Recap - Ras al Khaimah Championship
Another all-or-nothing week on the DPWT comes back with nothing. It is really getting tiring how hit-and-miss this has been, especially given that we bet Olesen last week only to see him cruise to victory this week.
The only guy we had in contention, Zander Lombard, didn’t show up at all on Saturday to put himself seriously in contention and then did so poorly on Sunday that he fell right out of the top 10, finishing 13th to at least cash our Top 20 bid on him.
Everything else was pretty well crap last week so there is really not much to say other than we dust ourselves off and go again this week in Bahrain.
Bahrain Championship
The course:
The DPWT stays in the Middle East for a 4th straight week, this time heading to the Kingdom of Bahrain! This marks the first time in 13 years that the DP World Tour is hosting an event in the Kingdom and this time it is being contested at Colin Montgomerie-designed Montgomerie Course at the Royal Golf Club, which plays to a par 72 across 7,260 yards.
While this event is brand new, this course has hosted the Volvo Golf Champions (won by Paul Casey) and Bahrain Invitational back in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
Based on my understanding, we are once again going to be facing an exposed desert course that likes to claim it is “link-style” that could leave the player in trouble if the wind starts blowing. The 130-man field will have to navigate several water hazards and this course is fairly well bunkered. Per reports, the greens were a big topic of conversation after the playing of the Volvo so they redid all of the complexes. While they maintained their paspalum grass, they did smooth them a bit to remove some of the undulations so I think we should expect “firm and fast” in the dry desert air.
While scoring was quite low back in 2011, from what I have read, it seems like folks think the players will be getting a bit more of a test this time around as they expect a pretty stiff breeze on Friday, Saturday, and, dying down a bit, Sunday. That said, it does look like the midsection of this course is really where you need to attack with 3 par 5s and a couple of short par 4s in there.
Prior results:
None.
The bets:
Given that things continue to be so hit and miss I am going to take some longer shots here under the guise that this is a new course for these gets and the wind will make things more difficult as the days go on. As such, I am going a little deeper into the card than I normally would with a few longer punts.
We also have the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am this week in California (link to picks) so I am going to keep it relatively light here with 4.7u of risk:
Outright:
0.5u Zander Lombard 25-1
0.355u Fredric LaCroix 35-1
0.2u Louis De Jager 65-1
0.17u Aaron Cockerill 80-1
0.13u Jesper Svensson 100-1
0.07u Freddy Schott 200-1
Top 10 (0.25u each):
Zander Lombard +275
Sebastian Soderberg +300
Louis De Jager +500
Top 20
1u Zander Lombard +110
0.5u Fredrick LaCroix +135
0.25u Louis De Jager +200
0.25u Aaron Cockerill +250
0.25u Jesper Svensson +300
As always, I am using BetOnline and Bovada to pull these odds.