The 2016 golf year gets underway on Thursday and it does so in South Africa where the European Tour and the Sunshine Tour co-sanction the BMW South African Open.
We have to be brutally honest and say this isn’t the best field that will be assembled in 2016 and Branden Grace and the defending champion Andy Sullivan aside it is devoid of current big names.
The odd blast from the past such as Retief Goosen and Trevor Immelman aside there isn’t much to get excited about in this field but someone has to win and four others have to place so it is still a tournament to get involved in from a betting point of view.
Glendower Golf Club in Gauteng near Johannesburg is the venue for the tournament for the third year in a row. The course plays to a par of 72 and a yardage of 7,564 although it is at altitude so it doesn’t play every one of those yards.
Accuracy and control of your golf ball is the big thing around here. There are over 60 bunkers around the course not to mention a plethora of trees and then water is in play on most of the holes too so being in complete control of your golf ball is paramount.
The rough was up here last year which made for a more exciting tournament and a much higher scoring one and much of the same is expected this year so you need to play this course from the fairway.
Branden Grace begins this week as the favourite to win the tournament. I can understand that because it isn’t a field full of big names but I just wonder even though this event is in South Africa just how seriously he’ll take it. Everyone is coming off a break and he might take a week to get going.
Andy Sullivan could possibly have the same thing said about him although as the defending champion he will at least be motivated. This is the first time he will defend a title though so it could be a unique experience for him which puts me off slightly.
The next man in the betting is Jaco van Zyl and he is my main bet this week. Van Zyl finished 2015 well with a second place in Turkey and then another top 10 in South Africa to begin the new season. He also had himself well in contention at the halfway stage of the Nedbank Challenge so he’s been going well.
The key to that has been how well he has driven the golf ball. He was in the top 15 in driving accuracy in the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the top 10 for greens in regulation and all this while he’s added a bit of length to his game. If he can be as tight with the driver this week then in a grossly weaker field than the ones he’s been competing in recently he should go very well.
2015 was very much a year where the rookies shined on the European Tour. Between them Anirban Lahiri, Matthew Fitzpatrick and Byeong-Hun An won four times in the year and I see no reason why 2016 will be any different.
With that in mind in a weak field like this I’m going to give the new professional Marcus Kinhult a chance this week. Kinhult has already had European Tour experience having held a share of the halfway lead in the Nordea Masters last year and landing a top 10 finish in the Omega European Masters.
Both of those efforts were in much stronger fields than he will face this week and with the confidence of securing his tour card in style in Spain towards the end of last year I’m expecting him to attack the early part of the season. There’s an element of the unknown about him in these conditions but if he’s as good as the hype he should be fine in this field and is worth chancing at a medium range price.
I’m not going too mad on this 2016 opener but there is one more which stands out at a decent price and that is Ben Evans. In fairness to Evans he hasn’t really established himself in full yet in terms of a genuine tilt at a title but he had plenty of solid efforts on tight tracks last year including top 10s in Morocco and Russia.
It was his top 15 finish in the KLM Open which caught my eye though. That field would have been very hot unlike this one. Evans hits a lot of fairways and if the rest of his game can stay tidy there’s no reason he can’t put up a huge showing in a field with such limited quality.
Back J.van Zyl to win BMW SA Open (e/w) for a 1.5/10 stake at 19.00 with Bet365 (1/4 1-5)
Back M.Kinhult to win BMW SA Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 41.00 with Bet365 (1/4 1-5)
Back B.Evans to win BMW SA Open (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 126.00 with Stan James (1/4 1-5)
