Ben Coley has tipped a winner, two runners-up and a close fourth in his last four DP World Tour previews. Get his best bets for the Italian Open.
Golf betting tips: Italian Open
2pts e.w. Matthew Jordan at 30/1 (BoyleSports, Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Danny Willett at 75/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Rafa Cabrera Bello at 90/1 (BoyleSports, Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Sebastian Garcia at 175/1 (BoyleSports, Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
0.5pt e.w. Haydn Barron at 400/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
0.5pt e.w. Espen Kofstad at 400/1 (BoyleSports, Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
One of the challenges of this DP World Tour season, the sort you don’t really notice when they release the schedule, has been the loss of certain golf courses from it. And these haven’t been just any courses – it so happens that we’re talking about several of the easiest ones to profile, places like Steyn City, Albatross, Dom Pedro and Marco Simone, which hosted the Italian Open from 2021 to 2023, and then last year’s Ryder Cup.
Somebody reading this will know why they’ve left Rome. I would love to. It seems a waste of all that effort to bring the Ryder Cup to Italy, to now go and move the Italian Open to the west coast, far from the capital, and a new golf course. Venues matter. Marco Simone was built for purpose and served it well, but it was also a very good DP World Tour host on the outskirts of one of the world’s finest cities. Moving around the country is understandable to some degree but less so in a nation known not to have fallen madly in love with the game.
Bad news for me and for Rome’s admittedly small golf community is good news for Adriatic Golf Club Cervia and if we can avoid the small threat of weekend rain, this will be a glorious week in spite of the new location. It could be glorious because of it, too, but it’s very difficult to know what sort of setting awaits, except to say that it’s unlikely to be quite so top-of-the-range as Marco Simone proved to be.
The course has three nines and we’ll see the yellow and red ones in that order, the latter being the original nine holes, built in 1984. They are billed as ‘right inside unspoilt Pinewood’ and pictures suggest this isn’t an exaggeration; that we’re talking pretty dense woodland beside the fairways. The yellow course, however, claims to be ‘Scottish links’ in style, which usually translates as exposed, rather than golf along the ground. Regardless, that’s quite a contrast and if Cervia delivers on its own promise, it could make for a fun test.
How to solve it, well that’s not easy. We’ve a good field, headed by Patrick Reed, and it’s good timing after Guido Migliozzi’s victory in the Netherlands, but there is so much guesswork required. The fact that driver just doesn’t feel like it’ll get a lot of action has become my focus: the shortest par-fours are guarded by water and one of the par-fives might be a three-shot hole. This is a short par 70 and it is so very different from Marco Simone, where good drivers dominated.
The reason this might help is because the majority of the market leaders lean on that club and while Reed isn’t one of them, I don’t necessarily think he’s to be feared. Much is made of his willingness to travel (typically for the right price – he hadn’t been to Australia until LIV came along) but Reed still hasn’t won beyond Mexico, his best Open finish is 10th, and he flies in from Nashville where 32nd place represents his worst golf since March.
Bernd Wiesberger and Tom McKibbin are instead the pair to aim at and if the former can keep gaining strokes on the greens he’ll go well, but the fact he looked less convincing with the broomhandle the longer the KLM Open went on is reason enough to swerve the Austrian. McKibbin would get my token vote as the sky remains the limit.
My sole selection from near the top of the betting though is MATTHEW JORDAN, who we were on in Sweden last time.
Jordan was 12th putting poorly in that event, having also made a slowish start, and I won’t be alone in thinking he’s currently playing the best golf of a career which has always promised plenty.
Fifth in Belgium followed by 13th in Germany and then 12th in Sweden gives us one of the strongest form profiles in the event and I just love the fact that throughout this trio of starts, he’s ranked first, first and third in greens in regulation. This is an archaic statistical category but for a player whose irons have sometimes been a handicap, it helps demonstrate that Jordan is dangerous at the moment.
Historically strong off the tee, a good chipper and an occasionally deadly putter, quality approach play is all that’s been missing and when that putter does join the party, he ought to have a chance to win. We’ll see if it’s this week, but optimism is increased by the fact that his Challenge Tour win came in Italy and he’s played well in a couple of Italian Opens since then.
