THIS WEEK’S EVENT
After focusing mainly on the PGA this year, the market has spoken and with the bigger volumes flowing through on the Euro event I’ll give the forgotten Tour a bit of love in this week’s write-up. The Irish Open will give viewers an increasingly rare taste of links golf and the presence of perennial punter favourite McIlroy has seen volumes double the weak-field season opener on the PGA.
Unfortunately, while this event has caught the attention of bettors, locals McIlroy, Lowry and Power along with almost local Aaron Rai are really the only names of note that have made the trip. It’s a bit of a shame and reflects an ongoing trend towards a preference for beautiful, but boring parkland tracks where thick rough and set-back tee boxes are really the only challenges that course managers can dial up.
The track at Royal County Down hasn’t seen a lot of professional play however a decent chunk of the field had experience there when it hosted this event in 2015. That year saw Soren Kjeldsen battle his way to victory with a single digit score while Rory was atrocious on his way to a very bad MC.
The layout measures just under 7,200 yards and is characterised by tight fairways and brutal gorse rough. Greens are set lightning fast, meaning an approach from shorter grass will be critical to keep it on the putting surface. With very little in the way of tree cover, wind can play a huge role here.
The forecast currently has some very gusty conditions on Wednesday that are settling down somewhat over the course of the event; however if any of the Wednesday breeze gets pushed out, expect players with an AM tee off to really struggle.
COURSE HISTORY AND FIT
Despite the most experience in the field standing at a tiny four rounds here, some of the performances were big enough to result in some reasonable overlays. Unsurprisingly it’s Kjeldsen who tops this list however runners up Eddie Pepperell and Bernd Wiesberger will also take in reasonable bumps to their baseline.
On the flip side, Rory and Larrazabal were so poor across their cut missing performances they’ll cop not insignificant whacks.
BETTING MARKETS
While he currently sits as a single digit favourite, Rory has been steadily drifting and has captured a surprisingly small amount of the total market volume. The model agrees with the market here and he still has a ways further to go before even being worth the sniff of a punt.
It’s hard to find where the interest has been going as in the top names it’s only Ryan Fox who has seen any downwards price action. The upside to the lack of interest in Rory is pretty tight spreads across most of the top of the board, which should bode well for some value play on what will likely be a very unpredictable event.
