Find Me A 100 Winner / Paul Krishnamurty / 24 November 2009 /

Europeans dominated in Japan last week and even our journeymen could become giants in fields dominated by homegrown talent. And that may make Dane Huldahl a top value bet at [150.0]

There was a time when the Casio World Open could always attract a few top overseas stars, particularly because of its timing during the European and PGA Tour's seasonal breaks. The rollcall of former winners is dominated by Americans through the two previous decades, and more recently Sergio Garcia has been a visitor.

Japan hasn't fared well though in the recent re-ordering of golfing power, as other regional tours have linked up with Europe to form a putative world tour. Consequently, this year's line-up is almost entirely homegrown or at least regularly based in Japan, and the standards in relative terms appear to be slipping.

Consider last week's leaderboard in the Dunlop Phoenix tournament. Amongst a small band of overseas players, all of whom had finished outside the top-60 on the Race to Dubai, Eduardo Molinari and Robert Karlsson totally dominated affairs, finishing six shots ahead of 3rd place. Moreover, one of the pair tied for third was Shane Lowry, a [1000.0] winner of the Irish Open but basically a man miles down the European pecking order.

Therefore anyone with form in Europe deserves respect, so perhaps Denmark's Jeppe Huldahl is not the forlorn hope his odds of [150.0] imply. After all, Huhldahl represents a similar standard to Lowry in that he was a shock winner on last year's European Tour without doing much else. Actually, Huldahl would rate slightly ahead, because he followed up with another competitive effort when third in the SAS Masters. Alternatively, Lowry hadn't made a top-10 until last week against what amounted to stronger opposition than Huldahl will face now.

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