The DP World Tour returns from a week off this week as the Asian Swing kicks off with the second staging of the Singapore Classic which is the first of five tournaments over in Asia which are played around the opening two majors of the season.
The South African player Ockie Strydom came out on top here last year and he is back in the field looking to make a successful defence of his title. One of the better DP World Tour fields in recent times will be out to deny him.
Recent Winners
2023 – Ockie Strydom
The Course
We are at the Laguna National Golf Resort Club in Singapore this week. This course was used for the first staging of this tournament last year. There have been Singapore Masters and Ballantine’s Championship competitions staged here as well so there is a little bit of knowledge for us to go with although those events were all held a while ago. We know the course is a par 72 which measures 7,420 yards.
This is a visually stunning course where the fairways are full of slopes and there are plenty of strategically placed bunkering ready for the wayward tee shots. The greens are full of slopes as well so there is going to be a premium on distance control into them. Good putters are likely to stand out from the crowd here. Accurate ball strikers are likely to be the ones to follow this week and if they have some extra length on top then so much the better.
The Field
The field for the tournament this week feels stronger than it did last year. We have two members of the top 50 in the world rankings teeing it up with Shane Lowry and Mathieu Pavon both arriving hot from TPC Sawgrass to attempt to win on the DP World Tour. The defending champion Ockie Strydom is also in the field which gives any tournament a lift. Four other members of the top 100 in the world are also teeing it up in Singapore this week.
They are Rasmus Hojgaard, Thriston Lawrence, the Qatar Masters champion Rikuya Hoshino and Jordan Smith, while Paul Casey and Bernd Wiesberger would surely be in that bracket too had they not gone over to play on the LIV Tour. We have two other members of the current top 10 in the Race to Dubai rankings teeing it up in Zander Lombard and Darius van Driel with Jesper Svensson, the Jonsson Workwear Open winner Matteo Manassero and Aaron Cockerill all in the top 15 with a tee time here.
Market Leaders
Shane Lowry is the favourite to win the tournament this week after a decent spell of it over in Florida on the PGA Tour. We know that the breezes that this part of the world will be no issue to the Irishman but the one concern I have over backing him at 10/1 is that he has only won once anywhere since The Open in 2019 and that was at the 2022 BMW PGA Championship which was messed about by the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. He is a class act but he doesn’t feel much value to me.
We have joint second favourites in the field this week with Rasmus Hojgaard looking for another DP World Tour win alongside Paul Casey, who tees it up with this tournament being co-sanctioned with the Asian Tour which gets him a spot. Both men are 14/1 to win here with Hojgaard yet to finish worse than T11 in the five events he has played on the DP World Tour this season and he has formerly won in Mauritius which feels significant. Casey has a couple of top five finishes and a T11 on the LIV Tour in 2024 so he’s in decent form too.
Matthieu Pavon comes next in the betting at 16/1. He hasn’t won on the DP World Tour but he went well enough last season to get a PGA Tour card for this term and he has already taken full advantage of that by winning the Farmers Insurance Open and going very well across the pond. If he translates that form to here then there is a case to be made that he could be too good for the field here. A T6 finish here last year does nothing to negate those thoughts.
The only other player in the market shorter than 25/1 is Tom McKibbin. He is a 22/1 shot to win this week. The 21-year-old has put together five successive top 20 finishes on the DP World Tour and he was T12 here last year, where he was placed nicely to go on and really contend after 36 holes last year where he sat a shot ahead of everyone in the field bar a Chinese amateur, only to stall over the weekend. He has won since though which could make him dangerous.
Main Bets
I like a good long game this week but one which is going to stand up to the breezes which can sometimes be seen in this part of the world and given that Sebastian Soderberg ranks fourth for strokes gained from tee to green on the DP World Tour this season I think that he is well worth backing here. He is actually based in Asia so the heavy and humid conditions certainly won’t be a negative for him and he has a couple of top 10 finishes to his name this season before visibly running out of steam at the Qatar Masters. He has had five weeks off though so he should come in here fully refreshed and ready to challenge in conditions which should really suit.
The other main bet for me this week is Bernd Wiesberger. His return to the DP World Tour was fairly quiet when he was allowed membership again at the back end of last year. He hasn’t really played much yet but you sense that coming into the spring and summer he will play much more. He generally goes ok in Asia and even in the three events he has played this season he has a T21 in the Dubai Desert Classic and T16 in Bahrain in better fields than this. That suggests he hasn’t lost his confidence after a bang ordinary year on the LIV Tour so as long as his motivation is high, and a trip to the Ryder Cup last season and realising what he was missing might have helped with that, then I expect to see the Austrian contending again at this level soon. Wiesberger has a couple of wins in Asia and prior to heading for the LIV riches he was a serial contender at this level. He feels a big price to me here.
Outsiders
I’ll go with a pair of outsiders this week as well. I’m a sucker for Haotong Li whenever he is showing signs of form and given that I won with Matteo Manassero in a similar situation in South Africa earlier in the month I am more than inclined to see if the Chinese ace will deliver too. Last year was an absolute write off for Haotong but he has mentioned in the beginning of this season that he has been putting a lot of hard work in and it looks to be paying dividends. In four tournaments this term he has results of T14-T7-T63-T16 with the first two of those being in Dubai with very strong fields. We know he will go well in Asian conditions and having had five weeks or so to work on his game before a warm up spin in Macau last week where he opened with a 63, I wonder if he’ll come to the boil nicely here.
The last man I’ll back this week is a winner already this season in the form of the Kenya Open champion Darius van Driel. The Dutchman won that tournament in fairly good order and given that he sits ninth on the strokes gained from tee to green on the DP World Tour he should be suited to go well here. Van Driel went well in the South African events to open up the campaign before winning in Kenya so the paspalum grasses in this part of the world will offer no issues either. We are in that part of the season where the fields aren’t as strong as they will be in the heart of the campaign so I always believe form and winning confidence can be big at this stage of the year hence why we often see a player winning multiple events in the opening few months of a season. Ockie Strydom won twice early last year, with his second win behind here while in 2021 Garrick Higgo won twice before the end of May and in 2022 Pablo Larrazabal had won twice before we even got to May. I’ll pay to see if van Driel can be the 2024 multiple winner to keep that trend going.
Tips
Back S.Soderberg to win Singapore Classic (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 34.00 with Coral (1/5 1-7)
Back B.Wiesberger to win Singapore Classic (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 46.00 with Coral (1/5 1-7)
Back H.Li to win Singapore Classic (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 81.00 with Boylesports (1/5 1-8)
Back D.van Driel to win Singapore Classic (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 126.00 with Boylesports (1/5 1-8)
Back them here:
