Maybank Championship betting preview and tips from Ben Coley

Recommended bets

1pt e.w. Pablo Larrazabal at 50/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

1pt e.w. Aaron Rai at 50/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

1pt e.w. Bernd Wiesberger at 100/1 (1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

0.5pt e.w. Thomas Bjorn at 200/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

0.5pt e.w. John Catlin at 250/1 (1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

0.5pt e.w. Khalin Joshi at 500/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

Another week, another globe-trotting adventure on the European Tour, another chance for Thomas Pieters to win - without the help of a partner - for the first time since 2016.

With the exception of a missed cut in Qatar last time, Pieters has been playing superbly ever since he threatened to pinch the PGA Championship last August. But his reward for this, bar some healthy cheques and useful world ranking points, has been the World Cup. Solo silverware remains elusive.

Jorge Campillo and Mike Lorenzo Vera, the next two in the market, are yet to win at this level between them. Both have come close, tearfully so in the case of the Frenchman. Campillo, meanwhile, arrives on a brace of runner-up finishes, during each of which he looked like striking, first at the 225th and then at the 226th attempt.

If it seems unnecessary to highlight the lowlights, the point is to underline the fact that we are, again, dealing with a collection of market leaders who come with serious risks attached. And, when you consider that the Maybank Championship Malaysia has thrown up three surprise winners, it's surely time to get creative.

One year ago, Shubhankar Sharma landed an almighty gamble with one of the best final rounds of the season, and the formula for finding him was straightforward. The Indian has the class and the course form - more than that, he is straightforwardly suited to Saujana - yet a run of so-so golf in the Middle East had put people off the scent.

This comparatively short, tree-lined layout, which needs attention but does yield opportunities, is a very different test to those in the Gulf, and while the schedule means Saujana no longer follows on the heels of the Middle East swing, it still allows us to put the theory of relativity to the test.

Aaron Rai, then, gets the headline vote on what's in fact his first appearance here.

Other than the absence of a previous, positive course spin, Rai holds much in common with Sharma. Both are young, immensely talented, straight-hitting players who appear already to favour old-fashioned courses; both have played well in Hong Kong and, as Sharma had before him, Rai ended last year with a win.

That it came in Hong Kong, where so many Saujana contenders of the past boast strong records and where Sam Brazel won before playing so well here, is of particular significance. These are courses on which hitting fairways and finding the middle of greens carries definite value.

Rai missed the cut in Qatar last time, a little disconcerting given that he'd played well there in 2018, but the preparation was very different. It included a trip to Mexico for the WGC, which in turn came after a one-week trip to Australia, and perhaps he was in need of a weekend off following a busy start to the year.

The decision to skip Kenya last week will not have come easy - Rai's mother is Kenyan, and he won the event on the Challenge Tour two years ago - but it can pay dividends as he arrives in Malaysia fresh and ready to continue on what's generally been a sharp upward curve.

Anyone who has listed to this week's European Tour podcast, on which I featured, is entitled to expect Ryan Fox's name to feature next.

The New Zealander is back from a break having played seven weeks in a row, a stretch which included his European Tour breakthrough and a very solid share of 11th back on home soil a fortnight later. In between, he joined Rai in the field for the WGC-Mexico. He needed a rest.

Fox was third here last year, at the time his best finish on the Tour, and it included the rarest of birds on the first hole during round three. He did very little wrong as Sharma ran the table and returns having ticked off the next job on his list.

Ultimately, he looks short enough to my eye having looked through the market in greater detail, but if you do want one from the top of the betting it perhaps ought to be him. Alex Bjork, who has been hitting the ball as well as ever and has all the right correlating form, is also worth considering.

However, I prefer the classy Pablo Larrazabal, who in eight starts in Malaysia is yet to finish worse than 30th.

Here at Saujana, where his shot-making is an asset and his creative mind is nurtured, Larrazabal's form reads 29-3 and he's ranked seventh and fourth for greens, having also topped the all-around stats last year.

That's a level of comfort which suggests he can be a factor at a generous price for one so decorated compared to many of these, and the golf he played over the weekend 12 months ago was nothing short of world-class.

