The first round of the Nedbank Golf Challenge is in the books which means we career towards the halfway stage of the tournament when the second round takes place out in Sun City on Friday. After this round there will be just six rounds of the European Tour season left so every shot matters at this stage.
With this being a Rolex Series event there are plenty of riches up for grabs so even those who didn’t have the desired opening round has plenty of play for on Friday, especially with there being no cut to worry about.
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Round 1 Recap
It was Sergio Garcia who stole a march on the rest of the field during the first round of the tournament. He carded an amazing eight under par 63 to lead by four shots as he looks for successive wins having won at Valderrama last time out. Charl Schwartzel is one of three men closest to him on four under. Mike Lorenzo-Vera and Mikko Korhonen are the other two on that score. There is a large group on three under which includes Andy Sullivan, Matt Wallace and Louis Oosthuizen among others.
It wasn’t quite the beginning to the tournament we had hoped for in the three ball betting with Lucas Bjerregaard only offering up a three over par first round. Ryan Fox’s two under had him well beat so there is plenty to work on for the remainder of the competition.
Friday Betting
At the time of writing there isn’t much of a second round leader market on offer and in truth I can understand why as something would have to go wrong for Garcia not to hold the lead at halfway. Even if there was a market the Spaniard would be exceptionally short but his early lead is so good that I wouldn’t want to be taking anyone else in it.
There is a tournament market without Garcia which might get visited over the weekend if my outright bets don’t get themselves into contention to deliver some sort of a pay out but it is too early to get stuck into that just yet so I’ll my betting in the three balls on Friday.
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Friday 3 Balls
The final group of Sergio Garcia, Mikko Korhonen and Mike Lorenzo-Vera are out onto the golf course at 08.51 GMT with Benjamin Hebert, Charl Schwartzel and Ashun Wu out slightly before them at 08.40 GMT. The groups go off two tees again on Friday with those in the bottom half of the leaderboard starting off the tenth tee and those better placed going off from the first tee. I gave a few groups the once over but in the end there is just the one bet that I like.
Charl Schwartzel/Benjamin Hebert/Ashun Wu
Match tees off at 08.40 GMT
The penultimate group out onto the golf course sees the home man Charl Schwartzel out alongside the Chinese star Ashun Wu and the French ace Benjamin Hebert in what is going to be a big day for all three men.
Schwartzel is the favourite for this group and given the experience he has this high up on the leaderboard in big tournaments you can understand that but he hasn’t exactly pulled up trees in recent times and although he is the only member of this group who is four under, he relied on a hot putter rather than a good long game. I’m not sure that is the way forward this week and it is my concern with Wu too. He was outside the top 40 in the field for greens hit and happened to hole everything when he was on them in the right number. That won’t happen too often though so unless he starts finding more greens he could struggle.
Hebert hit the most fairways out of anyone in the field in Turkey last week and nobody hit more greens than him on Thursday. He is getting better with the putter and in truth these greens are not the toughest to putt on. If his long game continues in the order of the last couple of weeks he could surprise his playing partners on Friday.
Tips
Back B.Hebert to beat C.Schwartzel & A.Wu for a 3/10 stake at 3.50 with Coral
Back him here:
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