Hero Cup Top Points Scorer Tips: Pieters and Ferguson can shine

• Tommy Fleetwood & Shane Lowry are course winners

• Thomas Pieters has team event form & course form

• Scotsman Ewen Ferguson is a lively outsider for GB&I

Team USA hasn't won a Ryder Cup on European soil since 1993 but the consensus view is that Europe is faced with a ferociously tough task when the match visits Rome in September.

It has always been the case, of course, that the Americans have superiority on paper but there has always been an understanding, born of repetition in reality, that the Europeans bond better - that when united they become considerably greater than the sum of their parts.

Ahead of the last match at Whistling Straits there were fears that the status quo had changed: that, on the one hand, the Americans had a generation of golfers who enjoyed one another's company and that, on the other hand, the European generation that had formed the backbone of 21st century success was old in the tooth.

The match itself intensified those feelings and LIV Golf has underlined them with the latter attracting both the few American bad apples and Europe's ageing band of brothers.

The Europeans who remain - with the elite exceptions of Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm - have made their way to the Abu Dhabi Golf Club for this week's Hero Cup, a battle between a Great Britain and Ireland team and a Continental European one.

It's a contest designed to inform captain Luke Donald; to provide him with insight into the 20 competitors: who wilts, who shines - both on the course and off it.

He faces a difficult assignment all year and picking the Top Points Scorers this week might be almost as difficult a project.

Consider, for starters, that we're (quite rightly) in the dark as to the exact instructions to the team captains Tommy Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari.

Is their brief quite simply to win this week? Or is this match part of the long game?

For example: each team has a trio of players with Ryder Cup experience. Are that half dozen going to form partnerships with genuine potential to be revived in September or will they be acting this week in a guidance capacity, jumping around the line-up to play with their inexperienced team-mates, spreading themselves a little thin?

Donald has Edoardo Molinari among his team, the Italian having used his background in engineering and fascination with Strokes Gained to become a highly-rated number-cruncher.

Might he be involved this week? And might he be advising both Fleetwood and his brother?

And what of the distinct nature of the course? It no longer hosts the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship but was known as a ball-striker's test - will that continue to be the case in match play?

Questions, questions. It's time to make some selections.

Continental Europe Top Scorer: Thomas Pieters 2pts @ 5/1

After making a stunning Ryder Cup debut in 2018 (top scoring for the defeated Europeans with four points) the career of Thomas Pieters has never quite taken off.

He didn't make the team in either 2018 or 2021 and is not guaranteed of inclusion this year.

But victories either side of New Year 2022 revived his career and I like the fact that one year out from the Rome match he found himself at Le Golf National - scene of the 2018 clash - and contended all week on his way to third place.

Since then he and his wife have welcomed a second child and his compatriot Nicolas Colsaerts has joined Donald's backroom team.

He also heads back to Abu Dhabi - scene of the second of those two wins mentioned above.

All good vibes and there are more.

In addition to his fine memories of the Ryder Cup, he put up a good performance for Team Europe in the 2018 EurAsia Trophy and he was a winner of the same year's World Cup with Thomas Detry.

Moreover, while he won last year's HSBC Championship at Yas Links, he does have a very fine record at Abu Dhabi GC: he recorded three top fives in his first five visits and in each of his last three appearances he spent most of the week in the top 20.

A good team player, motivated, happy and in a favourite place, he looks a solid option to lead the Continental European challenge.

Great Britain and Ireland Top Scorer: Ewen Ferguson 1pt each way @ 11/1

Tommy Fleetwood owns a spectacular course record (two wins, a second and a seventh in his last five starts) but will have the distraction of captaincy, enough to put me off his claims.

Tyrrell Hatton is another fine performer on the layout - indeed the most recent winner there (in 2021) - and Shane Lowry is yet another past champion there. They have to be respected but I'm wary of backing favourites in both markets.

Matt Wallace might be fuelled by memories of narrowly not making the 2018 team but his form is pretty dire, Robert MacIntyre has obvious promise and Seamus Power might be partnered with compatriot Lowry.

I'm tempted by an outsider, however.

Ewen Ferguson was a two-time winner last year and he has very good amateur experience of winning in teams - the European Amateur Team Championship with Scotland, and both the Walker Cup and Jacques Leglise Trophy (twice) with GB&I.

The latter is an amateur boys event with the same form as this week - GB&I versus Continental Europe - and Ferguson not only captained his team in the second triumph, he also won all four of his matches.

The clincher is that Abu Dhabi suits players with an excellent long game (revealed in SG stats). That's where Ferguson's game shines.

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