Africa Open 2010 preview/review of S.African Open

The South African Open was another profitable week for me, with a £36 profit (blog cumulative is £123 profit). It could have been even better if one of my tips, Hennie Otto, hadn't racked up a 9 on a par-3 then withdrawn. I still don't know what happened - was this an injury or a mental short circuit?

One thing I learned for next year is that the morning starters seem to get the best of the conditions on last week's course - but they're moving to a different course next year so this seem irrelevant now! However, see below for my analysis of last year's Africa open, which may endure the same trend.

Looking ahead to the Africa Open at East London Golf Club, as far as I can tell this is going to be played on a very short course, at under 6,900 yards. I do think this will have an impact so previous form on this course would be helpful. The wind also plays a part here so successful links players may outperform.

Talking of wind, there is a theory that on coastal courses the morning starters tend to get the better conditions (wind picks up in pm, course dries out). It means that the players who tee off on Thursday afternoon can have their heads down by the time that they tee off in the better conditions on friday morning. This seems to have occurred in last week's SA Open, as already mentioned. I analysed last year's Africa Open to see if happened here, and it may have. The morning starters average score on thursday was 72.2, which increased to 73.6 when the same players played on friday afternoon. While the thursday afternoon starters averaged 73.3 on both thursday am and friday pm. The bright ones among you may point out that the thursday morning starters average score for the first two rounds is therefore more than the thursday afternoon starters, which opposes the "heads down" theory - but its important to note that all the top players teed off in the afternoon session on thursday so you would expect a much lower average for them. So, once the tee off times have been anounced for this year's Africa Open, I may tilt my selections towards morning starters.

Looking at last year's results it does seem that the players who played well at the South African Open tended to perform well here. So my sells this week are likely to be:

Kingston, Sterne, Schwartzel, Horne, Clarke, Hoey, Fichardt, Blaauw, Grace, Hed Andersson, Van Zyl, De Jager, and Canizares.

Top 5: Sterne, Kingston, Van Zyl, Andersson Hed, Fichardt

Most of those will be fairly obvious as to why, but I will pick out a couple: Andersson Hed has had 4 top 5 places in his last 6 starts. Hoey is a good links player and has posted ok results in the last 2 tournaments, plus had a good result last year.

South African Open 2009

Last week I lost 100 points which is equal to £50, so I am now up £87 cumulatively. I lost £100 on the Dunhill Champ but won £50 on the Australian PGA. I think I made a loss because I had become overconfident and made too many left field picks which could not be backed up with enough logic.

Looking ahead to next week, the only event appears to be the South African Open. The course is reasonably long at 7400+ yards, but I have not been able to discern a pattern in terms of style of play that is effective there. Note that I look at the European PGA website which shows last year's leaderboard with each players statistics for that tournament, as a starting point).

I will be basing my picks by looking for quality or up and coming players who have been in reasonable form for the past few weeks. Yes this is a relatively simple method but I am looking for consistency or a tendency to bounce back after a bad week (which is an ability that some players seem to have while other players, conversely, have patches of good or bad form which may last for a few weeks in a row).

So, my picks this week, with some explanation where applicable:

PREDICTED PLAYERS IN TOP 5: Sterne, Molinari, Mulroy, Mcgrane, and Mcgowan.

SELLs:Bourdy, Canizares, Drysdale, Fichardt, Finch, Garrido, A.Hansen, Horne, Kapur, Kingston, Lorenzo-Vera, Lowry, Maybin, Mcgowan, Mcgrane, Molinari, Mulroy, Oosthuizen, Otto, Rock, Sandelin, Schwartzel, Sterne, Van Zyl, Zanotti.

BUYs: S.Hansen, Henningsson

There are some players in there who missed the cut last week. But I have picked them either because I believe they were rusty after time off (and only missed the cut by 1 shot so are close to form - eg Van Zyl and Otto) or they have displayed consistent "bouncebackability" (eg Oosthuizen & Drysdale). A lot of the others are picked for fairly obvious reasons but I will say that Lorenzo-Vera would normally be too inconsistent for me, but I noticed that he seems to have certain favourite events where he does well and others where he continues to miss the cut. This is one of the events he did well at in 2008 so I picked him.

I am buying S.Hansen because I suspect he will be among the favourites but he is a consistently slow starter to a season. I am not sure if Henningsson will be available to bet on as a finishing position, but if he is then I think he is likely to miss the cut given recent form (he did well here last year so he may be priced).

I have some maybes that I may back if well priced: Abery, Aiken, Bothma, Cabrera-Bello, Hoey, Ilonen, Khan, Luiten, Martin, Mclean, and Whiteford.