As far as the course goes, that win came on an exposed one and we know by now that he grew up playing at places like Lytham, Birkdale, Hoylake and Hillside, so the nature of the front nine should work nicely. As for form around tighter, tree-lined courses, he’s been fourth at Crans and Muthaiga and loves Rinkven, where he’d been 15th prior to his recent fifth place back in May.
With six top-20 finishes in his last nine starts, Jordan looks ready to win his first DP World Tour title and he’s selected ahead of Ewen Ferguson from that first quarter of the betting, both having plenty to recommend them.
Ferguson’s ability to win a multi-course tournament, his links/exposed form and some of his play at Rinkven and in Kenya all mark him down as a potential candidate. He’s accurate off the tee, which ought to be particularly useful over those back-nine holes, and I do like his game for this, but I’m not quite so enamoured with prices around the 33/1 mark.
Instead I’ll keep things speculative, a nod to the fact we’re at a new venue – whereas we could’ve approached the old one with confidence following the 1-2-5 last year and a very clear profile, here we can’t. There’s no use pretending otherwise.
Next then are two ex-Ryder Cup players, DANNY WILLETT and RAFA CABRERA BELLO.
Willett is extremely difficult to price and you could make a case for him being half or double the 80/1 available, but the upside is no less obvious. We’re talking about a former Masters champion who has won the biggest titles on the DP World Tour without exception: the BMW PGA, the Dunhill Links, the DP World Tour Championship, and the Nedbank Challenge.
Adding a national open like this may well be towards the top of his career goals and Italy would make perfect sense based on form figures of 3-2-MC-8-18 from 2015 to 2019, this being his first start since the most recent of those.
He returns having only just recovered from surgery in time to make the Masters, where he was a surprise name on the early leaderboard given that he’d been away for more than six months. Then came another break, recommended by his doctor rather than any kind of setback, before a narrow missed cut in Germany where he was understandably rusty.
Last week, though, was another step in the right direction as Willett finished 29th, his best result since last year’s PLAYERS Championship, and it came largely thanks to quality iron play. As usual, he wasn’t particularly good off the tee but that may not matter here, at a course which looks to me like it’ll ask players to hit shorter clubs to specific targets at times. Also of note is that the difference between him and the play-off trio were the eighth and ninth holes, which he somehow played in +9.
The big picture is positive and he certainly sounds it, and has done since that return to action at Augusta. With such a strong record in Italy, plus tree-lined and links form of the highest standard including at Crans, I can’t resist taking a chance on a class act who has always been capable of producing a winning performance out of almost nowhere. Right now, in a field like this, there are enough positives to go at.
Cabrera Bello meanwhile has been on my radar since Christmas and now looks the time to strike at 90/1 or so, with some three-figure prices available if you want to accept fewer places.
As I wrote back then, this formerly class act was set to turn 40 in May and finishes of 7-25-29 since he did suggest he might be the latest to conjure a return to form around a milestone birthday, the sort of occasion that can remind a player why they do what they do.
This improvement had been the product of better putting for the most part but his approach work is now looking very strong, too, so much so that he could get away without putting so well in the Netherlands last week.
Like Willett, he’s a modest driver but I don’t mind that and as for links form, he’s a former Scottish Open winner who grew up on Gran Canaria and has always been pretty comfortable under exposed conditions. Also true is the fact his finest hour came on a tree-lined course in Dubai.
Four-over through 10 holes last week, he did really well to make the weekend and his confidence ought to be growing ahead of a return to Italy, where he has seven top-10s in total and two in this event. Warm weather and less pressure off the tee both play to his strengths.
Gavin Green has been an eye-catcher lately and on another course he’d have made the staking plan, while Julien Guerrier has been close to winning over the past two seasons, including in this a year ago, and also merits respect. His approach play has started to fire and, a little like Jordan, that could prove the final piece of the jigsaw.
Guerrier’s young compatriot Tom Vaillant has an excellent record in Italy from his Alps Tour days and has shown that he’s capable of winning two grades higher, but a similar line of thinking leads to general 200/1 shot SEBASTIAN GARCIA.
Twice a winner in Italy on the aforementioned Alps Tour, Garcia got in the mix for this title two years ago when fifth at halfway. At the time he’d been very much up and down, whereas right now he’s beginning to at last look comfortable on the DP World Tour, producing several good efforts this year and lying 92nd on the Race to Dubai.
