Golf betting tips: Volvo China Open

3pts e.w. Tom McKibbin at 20/1 (William Hill 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

2pts e.w. Bernd Wiesberger at 25/1 (Betfred, BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Jacques Kruyswijk at 70/1 (Betfred, BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Richie Ramsay at 90/1 (Betfred, BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Marcus Armitage at 125/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

Sky Bet odds | Paddy Power | Betfair Sportsbook

The Volvo China Open returns to the DP World Tour schedule after five years away and even that wasn’t quite enough time for Mikko Korhonen to ready himself, the 2019 champion having only recently returned to action on the Nordic Golf League.

It has however been long enough for Genzon GC to rebrand, henceforth known as Hidden Grace Golf Club, but not much else has changed. This is a mid-length par 72 which will again play soft after plenty of recent rain, and there’s no denying that the weather, scorecard and leaderboards combine to offer mixed messages.

Korhonen is, in essence, a bit of a plodder. Fairways, greens, a decade to fall over the line, and so on. He beat Benjamin Hebert, a fairways-and-greens merchant if ever there was one, and in third place was Jorge Campillo, who is Korhonen but Spanish. He too took an age to win but has made a fine career out of doing everything just fine.

Two years earlier, when the Shenzhen International was played here, Bernd Wiesberger beat a charging Tommy Fleetwood in a battle of the flushers. Those two are both winners at Le Golf National and again the main message is that in behind them, you find the likes of Gregory Bourdy and Fabrizio Zanotti as well as a couple more winners of the Open de France.

But then there’s Alex Levy, who brings a different kind of French flavour to calculations. He’s the golfer people call swashbuckling for reasons I understand but could never explain. When he won here, with Fleetwood second, Alvaro Quiros finished third. And on the face of it, four short par-fives plus two short par-fours and a whole load of rain ought to give the powerhouses plenty to feast on, more so than last week in Japan.

You can certainly make a case for Alejandro del Rey, who buckles his swash like Levy and drives it like Quiros despite being a third of the size, and I almost did. Yet I can’t shake the idea that this course is actually about being sensible, tidy, precise. The 1-2-3 in 2019 made 14 bogeys between them and that is how they separated themselves, which they really did in the end.

There are some options at the top of the market who offer a charming blend of tidiness and explosiveness, however, and none more so than TOM MCKIBBIN, who is a winner waiting to happen.

Seven top-25 finishes in eight starts so far this year demonstrate a player who has taken all he learned during a fine rookie season and will now go on to achieve his goal of joining mentor and club-mate Rory McIlroy on the PGA Tour in 2025.

How much McKibbin will draw from seeing McIlroy and Shane Lowry team up to win the Zurich Classic of New Orleans I don’t know, but the case here is far more simple than that. He’s the best player in this field already, I think, and the icing on the cake is that the course could be a really good fit.

On that we’re guessing a little, but McKibbin’s blend of accuracy and power takes care of any concerns about soft conditions, and I certainly feel it’s better for him than Gotemba in Japan. There, he had two par-fives to go at and would’ve had to club down on occasion. Here, he should be able to grab the driver over and over again.

Holes like the first and 11th will be interesting to watch, with the latter perhaps driveable, and I hope McKibbin goes on the attack as I reckon he could do what Levy did a decade ago and make mincemeat of the scoring holes that Hidden Grace certainly throws up, before its hazardous closing stretch.

Levy by the way brings us to McKibbin’s win in Germany last summer, having missed a short putt at the same course to allow Jordan Smith to capitalise. Green Eagle is tougher and generally firmer, but there’s a similar demand made by that course. If you’re going to win, you really do need to limit the mistakes.

McKibbin ranks second on the DP World Tour in bogey avoidance so far this season and off the tee in particular, he’s so good at putting himself in position. Should he continue to putt as well as he did in Japan, there’s every chance he doubles his tally in this weaker field on his way to bigger and better things.

Smith’s chance is similar and he looks to have found a bit of something with the putter, but he is a little frustrating to follow and doesn’t have the same ceiling nor the same form. Two wins in seven years does tell us something and the first of them was gift-wrapped by Levy, so while he’s a lovely player, backing him as favourite is hard to justify.

Instead, I’ll give another chance to BERND WIESBERGER who, while a bit frustrating to follow in his own way, has broadly speaking made a very solid return to life on the DP World Tour.

Wiesberger has made five cuts in six, only narrowly failing to do so in India, and four of these have been top-25s. It’s been a light schedule for the Austrian, back from a LIV Golf jaunt which made him wealthier but was never likely to suit, and he’s got straight back into pounding greens for fun.

We know by now that the putter can be the problem and he might need his season’s best, but at least he now returns to a course where he held off Fleetwood to win in 2017, then returned at the beginning of his comeback from injury two years later and, at a time when he’d been struggling, finished 14th.

“I said to my caddie it feels like a course that suits me and suits my game,” was his early takeaway en route to victory in the Shenzhen International and it absolutely does, largely because of that point around avoiding costly mistakes. Holes 13 to 18 in particular are dangerous, drawing parallels with Le Golf National, and that’s always going to be the style which suits him best.

Wiesberger made only two bogeys last week, recovering well from a slow start having had to wait 21 holes for his first birdie. He was good off the tee, excellent with his irons (first in greens, 12th in strokes-gained approach) and scrambled wonderfully, as he usually does. It may prove the dream preparation for a return to China.

