Golf Bets / Mike Norman / 16 March 2010 / Leave a Comment

Despite missing the cut in Malaysia a few weeks ago, Darren Clarke (who had excuses) remains a player to keep on the right side of in tournaments that have weak-looking line-ups says "Mystical" Mike Norman.

I'm the first to admit that so far I've found this season's European Tour a bit of a struggle. In my defence the fields (barring the Gulf Swing) have been extremely weak with very few 'reliable' golfers taking to the tee. There's also been new venues, new tournaments, and the odd Pro-Am event to boot - all of which makes punting extremely difficult; at least it has for me anyway.

So you probably won't be surprised to hear that I'm looking forward to this week's Hassan II Golf Trophy about as much as a trip to an over-exuberant dentist!

To put you in the picture, this week's offering of European Tour golf is a Pro-Am event that is making its debut on the tour, is being played over two courses, and has a starting line-up that contains just one member of the world's top 50 ranked golfers - Francesco Molinari, who is ranked number 45 in the world and is also the pre-tournament favourite at [15.0].

Strangely enough though, although the Hassan II Golf Trophy is making its debut on the European Tour schedule, there are splatterings of course form that we can use if we must, as the venue this week - Royal Golf Dar Es Salam - has been host to both the Moroccan Open and the Moroccan Golf Classic in previous years. For example, Jean-Francois Lucquin ([230.0] to win this week) won here in 2002, beating Peter Lawrie ([34.0]) by five strokes.

I prefer to go down the current form route however. And by that I mean back a few players that have a least shown glimpses of form in the last six weeks or so.

One such player is Darren Clarke ([38.0]), who can easily be forgiven his missed-cut performance at the Malaysian Open a few weeks ago. For starters, he was on the wrong side of a biased draw that week (the Thursday morning starters got by far the best of the conditions), and secondly, it later became known that DC was a little under the weather and had become a tad fatigued playing in the incredibly hot and humid conditions. Prior to Malaysia Clarke had made the cut in five consecutive tournaments - a tied second at the Joburg Open and a tied eighth at the Avantha Masters being his best finishes. Hopefully Darren is back to full health and can contend throughout.

Ignacio Garrido ([50.0]) has had a top-30 and a top-15 finish in two of his last three outings, and that augers well for a player who has sacrificed a bit of length off the tee for an improved driving accuracy. If Garrido can keep the ball in play on the not-overly-long par 73 Red course (the course to be used for three of the four rounds this week) he has a good a chance as any to finish high on the leaderboard come Sunday afternoon.

I've been very impressed with Rhys Davies' ([32.0]) attitude in the two events that he has contended this year (tied sixth in Abu Dhabi, tied third in Malaysia) and he looks a player with a lot of promise. But you can follow golfers over a cliff who are trying to win for the first time on the European Tour (Oliver Wilson for example) so until Davies does get his maiden tour victory I'm happy to swerve him in the Winner market and instead back him in the Top-5 Finish market. He is available to back at [8.6] this week and I believe he is worth a wager.

Recommended Bets

1 pt win Darren Clarke @ [38.0] in Winner market
1 pt win Ignacio Garrido @ [50.0] in Winner market
3 pts win Rhys Davies @ [8.6] in Top-5 Finish market

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