Golf Ireland News, Latest News · Favourite Watch Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia make the trip nedbank golf challenge 2018 betting odds Sun City this year and both are listed around. Whether it's making picks to update your Fantasy team or keep your eye on the betting markets, our experts provide their insights ahead of. Paul Williams' Tips for the Nedbank Golf Challenge. Follow Paul on twitter: @golfbetting ·Branden Grace (). ·Alex Noren (). Golf betting tips: Nedbank Golf Challenge · 4pts win Tommy Fleetwood at 11/1 (General) · 2pts e.w. Lucas Herbert at 28/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6).
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It's just really, really cool when you win a tournament. At the time, it felt like the Nedbank proved that money isn't the be all and end all for most golfers. It might've been impossible to begrudge Fleetwood's overdue second Rolex Series title and fifth overall, but was it a tournament worthy of its history-making purse?
Of course, a lot has changed since, and this is the overdue return of the Nedbank Challenge. The prize fund has dropped significantly, not just because the big names did not come, and the field strength is weaker still. For all the talk about the top Race to Dubai cut-off which would earn players a start here, 76th-ranked Wil Besseling managed to sneak into the field and Thomas Detry, in 60th, had nothing to worry about.
Gary Player Country Club is made for Fleetwood at his best. This is a course where Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia have five titles between them, and where long, strong driving has always been the starting point. Nedbank golf challenge 2018 betting odds It's true that we're at altitude at this breathtaking resort, but 7, yards makes this the longest course on the circuit and the need to dominate the four-par-fives is clear.
When Fleetwood won, he played those par-fives in under, winning with a score of Westwood had captured the title with a field-leading performance across those scoring holes, too, as had Danny Willett some years before. Above all else though it's always felt like a drivers' golf course, and in the first year of strokes-gained data on the European Tour we were handed a champion who led the field off the tee.
As well as underpinning all of his success, it's driver that explains Fleetwood's struggles. Post-pandemic, if we can say that, his off-the-tee game has dipped and placed too much pressure on a short-game which has arguably never been sharper. It's why he failed to crack the top on the FedEx Cup a year ago, which in turn shows us how far he's come since having finished 49th in There's still more to come, and after fourth place at The CJ Cup last time, his third top-five finish in seven dating back to the Scottish Open, Fleetwood explained just why things are on the up.
Asked what's improved, he said: "Swing. The swing's better. I'm not losing my ball, started driving it better now, especially the second half of the year. Had some tournaments where I felt like my driver's been much more consistent and that was something that in my best years driving and my iron play was clearly where I made like my biggest strides to compete at the highest level.
That's been a big improvement and that's got better, and then from there you just have to let the game come to you and let the results come, which they sort of started to do, started drifting that way. Now returning to a course where his results read , Fleetwood looks ready to put everything together and serve up a reminder that, in actual fact, his strike-rate is pretty good. All told he's won four of his last odd starts in non-majors on the DP World Tour and while another is certainly now overdue, I do feel his class edge has been underestimated by the layers.
Three years ago, arriving in similar form and only seven spots higher in the rankings, he had Oosthuizen, Matt Fitzpatrick, Bernd Wiesberger, Erik van Rooyen, Henrik Stenson and several other high-class opponents to beat. Now, he's the same sort of price, with just one other top player in a field which is thinner at all levels. It's a price that demands inclusion at a course where experience has historically been of real significance, a problem for quite a few of his key rivals.
Click the image to download our Ultimate Word Cup Betting Guide, featuring tips, stats and analysis and completely free to read. Perhaps the biggest threat to Fleetwood is Detry, inside the top 10 on both starts here and never a better player than he is now. Robert MacIntyre would be next on my list of live threats, the Italian Open champion having produced a sensational weekend to climb from 50th all the way up to eighth on his first start here.
The Scot has barely missed a beat, is fully engaged in his quest to make the Ryder Cup side, and should see this as an excellent opportunity to win a high-profile event in which captain Luke Donald is also playing on an invite. Along with Antoine Rozner, these are three live each-way contenders with thriving long-games at a course which is unrelenting.
You simply can't relax at Sun City, where wild drives can equal lost balls as Detry found out when his challenge collapsed three years ago. That requirement for focus and execution has thrown up a list of high-class champions, including when other events have been held here, and it should continue to do so.
Like MacIntyre, the Australian also made his debut here in and while down the field, a pair of 69s and good scoring on the par-fives should serve as a nice introduction. To a large degree that's because Herbert boasts one of the best short-games in the field, and it's his long-game numbers which undermine confidence to a degree. It was only four months ago that Tony Finau won in back-to-back weeks on the PGA Tour and he took ninth at the Tour Championship just three months ago.
I like that he has a couple of competitive rounds under his belt before taking on a very difficult Memorial Park Golf Course this week. You see the theme here. Big-hitting ball strikers who can putt on Bermuda grass. Mitchell has done that in a victory at the Honda Classic. That is what we want here — length, power and touch around the greens.
And of course, that leads us to Woodland, a former winner in Phoenix. He also had a top finish at Southern Hills last May. Driving the golf ball and ball striking have always been the strengths of his game, which should put him in good position this week. Jordan Smith broke a five-year winless drought two weeks ago at the Portugal Masters shooting 30 under par.
Thomas Detry has been playing full-time schedules both on the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, where he had a runner-up two weeks ago in Bermuda and is still chasing that elusive first major tour victory. Robert MacIntyre won the Italian Open in September and that started a run of five events with no worse than a top finish. Only World No. It began as a five-player tournament on Dec.
It remained in a similar format, with no more than 12 players, all the way through This tournament remained an unofficial event from to before the Sunshine Tour in South Africa started sanctioning the event from to The European Tour and Sunshine Tour co-sanctioned the challenge from to The Gary Player Golf Club, located in Sun City, is a par that measures at 7, yards but essentially plays at around 7, yards because it is played at altitude 3, feet.
The kikuyu fairways are of average width and the greens are slick Bentgrass. Missing the fairways will be punished as thick kikuyu rough can swallow up errant tee shots. The course is also well bunkered with a fair number of mounds and swales. Thunderstorms may well soften the course ahead of the tournament itself, with disruption possible from Friday onward as cells work their way through the area.