Recap - ISPS Handa Championship
Man, usually feast or famine DPWT doesn’t hit like that, but that was rough. After the first round, we were nicely positioned with two guys 1 back and two guys 2 back.
Then the 2nd round came and went and we were sitting with 2 guys tied for the lead and our 250-1 shot sitting nicely inside the top 10.
The third round did not go our way, but Soderberg had the solo lead at -13 before double bogeying and falling back and then Sunday came and Bairstow did the full eject to fall fully out of the top 20, but Soderberg once again took the solo lead, but was not able to find any amount of consistency and ended up solo 2nd.
Please note that this is the last DPWT event for a while as our next one is post-PGA Championship when the DPWT returns to Europe.
Volvo China Open
The course:
After a week on the Island of Japan, the DPWT heads to mainland China for the first time since 2019! The XX-man field will be teeing it up at the Neil Haworth-designed course at Hidden Grace Golf Club in Shenzhen, China.
This course plays to a par of 72 across ~7,150 yards and Mr Haworth was a believer in the “soft handshake” idea to course building. As such, both 9 start with easier holes and get tougher as the players go along, but this course should present plenty of scoring opportunities.
While this is the first time since 2019 that the DPWT played this event, this tournament has been going on since 1995 and was a DPWT event from 2004 through 2019. As such, this is 5th consecutive renewal of this tournament at this venue (and 6th playing here overall with 2014) and we have plenty of former winners in this field, including Sarit Suwannarut (2023), Nicolas Colsaerts (2011), Alexander Levy (2014, 2017), Ashun Wu (2015), Haotong Li (2016), Huilin Zhang (2020), and Zhang Jin (2021).
This course feels like it should favor longer hitters, especially with short par 4’s and gettable par 5’s, but if you are wayward, you can find Dragon Lake on many of the holes. That said, the Par 5’s are very gettable, and based on my understanding of the history of this course, you need to score well on the Par 5’s to have a real chance so it actually may be those that are good ball strikers that we want to attack this week. I always like to talk about the grass and this week we have wall to wall paspalum.
Based on my check of the weather, it seems like the course should get a fair bit of rain before the tournament starts, with a possibility of delayed start should the showers continue into Thursday. Once that storm is over, the players should find a soft course that remains soft as there does not appear to be much wind coming.
Something else to keep in mind this week is that the top 100 in the OWGR as of next Monday (May 6th) qualify for the PGA Championship. That means anyone on the bubble will have a little more to play for and focus on this week.
Prior results:
2023 - Sarit Suwannarut shot a -19 to beat Chen Guxin and Kho Taichi by 6 strokes when the Asian and Chinese Tour sanctioned this event
2021 - Zhang Jin shot a -8 to top Hoatong Li by 1 stroke when the Chinese Tour sanctioned this event
2020 - Zhang Huilin shot -19 and beat amateur Ding Wenyi by 9 strokes when the Chinese Tour sanctioned this event
2019 - Mikko Korhonen (50-1) beat Benjamin Hebert (60-1) in a playoff after both shot -20
2018 - Alexander Bjork (40-1) shot -18 and beat Adrian Otaegui (50-1) by 1 stroke, at Topwin
The 72-hole record was shot in 2011 when Nicolas Colsaerts shot a -24 (264 strokes) at Luchills International. Mikko Korhoenen’s performance in 2019 was the best in the 4 editions previously held at Hidden Grace (formerly Genzeon).
The bets:
I normally talk about the public picks on the PGA Tour each week, but this week there are three main public buys with Haotong Li, Alexander Levy, and Brad Weisberger. While I tend to try and avoid these, this week I couldn’t as the value on Levy that I found was far too much to pass up. The Hoatong Li love is so obvious that it is screaming FADE.
This week we have CJ Cup Byron Nelson over on the PGA Tour (link to picks), but with that, we still have plenty of dry powder to take a crack here with 6.5u of risk:
Outright:
0.75u Tom McKibbin 19-1 (Bet365)
0.3u Alexander Levy 50-1 (Bovada)
0.25u Adrian Otaegui 65-1 (FD)
0.2u Fabrizio Zanotti 80-1 (FD)
0.17u Andy Sullivan 85-1 (BOL / Bet365)
Top 10 (0.25u each):
Adrian Otaegui +300
Alexander Levy +350
Fabrizio Zanotti +400
Andy Sullivan +450
Top 20
0.75u Tom McKibbin +100
0.5u Adrian Otaegui +125
0.5u Joost Luiten +150
0.25u Fabrizio Zanotti +165
0.25u Andy Sullivan +175
Match-ups
0.8u Bernd Wiesberger over Hoatong Li -160
0.725u Scott Jamison over Grant Forrest -145
Please note that this is the last DPWT event for a while as our next one is post-PGA Championship when the DPWT returns to Europe.