29th across his last three Challenge Tour starts.

Those results came courtesy of 11 consecutive sub-70 rounds, a run he extended to 14 at Q-School last week, but Steinlechner made a mess of the final round to miss out on advancing by a shot. I wonder how he'll respond to that and it's just enough to look elsewhere despite his obvious promise.

Thomson's course record (2-8) demands respect but at shorter odds I wonder if JULIAN SURI might be able to go one better than last week's runner-up finish.

• CLICK HERE to back Suri with Sky Bet

Suri has had all kinds of fitness problems over the last few years but since dropping down to the Challenge Tour in May, things have started to improve. All told he's made nine starts, advancing to the weekend in each of them, and Sunday's second place was his second top-three.

Up to 38th in the Road to Mallorca standings he's close to guaranteed a crack at the Grand Final and will be aiming, like Lacroix, for that top-20 cut-off and a return to the DP World Tour, where we know he belongs.

Suri was third in this in 2017, one week after he'd captured the Czech Challenge, and his record in France is really good having gone 2-WD-13 at Le Golf National, his favourite course in Europe, and been 18th in the Vaudreuil Golf Challenge during his first weeks on the circuit back in 2016.

Long off the tee and having bullied the par-fives last week, Suri rates a bet at 28/1 and bigger.

Reitan the money

French duo Romain Wattel and Benjamin Hebert have been on my radar for a while but I doubt this is ideal for either of them and will make KRISTOFFER REITAN my final selection.

• CLICK HERE to back Reitan with Sky Bet

The Norwegian has started playing well again since July, finishing fifth in Ireland, 17th a week after thanks largely to a second-round 65, 29th and 15th across the fortnight spent in Sweden, then 31st last week after a narrow missed cut in Spain.

It's a run of pleasing consistency from a 25-year-old who probably reached the DP World Tour too soon despite his obvious amateur promise, having pipped teammate Viktor Hovland to being the first Norwegian man to play in the US Open.

Reitan showed what he could do under the right conditions with big performances in Prague and Italy, on driver-first, resort-style courses, but it became a struggle and even now he's only just inside the top 100 on the Road to Mallorca.

However, something has changed recently and in six of his last seven Challenge Tour starts, he's been very close to the places and on two occasions close enough to the lead through 54 holes.

Putting four rounds together is the next step and if he's to do it anywhere before the season is out, it could just be at this course given what we've learned about it over the past two years. Three-figure prices are worth taking in the hope he can blast his way into contention.

Highsmith with a bit of Luck

Over on the Korn Ferry Tour it's the Nationwide Children's Hospital Championship, the penultimate event of the season.

The dynamics have changed since David Lingmerth landed this at massive odds a year ago, when those PGA Tour players who'd missed the top 125 in the FedEx Cup were able to drop down to Korn Ferry Tour Finals and earn back their status.

Now there's the FedEx Cup Fall for those players, so this is all about the KFT membership and the 120 who made this field, which will then become 75 for the Tour Championship, all of whom will earn full status for 2024 with only the top 30 graduating to the big league.

That absence of PGA Tour players makes life more difficult and I must confess I don't feel like I've a strong enough grip on everyone here, but I can't let JOE HIGHSMITH go unbacked and he heads three selections.

• CLICK HERE to back Highsmith with Sky Bet

Highsmith has his place in the Tour Championship locked up but having been injured during the spring, one of the most promising players on the circuit still has work to do if he's to gain promotion.

This however is a really good course fit. The case for Lingmerth last year involved the need to be a strong driver at Ohio State University's Scarlet Course, Lingmerth's prowess off the tee largely a result of accuracy over power, and Highsmith is fifth in the total driving stats this season.

One of the strongest ball-strikers around, he's completed his recovery from injury and been in the mix in three of his last five starts, suggesting he's capable of ending the season strongly – Victoria National should also play to his strengths and it wouldn't surprise me were he to succeed Justin Suh there.

The kicker is that he's a former Pepperdine teammate of Sahith Theegala and is bound to draw inspiration from the latter's popular breakthrough at the weekend so at 40/1 in this smaller field, Highsmith might be ready to win for the first time. Anything 33/1 or bigger is good enough.

Even more obvious are the claims of CURTIS LUCK and here we have the opposite to Lacroix, who had to be left out as more prices emerged. With Luck, it's a pleasant surprise to see prices as big as 40/1.

• CLICK HERE to back Luck with Sky Bet

You may recall seeing Luck's name in the news recently, as he was disqualified from the Boise Open for missing his tee-time. The Aussie was in fact warming up, having misread the tee sheet and believed he had another 10 minutes or so, and it must've been infuriating to damage his prospects of making the PGA Tour in that way.

"I'll just show up in Nashville and then Columbus and keep throwing everything I've got at the playoffs," Luck told Golf Digest afterwards. "Columbus is my favourite on the Korn Ferry Tour so I just have to keep pressing on."

Columbus is where we are this week and Luck's record at the course is outstanding, with a win, fifth, seventh, 16th and 19th from his five visits. Just one other player in the field boasts a scoring average of less than 70; Luck's is a tick under 69 at a really demanding course.

In the absence of those PGA Tour players, some of whom might have brought strong records with them, Luck is by far and away the player most comfortable here and as well as that motivational aspect he's been in good nick recently, making nine cuts in a row and often threatening the places.

Last week's 26th in Tennessee was a big step up on two previous missed cuts at the course and 12th in Utah was also his best in four visits there. In fact, the last seven times he's played a course he'd visited before, Luck has improved on what he'd done there in the past.

He can't do that here but we'll take a repeat at what seems to be to be a very generous price.

I also looked at the talented Norman Xiong, a contender here last year and the other player with that sub-70 scoring average (based on just appearance), but DAVIS CHATFIELD is preferred.

• CLICK HERE to back Chatfield with Sky Bet

This arrow-straight youngster turned pro last summer after a good amateur career and he's done well to get within touching distance of full status for 2024, likely just needing to make the cut to be sure of achieving that goal.

He was eighth in Boise a fortnight ago for his first top-10 finish and I don't mind last week's missed cut, which came courtesy of rounds of 75-67 and therefore has echoes of Lingmerth's display before he captured this title.

Chatfield was first in fairways and second in greens in Boise and while his putting looks like a potential area of weakness, this move away from bermuda greens might help given his Massachusetts upbringing and college career at Notre Dame.

Like Highsmith, he's a debutant here but Luck aside, there's a real lack of course form – in part a product of the change in system that has altered the nature of the event and who takes part in it.

Without those PGA Tour players dropping down this is a real chance for a young player to change their careers and in Highsmith and Chatfield, we have two quality drivers who might be up to doing so, that's if Luck doesn't reignite his by taking this title for a second time.

Finally, ISAIAH SALINDA is a former Walker Cup player who remains with promise and there are two main reasons for thinking he might show up this week.

Firstly, he drives the ball really well, ranking seventh in combined distance and accuracy. He's well above average in both departments and as a consequence hits plenty of greens, with his short-game the only thing holding him back.

Secondly, Salinda is ranked 77th in points and found a return to form last week, ending a run of missed cut during which he still offered some promise. Like Highsmith, he may benefit from a move away from bermuda greens and is an outsider with a chance given the way he drives it.

Posted at 1100 BST on 20/09/23

Safer gambling

We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.

Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.