Four days after the end of the 2018 European Tour season the 2019 campaign gets underway. It begins at its regular opening spot of the Hong Kong Open where this week a decent looking field tees it up looking for a pre-Christmas bonus.
Francesco Molinari secured the Race to Dubai title last week but with a huge change in schedule this season a number of top names should compete for that title and plenty of them tee it up this week.
Recent Winners
2017 – Wade Ormsby
2016 – Sam Brazel
2015 – Justin Rose
2014 – Scott Hend
2013 – Miguel Angel Jimenez
2012 – Miguel Angel Jimenez
2011 – Rory McIlroy
2010 – Ian Poulter
2009 – Gregory Bourdy
2008 – Wen-tang Lin
The Course
Once again we are at the Hong Kong Golf Club this week where the shorter hitters get the chance to hold sway and compete with their longer hitting compatriots. The course is a par 70 which measures 6,700 yards so it is not long but it is heavily treelined so accuracy off the tee and into the greens are important.
The rough is set to be at around two inches and with water in play on a number of holes this is a decent test of golf, one which will reward shot making rather than pounding the life out of the ball. It should be a second shot course so good high quality iron players and good scramblers or putters should go well around here.
The Field
The last two Masters champions are in the field this week in Patrick Reed and Sergio Garcia while former European number one Tommy Fleetwood also tees it up. Regular winners Rafa Cabrera Bello and Matthew Fitzpatrick are also here while Lucas Bjerregaard is looking for European Tour wins in successive months.
Shubhankar Sharma began last season on fire and he is looking to do likewise here while former champion Miguel Angel Jimenez is also here to tee it up. The tournament gives the Challenge Tour graduates and Q-School qualifiers the first chance to earn on their latest tour card.
Market Leaders
Patrick Reed and Tommy Fleetwood are the 13/2 favourites to open up the season with a win this week. Reed was in the final group in Dubai last week but couldn’t get it done however this track should suit him. Fleetwood looks like a golfer who is running on fumes at the minute and while he’s good enough to win wherever this doesn’t feel like it will be his week.
Sergio Garcia begins the tournament as a 15/2 chance to land the opening event of the campaign. He ran well at Valderrama last month and probably should have won the Nedbank earlier in November. He has the credentials to be in the mix again this week but he is a pretty short price considering he can have some mares with the putter.
Rafa Cabrera Bello starts off as an 11/1 shot to win the tournament. It is becoming a bit of a mystery to me why he doesn’t win more tournaments than he does because there isn’t an obvious weakness in his game. It might be that is can be too aggressive in which case this probably isn’t the tournament for him. It certainly looks like a track that should suit Matthew Fitzpatrick but at 12/1 I would want his most recent form to be a little stronger than it is. It is 16/1 bar.
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Main Bets
The head of the market centres around six players and in truth apart from Lucas Bjerregaard none of them take my fancy and even he is a little shorter than I would like after last week. With that in mind I’ll go with just the one main bet this week.
Jason Scrivener has a decent record around here with successive top 10s and it is clearly a track the Australians like with the last two winners being Australian and Scott Hend a few years ago also being a winner here. Scrivener arrives here with a bunch of top 25s in tournaments that were on courses which probably don’t suit his natural game. This one does though and so at an acceptable price he’s the one I want to be on this week given his tee to green strength.
Outsiders
Alejandro Canizares should be full of confidence after not only winning his card at Q-School but actually winning that event courtesy of a couple of very low rounds and he is a decent price to follow up that success with a win here. We often see players who get their cards back having good seasons and this course is perfect for an iron player of the class of Canizares. Dropping off the tour might have focused the mind of the Spaniard and if he has rediscovered his class on the greens while at Q-School he should go close here.
Aaron Rai is a solid campaigner from tee to green and we saw him in a good light at the Nedbank a few weeks ago. I’m not going to read too much into his effort in Dubai because that course suits the bombers and he isn’t one of them. What he is, is relentless from tee to green and if he can get some putts to drop he should allow himself to be prominent on the leaderboard when Sunday comes around.
Fabrizio Zanotti has decent form at Crans-sur-Sierre which has a lot of correlations with this place so at 100/1 I’ll take the chance that the tee to green monster can open the season with a win. I was on Zanotti at a treelined course similar to this at Woburn and watched him in the final group on the Sunday at the British Masters in 2015 and I’ve followed him since then. 2018 was a frustrating season for him but he can make up for that with a fast start to 2019. At three figures he’s decent enough for me this week.
Tips
PLACED – Back J.Scrivener to win Hong Kong Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 29.00 with Unibet (1/5 1-6)
Back him here:
WON – Back A.Rai to win Hong Kong Open (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 81.00 with Betfred (1/5 1-6)
Back him here:
Back A.Canizares to win Hong Kong Open (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 81.00 with Boylesports (1/5 1-6)
Back him here:
Back F.Zanotti to win Hong Kong Open (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 101.00 with BetVictor (1/5 1-6)
Back him here:
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