Alfred Dunhill Championship 2009 preview, Australian PGA 2009 preview

Last week I appeared to break even, with a lot of ups and downs all cancelling each other out, so cumulative blog gain is still +£137. Looking forward to this Thursday:

Alfred Dunhill Championship 2009
Looking at the stats from the event in 2008, it was heavily dominated by the longest hitters in the tournament. Also, the 2006 tournament was won by the long hitting Alvaro Quiros. However the 2007 one was less dominated by long hitters, and GIR seemed more important. This leaves me wondering whether there was a change in set up last year (shorter rough?), which could be partly correlated with the fact that the winning score was much lower in 2008 than in 2007.
So should I be biased towards long hitters this year? No idea. The other areas I have been looking at are the successful Euro PGA tour qualifiers from the 2009 Challenge Tour and the Qualifying School. The best of these often do well in the events with weaker fields at the start of the year, such as this one (like Horsey, Willett and Cabrera-Bello last year).
Overall I will lean towards the long hitters but not exclusively so. Last, it does seem that certain players have more success in South Africa than others, and it is not surprising that African players themselves are the ones who seem to thrive. There are a core set of quality young African players at the moment and I will be including them in my tips.
I am going to split my choices into 3 groups based on big names, maybes, and outsiders:
Big Names - The South Africans Els, Oosthuizen, Aiken, and Schwartzel must all have good chances and fit my outlined profile. I won't include Sterne here due to his erratic recent form. Last person for this group is Eduardo Molinari who is playing very well. I am not going to back Els as his quoted finishing position of 15 looks too low given some inconsistency in his season.
Maybes
Cabrera-Bello, Drysdale, Maybin, A.Hansen, Otto. I think Otto could do well here - he won in Namibia a couple of weeks ago and came 29th at this venue last year.
Outsiders who could make Top 20 with luck
I will quickly list a few that I might back for Top 20 places - Van Zyl, Whiteford, Mclean, Fichardt, Dixon, Delamontagne, Davies, Colsaert, Cayeux, Boyd, Canizares, Andersson

Chevron Challenge 2009, Nedbank 2009, Australian Open 2009 betting preview

Nedbank 2009: Have backed Karlsson to win at 18-1. Other than that I am tempted to sell Watney, Goosen and Karlsson on spreads. The course suits long-hitters, and also I think at this time of the season it pays to look for players who are motivated and not exhausted. That rules out most of the field hence these 3 are my picks. Also BUYing Cabrera and Stenson since Stenson is favourite and Cabrera 4th favourite (on IG Index), which appears optimistic.

Chevron Challenge 2009: Based on the above, I am looking for fresh players, players in form, players who have played well here before (not as important though), and players who are good starters. My last criterion, good starters, means players who normally start off a season well as opposed to those who need a few tournaments to get going. I am looking at this as some of these players have not played for quite a few weeks and therefore could be rusty.
So my picks are Stricker, Harrington, Zach Johnson and Furyk (maybe Villegas, not sure yet).

Australian Open 2009: I do think you need to take into account ability to play in wind here, and recent form. Last years Aussie Open had some wind so is not a bad place to start when looking players with that ability. On top of that I am looking for players showing some form but not looking like they are putting their feet up for christmas quite yet. So my list is: Baddeley, Conran, Senden, Sim, Scott, Percy, O'Hern, Nitties, Molder, Both, Long, Hall, R.Green, Dodt, and Chalmers.

Omega Hills 2009 summary

A good week in the end as I made £82 profit (£137 gain cumulative), made of:


Spreads:

Italy +8 points

India -3

Singaport +1.5

Spain -18.50

TOTAL = -12 points @ £1 a point


Fixed Odds: I backed Italy with £5 at 18-1 to win = £90 win


Net £4 profit on Japan tour, won't bother to list it out.


Shocking result by Spain really, I didn't see enough of the golf to say why but I imagine they became disheartened by poor putting!?


Anyway, preview of Australian Open 2009 et al to come later today.

CUMULATIVE GAIN IS NOW: £137 Gain

Omega Hills World Cup 2009

Not really much to say on this one because I find it really hard to find any discernible pattern on this format. I am going to plump for a few teams though based on form, ability, freshness and motivation.

So of the favourites I am selling (ie think they will do better than their quoted place): Spain 8, Italy 8

Also selling less favourites: India 11.5, and Singapore 18.

I will add some tips for Casio WG in Japan shortly.

Dubai World Championship 2009 review

Overall not too bad a week but I lost 49 points = £24.50.

I added Adam Scott to my sells and also sold Ogilvy after the 1st round, as he was playing well but did not hole many putts, which I thought might improve in the 2nd round. Fortunately I was correct on that.

Mistakes: I think in hindsight Schwartzel had been playing well for too long and was due a bad week; also Rose was too low a price at 20 for someone who has been inconsistent all year, so I probably shouldn't have backed them to do well. Otherwise my selections were reasonably good!

Cumulative profit since this blog started = £80 last week less £24.50 this week = £55 up (rounded).

Dubai World Championship Preview

Well, I will post my results from last week shortly when I look at my account statements, but calculate I am about 200 points up. I used £0.5 per point so that translates to £100 profit. Thats the good news. The bad news is the names I quoted on my preview probably made a loss (as I have said before I back about 15 players per tournament and did not quote all of them last week). Anyway, I will post more details on that soon.

