MyGolfLife Open Golf Betting Tips 2022
With all Sky’s heavy artillery trained on the $20m Players Championship - there’s a daily 12 hours of it starting Thursday - the DP World Tour’s South African adventure, the MyGolfLife Open, won’t be live on TV but a winner is a winner is a winner.
Expect fireworks from local hero JC Ritchie who is on a tear following back-to-back successes in Durban and Cape Town on the Challenge Tour. This is a step up but not a big one and when we last saw him on tour he showed himself in a good light by finishing inside the top ten in the Joburg Open the other side of Christmas.
This new event at the Pecanwood Country Club, in the Hartbeespoort region of Gauteng close to Pretoria, tees off a two-week stint in the Rainbow Nation with the Steyn City Championship in Jo’burg to follow.
Pecanwood, the first of five Nicklaus designs in South Africa, makes its main-tour bow and is a 7687-yard stroll that doesn’t play near its length because of altitude. Surrounded by mountains, it has generous fairways like most Nicklaus courses and the emphasis is on great iron-play approach work.
The signature short 13th - unlucky for some - runs alongside the dam with bunkers either side of a small green. It’s a well-bunkered layout, 170 traps at the last count, Saturday is likely to be the windiest of the four with a 30C Sunday on the cards.
Local stars are favoured through their experiences of Kikuyu but they could meet their match in Austrian ace Bernd Wiesberger who will take inspiration from compatriot Sepp Straka’s stunning PGA Tour success two weekends ago.
As an eight-time winner in Europe, Wiesberger is reasonably priced at 20/1 for this level, the odds reflecting he has yet to rediscover his A game this campaign.
Power hitter Dean Burmester looks an uneasy favourite and will have taken plenty of stick from his peers after his sextuple bogey nine on a par three in Kenya. He and fellow Springboks Justin Harding, Oscar Becker, Brandon Stone,George Coetzee and Ritchie - all look ready to make hay.
Three of Coetzee’s five European victories have come with a home crowd behind him. He lacks focus at times and is unpredictable, as is Stone, but George would have been a 14/1 shot not 40/1 in his heyday. Without a DP World Tour win since Portugal two years ago, does Coetzee have anything left? We shall soon find out.
Best of the DP World raiding party could be Jordan Smith, who went close first time out, Scott Jamieson, in tip-top form but often flatters to deceive, the “new”, ever-Richard Bland, now British Masters champion, and a bunch of Spaniards, Santiago Tarrio, Francesco Laporta and Sebastian Garcia Rodriguez.
Senor Rodriguez is surely worth a little tickle at 225/1. A 17th in Nairobi was a decent prep for this and he posted top-eights in Tenerife and Majorca last year.
Laporta showed up well for two days in Kenya but the weight of being my headline pick must have worn him down. He went west and I did my money.
Believing Francesco can be a winner in this grade and in the hope he’s found a putter that works, the bearded Laporta rates a second chance. His iron play is spectacular but if you keep missing the ensuing birdie putts, good shots count for nothing.
Also short-listed are a revived Ross Fisher, fresh from his second place in Ras Al Khaimah, and exciting French newcomer Julien Brun.
MyGolfLife Open Golf Betting Tips 2022
- 2pts each-way Bernd Wiesberger at 20/1 (Bet365) 5 places
- 1pt each-way JC Ritchie at 40/1 (Bet365) 5 places
- 1pt each-way George Coetzee at 35/1 (Bet365) 5 places
- 1pt each-way Jordan Smith at 28/1 (William Hill) 6 places
- 0.5pt each-way Seb Garcia Rodriguez at 225/1 (Bet365) 5 places
- 0.5pt each-way Francesco Laporta at 90/1 (Bet365) 5 places
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