Despite this week’s Omega European Masters not being the biggest tournament in the world there has been a number of first round three balls priced up.
As always in tournaments of this type there are some big name players grouped together to get the baulk of the TV coverage and those groups have been priced up as have a few others.
The main group of the first two rounds sees Sergio Garcia, Bernd Wiesberger and Thongchai Jaidee grouped together and they will form most of the coverage on the opening two days. Another high profile group sees Danny Willett, Lee Westwood and the defending champion David Lipsky together but from a betting point of view the best value lies elsewhere.
Marcus Fraser is a former runner up in this tournament but he has had some injury problems since then and is trying to re-establish himself as a leading light on the European Tour. He goes out with the Korean player Jeunghun Wang and the Frenchman Jerome Lando Casanova.
Wang played the co-sanctioned events in Asia earlier in the year so he knows what is needed in this company and to be fair to him he performed fairly well but I never really got the feeling he was ever going to contend in those tournaments and in two of those events he shot horror first rounds.
Horror first rounds is something Casanova has specialised in this season. In 20 first rounds on Tour this year he has only broken 70 on two occasions and given that he has missed 15 cuts in that time we are looking at a player who struggles at the best of times, even in some lower ranked events.
Marcus Fraser has a decent record around here. He was second in 2012 and in the top 20 a year later but it is his first rounds that have caught my eye. In four of his last five visits he has broken par and it could just be that anything under par wins this group. Fraser had a good run at St Andrews last week and is getting better by the week so at odds against he looks the value in the opening round.
Back M.Fraser to beat J-H.Wang & J-L.Casanova for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Stan James