Slow starts have cost Larrazabal on both visits and that was the story in Qatar last time, as he climbed 75 places on the leaderboard from Friday to Sunday. However, a closing 66 puts him in good shape for a return to familiar terrain and having arrived in Malaysia on Saturday, he'll be raring to go.

Mikko Korhonen, Andy Sullivan and Chris Paisley all make some kind of appeal but I'm keen to roll the dice a little here, in an event which has been kind, so it's Bernd Wiesberger next.

The Austrian was in fact my headline selection at 20/1 a year ago, in a field which included Henrik Stenson and Hao-tong Li, only to narrowly miss the cut before injury problems took hold.

Before drawing stumps at the China Open, Wiesberger still had time for a top-25 finish at the Masters and there's absolutely no doubting his class - it's just a case of trying to work out if and when he'll work his way back to that level, having played uninspiring golf ever since returning in Mauritius.

That's far from easy, and the scorecard doesn't offer a great deal of hope, but his record in Malaysia - 2-2-3 before last year's anomaly - suggests that this is as good a time as any to take a chance.

Furthermore, he ranked second for greens in regulation in Qatar, a small but potentially significant step in the right direction from one of the best iron players on the circuit, and it's that which gives me hope he might spring to life at Saujana, where he made nine birdies in succession two years ago.

With victories in Korea, Indonesia and China, Wiesberger has long been dangerous in the Far East and anything around the 80/1 mark has to be worth taking under these specific conditions.

If you thought Wiesberger was a little out of left-field, I'm afraid it's Thomas Bjorn next.

The Captain, as he shall henceforth be known, has shown one or two promising flourishes this year - none more so than a final-round 66 in Kenya last week.

His short-game in particular looks good, even if his putting technique isn't the most aesthetically satisfying, and with the exception of a shocking second round in Oman he's scored consistently well so far in 2019.

Clearly, it's a long time since Bjorn even looked like winning a tournament but his focus had been taken by the Ryder Cup and now that he's free from that, a last hurrah isn't out of the question. And I've absolutely no doubt that he'll have seen what contemporary Jim Furyk did on Sunday at the PLAYERS and felt the fire burning brighter.

Lee Westwood and Matt Kuchar have emerged from supporting roles at the Ryder Cup to actually win tournaments and Bjorn, who shot 68-68-69 to sit on the fringes of contention here last year before a poor final round, could spring another surprise. It's a course which suits his game.

Speaking of the potential for inspiration, I did consider Renato Paratore at a big price. He remains a big talent and was greenside to congratulate Guido Migliozzi on Sunday, the pair having once played Eisenhower Trophy golf together.

That said, he can be seriously erratic and I worry about that around here, so preference at 250/1 is for John Catlin.

This 28-year-old American is taking what once would've been called a strange route to the PGA Tour, but now is fairly common, and he'll surely have seen the success of Kurt Kitayama and started to believe he can do the same thing.

Going further back, David Lipsky came close to winning in Malaysia when holding only an Asian Tour card and Catlin looks to have enough talent to do something similar.

Two previous wins in Malaysia can only help and having been really solid from tee-to-green last week and sixth in Thailand before that, this return comes at a really nice time for him.

Catlin says he enjoys and embraces the challenge of adapting to the varying venues of the Far East and while missing the cut here on the Asian Development Tour in 2017, he's clearly come a long way in the interim.

Whether or not you consider his world ranking - not far off that of Campillo - to be a fair reflection of his achievements, Catlin is certainly improving. The fact he made the cut in two of three PGA Tour invites to start the year says as much and he can be a factor at this sort of level, in surroundings he's familiar with.

Finally, Khalin Joshi simply looks way overpriced and completes the staking plan.

Joshi is a young, improving Indian player who was fifth here last year, ranking inside the top 20 in all key statistical categories bar driving distance - it's safe to say he is not a bomber.

Last week's 35th in the Kenya Open reads as perfectly encouraging form and since the top-five here a year ago, he's won at Delhi - a tight, tree-lined course on which he beat standing dish Siddikur Rahman.

He actually played nicely early on in Hong Kong after that breakthrough victory and while there's plenty of modest form in the book, it's not totally unthinkable that he could follow in the footsteps of Sharma and Anirban Lahiri and win in Malaysia.

Posted at 2030 GMT on 18/03/19