The former Ryder Cup man has also won in Korea and Indonesia, Asia making up a third of his dozen professional wins, and it’s time he got in the mix again in one of the weakest fields he’s played in on the DP World Tour.

Joost Luiten ought to go well enough and merits a second glance along with Romain Langasque, whose form at Celtic Manor, where he secured his one and only DP World Tour win, caught my eye. Korhonen, Levy, Bourdy, Campillo, Fleetwood, Zanotti, Smith, Wiesberger… just about all the players I’ve referred to from past events here have form in Wales.

That was almost enough for me to chance Gavin Green, capable of being among the best drivers in the field and certainly one of its best putters. He only narrowly missed the cut last week, prior to which he’d been fifth in India, and finished 19th here in 2019 despite butchering the par-fives.

But as was the reason for overlooking the massively talented del Rey, I’ve come down on the side of pragmatism over power, so it’s RICHIE RAMSAY next.

Consistently among the best on the circuit in the bogey avoidance charts, as with Wiesberger that’s a reflection of his fairways-and-greens game, where smaller misses make scrambling that bit easier for the most part.

Ramsay has been showcasing that game for most of the season and while not quite in the form he showed around the time of his 40th birthday last summer, he’s made 24 of 26 cuts since over a 52-week period, the sort of consistency which goes a long way at this course.

I thought 30th in Japan was very solid and while Gotemba was a good fit on paper, it was still new to him as have been a couple of courses this year. Hidden Grace on the other hand is not: he’s played here five times, never finishing worse than 32nd, with the other four all top-25s.

On three occasions, Ramsay has sat close to the lead at halfway and he’s precisely the sort of golfer who would’ve made sense had he edged just a few places up the leaderboard and got amongst that leading trio of Korhonen, Hebert and Campillo when last the DP World Tour came here.

His correlating form includes two top-10s at Gleneagles and two top-fives at Le Golf National, while we know for sure that mid-level scoring conditions tend to suit. If this is won in 24-under then I doubt it’ll be Ramsay who does it, but a couple of shots per round tougher than that is both anticipated and absolutely ideal.

At bigger prices I considered giving Matthias Schwab another go, his putter really the only problem at the moment, but he was in excellent form when missing the cut here in 2019 and that’s just enough to put me off.

Instead, MARCUS ARMITAGE gets the vote as he’s underestimated based on two narrow missed cuts since he finished fourth in South Africa.

The Bullet is a proper, old-fashioned ball-striker whose win, like McKibbin’s, came under tough conditions at Green Eagle. If he’s to double up, I suspect it’ll be at a course where he can avoid the sort of errors which catch others out in the end.

He was 21st here on his sole previous visit back in 2017, shooting two weekend rounds of 68, and that performance can be upgraded given that he’d gone MC-MC-MC-45-WD-66 to begin the campaign, shooting rounds of 83, 76, 70, 76 and 79 before arriving at Hidden Grace.

Perhaps the return to China had something to do with it, as Armitage secured his sole Challenge Tour win at the Foshan Open and later went on to finish runner-up in a similar event at that level.

Regardless, I think he’s playing just fine at the moment, his approach work in particular some of the very best on the tour and his around-the-green stats also strong. Improvement with the putter triggered that top-five in the SDC Championship and we saw flashes of it again last week, so if he can tidy up the tee shots we could get a good run out of him.

Guxin Chen and Zhengkai Bai rate the pick of the home challenge but the China Tour isn’t as strong as its Japanese counterpart, and even in this particularly shallow field it’s hard to see beyond Haotong Li when it comes to a crowd-friendly champion.

He’s been well-supported as you’d expect but watch out too for Kiradech Aphibarnrat, not currently in the field but a past champion who is first alternate at the time of writing. His form is very good having almost landed us a 100/1 winner in Singapore and continued to play well since, although I do suspect bookmakers will be live to his chances should he get a run.

Matthew Southgate has been 19th and 14th in two starts here, contended at Green Eagle and threatened last week, so he’s a 100/1 shot who could go well if accuracy does indeed trump power. There are some underlying short-game concerns, but everything else is firing and he’d be a hugely popular winner.

Narrow preference though is for JACQUES KRUYSWIJK, who looks an ideal fit on paper.

Kruyswijk was 11th here in 2019 and at the time, his form on the DP World Tour read an ugly MC-MC-MC-MC-38-MC-MC-MC. Only when twice returning home did he produce competitive golf, yet it clicked when he arrived here.

The South African generally limited the mistakes that week bar an eight at the par-five 13th on day one, and returns now having stepped up to a career-best level over the past nine months, triggered by two wins in August.

Since Kruyswijk followed that with 11th at Q-School he’s barely missed a beat and in 32 rounds this year, just twice has he shot worse than 72. A scoring average of 69 is seriously good and he’s right behind Wiesberger and McKibbin in those bogey avoidance charts.

He was on my shortlist last week but I was somewhat concerned Gotemba wouldn’t be ideal, so to see him rank fifth in greens hit and strokes-gained tee-to-green, having been one of the very best ball-strikers in the field, was hugely encouraging with this event in mind.

Throw in some good form at Celtic Manor (10th and 14th) and the only real snag is that he’s generally been a golfer who plays well without often threatening at this sort of level. That being said, this field really isn’t great, he’s at the top of his game, and it therefore looks a fantastic opportunity to contend.

Posted at 1800 BST on 29/04/24

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