The European Tour returns after a week off for The Masters and after spells in the UK and Cyprus the show heads to South Africa for the first of three weeks in the sunshine nation starting with the Joburg Open.
This tournament has been a regular feature at the beginning of a European Tour season, although hasn’t been staged since 2017 when Shubhankar Sharma won, but this time it comes along towards the end of one.
Recent Winners
2017-18 – Shubhankar Sharma
2017 – Darren Fichardt
2016 – Haydn Porteous
2015 – Andy Sullivan
2014 – George Coetzee
2013 – Richard Sterne
2012 – Branden Grace
2011 – Charl Schwartzel
2010 – Charl Schwartzel
2009 – Anders Hansen
The Course
We remain at the venue last used for this tournament which is the Randpark Golf Club in Johannesburg. The track has been used for the South Africa Open for the last couple of seasons so it will be pretty well known for many in the field. It is a par 71 which stretches to 7,506 yards. If that sounds like a monster of a course do remember that we are at altitude in Johannesburg so the ball flies further which means that the course doesn’t play to anything like that sort of yardage in reality.
Finding the greens is not necessarily the easiest task in the world on this course and actually the statistic that appears most important is scrambling so I’ll certainly be having those with decent short games on side. Driving accuracy is more important around here than distance which would make sense given that the greens are hard to find. You’ll have a much better chance of doing it from the fairway.
The Field
Given the bubble nature of all these events we are beginning to get used to fields not being the strongest but as golf punters we should be grateful to the European Tour that they have been able to get these events on rather than complain about them. It would be wrong to suggest that this is a strong field. It isn’t. It is basically a Sunshine Tour field with a sprinkling of quality added to it here and there.
Home ace Christiaan Bezuidenhout is the only player inside the top 90 in the world rankings who is teeing it up here. Fellow South African player Garrick Higgo is the only other player into the top 100 with a tee time. The pick of Europe comes in the form of Adri Arnaus and Joost Luiten while the relatively recent Scottish Championship winner Adrian Otaegui is also in the field. Other notables teeing it up include Dean Burmester, Gavin Green and Brandon Stone.
Market Leaders
Christiaan Bezuidenhout is the 14/1 favourite to win the tournament this week. He was active at Augusta last week and that feels like an immediate negative to me but even then I’m not convinced this track suits him as well as some others do. He is the highest ranked player in the field though which demands respect and in theory he shouldn’t be far away but I’m not going near anyone who was at Augusta last week so he isn’t for me.
Adrian Otaegui is the 20/1 second favourite and he is the most recent European Tour event winner in the field which might well count for something. He also has the skill set to get the job done around here as he is a decent scrambler and putted very well in Scotland. There is a genuine case to be made that he should be the favourite for this tournament so I certainly wouldn’t put anyone off the 20/1 as I will highlight below.
Josst Luiten and Brandon Stone come next in the betting at 22/1. This should in theory be a good track for Luiten but his putter doesn’t seem to cooperate nearly as much as he needs it to these days so that immediately puts me off backing him. Regular readers will know I find it hard to back Stone after he threw away the Portugal Masters when carrying my money last year. The fact he hasn’t won since then probably tells us enough of a story to swerve him here too. It is 25/1 bar.
Main Bets
As I hinted above Adrian Otaegui is my first main bet this week. He has a lot going for him this week and if he had sampled the course in a previous tournament I would be on him for a lot more than I’m going to be. As it is he is one of the best scramblers on the European Tour and knows his way around the greens too. We saw that at Hanbury Manor during the UK Swing and we definitely saw it across the Scottish Championship where he played two of the best rounds of the year. Winning momentum is massive in golf and the Spaniard has that. With his skill set I’d be surprised if he isn’t heavily involved here. He’s my first main bet.
The other one is Marcus Armitage, a man who has two things I like here – course form and current form. He wouldn’t necessarily be the best scrambler in the world but you can’t argue about his scoring potential and he has had eight top 25 finishes since the restart earlier in the year. A lot of those have come in fields much stronger than this one and on courses which he won’t have had the record on that he has here. The last two times Armitage has played tournaments here he has finished in the top five so he has good memories of this place which will be important. He’s in the kind of form to lay down a significant challenge this week.
Outsiders
I’ll also plump for a couple of outsiders here with the first of them being a man who has been on fire on the Sunshine Tour in recent times without getting his nose in front in Jacques Blaauw. Blaauw finished inside the top 15 here on his last appearance in the SA Open earlier in the year and is in great form coming in. The last four times he has teed it up he has finishes of 4-2-6-5 and that stands up to anything in this tournament. That shows he is hitting the ball well and at a three figure price he is hard to leave out of the staking plan.
The other man I’m prepared to take a punt on is the Northern Irish player Jonathan Caldwell who has also been in decent form of present. The last four weeks he has finishes of 7-5-MC-16 which suggests that he is hitting the ball nicely and he sits at 16 on the European Tour for scrambling and that is going to be a huge feature this week. His recent run includes top 10s in Scotland and Italy where the fields were a lot stronger than it is here so he is another who shouldn’t be left out of the staking plan at a three figure price.
Tips
Back A.Otaegui to win Joburg Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 21.00 with Boylesports (1/5 1-8)
Back him here:
Back M.Armitage to win Joburg Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 26.00 with 888sport (1/5 1-6)
Back J.Caldwell to win Joburg Open (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 126.00 with 888sport (1/5 1-6)
Back them here:
Back J.Blaauw to win Joburg Open (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 101.00 with Betfred (1/5 1-6)
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