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 It could have been even better if one of my tips, Hennie Otto, hadn't racked up a 9 on a par-3 then withdrawn.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