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.