The opening Rolex Series event of the year will be won on Saturday when the final round of the Abu Dhabi Championship is played out over in the UAE and with a huge prize fund on offer it has the makings of a big day in the European Tour season.
Some big names have negotiated their way into a good position with 18 holes left to play in the tournament which should make for an exciting and good quality final day of the first tournament of 2019.
Join BetVictor and get 30/1 on Man United to beat Brighton on Saturday! Click the image above for this great offer. 18+. T&Cs apply.
Round 3 Recap
Shane Lowry will attempt to go wire-to-wire in front this week as he takes a three shot lead into the final round of the tournament with him. He leads on 17 under par with Richard Sterne three adrift on 14 under. Ian Poulter is a shot further back on 12 under and then former champion Pablo Larrazabal sits on 11 under. Thomas Pieters and Soren Kjeldsen are among the quartet of players on -10 with our outright pick Lee Westwood and the US Open and USPGA champion Brooks Koepka another shot back.
It was a bit of a day to forget for us on Friday with Louis Oosthuizen not really showing up with anything approaching his best game and he ended up losing his two ball to Shane Lowry by a massive eight shots. Hopefully we can find some joy with bets on Saturday to end the week well heading into Dubai next week.
Saturday Betting
As ever heading into a final round, the only long market to really get stuck into is the outright one, where Lowry is a pretty warm order. He should go on and win the tournament from here but this event has a history of leads failing to be converted. Nobody I really like is close enough to him to take him on however so with that in mind I think the best thing to do is to leave it well alone, hope that Lee Westwood can have a good final round to deliver a payout of some sort, and head to the two balls for a Saturday punt.
[the_ad_group id=”3624″]
Saturday 2 Balls
As with Friday, the field go out in two balls on Saturday, with the last pair of Shane Lowry and Richard Sterne teeing off at 08.50 GMT and the penultimate group of Ian Poulter and Pablo Larrazabal out nine minutes prior to that. There are plenty of other pairings of note earlier in the day for the crowds on the course to enjoy and us watching on TV to take in. There is one bet I like on Saturday.
Jordan Smith vs Joost Luiten
Match tees off at 07.56 GMT
One of the later matches out onto the golf course is the one between the English player Jordan Smith and Joost Luiten with both men probably too far back to win the tournament but who could easily bag a big cheque with a decent round on Saturday.
I’ve been banging on all week about the necessity of a good tee to green game and nobody has been better in that department than Joost Luiten. Only one man has hit more fairways than him and only three have found more greens in the right number so he is clearly doing something right. If he can get a few putts to drop he’ll be dangerous. Smith has Luiten in the length department but I sense he won’t be playing for just the money and might take risks which aren’t really on around here. The next couple of weeks are about banking the rounds for Luiten on his return from injury but at some point his putter will catch fire. If it is Saturday he should have too much more Smith here.
Tips
WON – Back J.Luiten to beat J.Smith for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with Betfair
Back him here:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2019
