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 It could have been even better if one of my tips, Hennie Otto, hadn't racked up a 9 on a par-3 then withdrawn.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