Looking forward to this week, I think there are a number of players who can be discarded for being short-hitters. Although I have no doubt there will be a couple of shorter hitters who do well in Dubai, this looks bound to favour overall the long-hitters and quality ball strikers. So am discounting Kjeldsen, Poulter, Wilson, A.Hansen, Jacquelin, P.Hanson and Jimenez.

Also, there are a number of players who have been playing well for a number of weeks who must at some point start to play badly - so I can also discount them, on the basis that they are currently playing above themselves and it can't continue for ever, or that they must be getting tired. I am going to include Westwood, Jaidee and Liang in this category - and both must be getting a little tired after playing many times recently.

There are other players I am ignoring due to erratic form.

That leaves with the following sells: Aiken (42), C-Bello (36), Edfors (34), Els (15), F-Castano (34), Garcia (16), Goosen (22), Kaymer (16), Lawrie (31), Mcilroy (14), Molinari (21), Noren (25), Oosthuizen (29), Quiros (28), Rose (20), S.Hansen (23), Schwartzel (25), JM Singh (28), Villegas (22), Wall (26) and Willett (29).

Buys: Jacquelin (35), Jimenez (30), Maybin (35), Mcgrane (38).

Thats all for now - I may come up with some Phoenix Dunlop tips if I see some prices anywhere.

UBS HK 2009, Australian Masters 2009, Childrens Miracle Network

Hi - a very quick post due to time pressures:

Updated thoughts on the UBS HK Open - I still agree with my earlier post. I am also backing D.Beck and A.Dodt as australians who may perform well, and also want to add J.Singh to my earlier list as a well priced quality player who is hitting form after injury.

Australian Masters: Most of the known favourite players will probably do well (although maybe not great value), but I see some value in Tadini, who has been playing well on the Euro tour and is priced at about 44 on the spreads. Also Cameron Percy is an Australian player who has consistently performed well and deserves a lower price than he has been given.

Childrens Miracle: I am not going to list everyone I am backing (I tend to back about 10-15 players per tournament), but my recommendations would be Petrovic, Trahan, Herron, Riley, Piercy, Snedeker, Garrigus and Toms. No time to say why but lets see how they do and see if my tips are rubbish. UPDATE - since they're doing well I am going to add my other picks: Klauk, Leonard, Ames, Streelman, Van Pelt, O'Hern, Slocum, Crane, Bohn, and Fowler. This now covers all the players in this tournament that I have backed as sells on finishing positions.

UBS Hong Kong Open 2009 preview

As per the past few years, this year's tourney is at Hong Kong GC, Fanling. Its a short course at just 6,734 yards (Par 70). So its not surprising that the shorter hitters have had more success here than at some other tournaments. Looking at the statistics of the past few years, you should be looking especially at players who are putting and scrambling well, and good Greens in Regulation stats are useful too (although that would apply to any tournament really). Asian players have had a good deal of success here (WT Lin won last year, and KJ Choi and Jaidee were 2nd and 3rd the previous year) - maybe thats not surprising since there are lots of Asian players playing in an Asian tournament. Overall, a different type of player than the usual big-hitting US and European stars has a chance of success.

I'll give more detailed tips at the start of next week (mid afternoon GMT on monday 9th), but players I am currently favouring are (when I say "good scrambler" or "short hitter", I am basing this on Euro PGA statistics):

Dredge - good scrambler, short hitter, good form, 19th last year
Jimenez - good scrambler, won it in 2007
Mcdowell - good scrambler, decent form, 11 last year
Molinari and Schwartzel - both good scramblers and decent form
Ben Curtis - good short game
Dyson, Kjeldsen and Poulter - top quality players whose shorter length won't negatively affect them on this course
Asian and Australian players - I need to do more research on these still, but expect WT Lin and WC Liang to do well

Outsiders - Monty may be favoured by the short course and has shown glimpses of form recently, Karlsson may have had enough time to get his game in order after his recent eye troubles and is a good scrambler

Introduction

Hi for the first time - this blog will attempt to pass on my tips for spread-betting on golf tournaments every week, both on the European Tour, PGA Tour, and other tours there is a high profile golf event.

I hope readers will post comments on my tips, and pass on their own predictions and advice.
I will try and be as entertaining as possible but frankly I'm pretty tedious so can't promise too much fun!

The particular area I will focus on is Finishing Positions. For example, a spreadbetting company may quote a price of 5 for Tiger Woods in this week's HSBC Champions tournament in China. This means they think he will finish 5th. My blog will attempt to identify mispricings of players - so if I think Woods will do worse than 5th I will say he is a BUY, but if I think in fact he will place better than 5th, I will say he is a SELL. I will attempt to justify my tips!

I will attempt to publish my results so that readers can see if I have any success. I am too late to post advice on this weeks tournament as it is already half way through, but I will try and tip on next weeks tournament, the UBS Hong Kong Open.

Best of luck, and remember to do your own research if you are betting big money (don't blame me if I get it wrong, I'm trying to help!).