Seventh three starts ago on a short course in Belgium, it’s easy to forgive him a bad day at the brutal Green Eagle, which is too long for a short hitter and short-game specialist like him. It was therefore not all that surprising to see improvement for a change in conditions in the Netherlands, where he finished alongside Willett and Cabrera Bello in 29th despite four late bogeys which ruined something better.
Garcia also contended in Bahrain earlier in the year and his best form elsewhere has come either by the coast in warm weather, such as in Tenerife, Mallorca and Portugal, or on shorter, tree-lined courses in Austria and Kenya. I have a feeling he’ll like the look of this place, certainly more so than the last two tournaments he’s played in.
With such fond memories of Italy he’s really interesting, and that’s before you see that he putted poorly last week. Garcia led the field in that department when hitting the frame in Belgium, and if he can marry these two recent performances, he can get amongst it at a huge price.
Sean Crocker is a former winner of the Italian Amateur but he’s another whose driver is a key weapon, a comment which also applies to Alejandro del Rey, who has been getting by without it lately. The young powerhouse is one to keep a close eye on for whenever he does get his conditions, though hand on heart the best fit on paper might be the Barbasol Championship, co-sanctioned with the PGA Tour next month.
He’s for another day but as you might be able to tell, there are any number of candidates I felt merited a second glance. Adrien Saddier for instance has two top-15s in his last three starts, is neat and tidy and won’t mind the back-nine, while Dan Bradbury has started to putt better and, as the best iron player on the circuit, that means his form could turn around at any moment.
Santiago Tarrio is on a run of 11 top-25 finishes in Italy and while it began on the Alps Tour it now includes successive shares of 16th in the Italian Open so he’d have been of some interest but for a poor effort in the KLM Open. Then there’s Rikuya Hoshino, who looked like a top-class putter, showed it when winning in Qatar, and has since been hopeless.
He was still 10th last week on his second start back from a break, having suffered a collapsed lung, and you can make a good case for him at 50/1-plus on results alone. The same is true of 125/1 shot Aaron Cockerill who I did consider owing to his clear preference for shorter courses and generally solid form throughout this year, albeit he has cooled lately and returns from a break.
My final selections though are two real outsiders and I wouldn’t suggest taking less than about 250/1 for either, starting with HAYDN BARRON.
The Aussie is on a run of six missed cuts since he followed ninth in Qatar with two solid efforts, but not all missed cuts are equal and he’s generally held his own and fought late on into Friday’s second round.
That was the case in Japan (70-68 to miss by one) as it had been in India (74-71 likewise), and last week he followed a poor opening round with a two-under 69 which saw him play his final 10 holes in five-under, bogey-free.
“Found a bit of a spark late to take some momentum into the Italian Open next week,” he wrote on Instagram and when you look closely at how he played during those three hours, you’ll see that four of the five birdies were genuine tap-ins, the other from inside 10 feet.
For a while then he had it on a string and having scoured the field for interesting outsiders in an event which is difficult to unravel, this youngster with contending experience (halfway leader at Doha, fourth in Australian Open), whose approach play is good but whose driver has been the issue, seems a potentially good course fit.
Angel Ayora’s ability and potential are both tempting, albeit at 19 this is a big ask. He wasn’t far off contending last week though and is in this field because he won a qualifier in Italy, so do keep an eye out for a young Spaniard with a gorgeous swing. He may well be a Challenge Tour winner before the season is out.
Finally, there have been one or two signs of promise from ESPEN KOFSTAD, who has won twice in Italy before.
Since a second-round 62 to make the weekend in India, this injury-plagued Norwegian has put in the odd pleasing effort and actually led the field in ball-striking last week, despite plummeting from 11th to 60th over the final two rounds.
You don’t need much to go on to chance a player who is 600/1 in places (see: Barron) and hand on heart he doesn’t look like he’s about to connect four rounds together for the first time in two years, but it was around this time in 2022 that he started to play very well.
A player with ability who is generally tidy from the tee and whose putter warmed up last week, he’s worth a very small bet at big prices.
Posted at 0930 BST on 25/06/24
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