Hero World Challenge Golf Each-Way Tips: Picks from 16/1 to 28/1

• 20/121.00 Cameron Young has strong form by the coast

• 16/117.00 Justin Thomas is showing form and likes the track

• 28/129.00 Open runner-up Sepp Straka will enjoy this test

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Tiger Woods is back! And if you believe in fairytale returns, the great man is 50/1 to capture this week's Hero World Challenge as golf's silly season starts up in the Bahamas.

How competitive Tiger can be remains extremely open to doubt and, to prove the point, those odds make him joint-last in the betting in this limited but elite 20-man field.

Albany, a par 72 designed by Ernie Els that opened in 2010, features five par 3s and five par 5s and needs some help from coastal winds to keep scoring in some sort of check.

Els has name-checked Royal Birkdale and Royal Melbourne as having some similar traits which may or may not help us.

Perhaps of greater use is looking at the seven winners at Albany - Viktor Hovland (2022 and 2021), Henrik Stenson (2019), Jon Rahm (2018), Rickie Fowler (2017), Hideki Matsuyama (2016) and Bubba Watson (2015).

We have three Masters champions in there while the last four winners have all had at least a top four in the Open which makes sense given that handling winds is part of the test here.

Steve Rawlings also adds in two desert tests that offer good correlations: the Waste Management Phoenix Open and the DP World Tour Championship.

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Back Cameron Young @ 20/121.00

Over a third of the field - Tiger, Will Zalatoris, Jordan Spieth, Scottie Scheffler, Tony Finau, Jason Day and Sam Burns - haven't played a strokeplay event since September.

That doesn't eliminate them but makes me reluctant to back any.

A Hovland hat-trick looks likely after his second place in the DP World Tour Championship but 7/24.50 isn't for a preview like this.

I'll also look past 7/18.00 Max Homa despite acknowledging his form and confidence after top scoring for the United States in their Ryder Cup defeat in Rome and following it with victory in the recent Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa.

Instead, this could be a great chance for Cameron Young to put a trophy in the cabinet.

With finishes of eighth (Hoylake) and second (St Andrews) in the last two Open Championships, he's clearly one to look at in elite fields by the coast.

I also like the fact that he'll be sharper than some following a couple of recent runs, also next to the sea.

A 54th in the World Wide Technology Championship followed by 38th at the RSM Classic doesn't look much on first glance but his round scores give those bare numbers greater appeal.

The American opened with a 65 and closed with a 64 in Mexico while he fired 64, 68, 68, 68 at the RSM.

Then, of course, there's the little matter of his third place finish here on debut 12 months ago when a pair of 68s on the weekend helped put him on the podium.

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Back Justin Thomas @ 16/117.00

The narrative around Justin Thomas got a bit silly ahead of the Ryder Cup.

It was as if the guy had completely forgotten how to play golf and his pick by Zach Johnson was the 'old boys club' kicking in.

That ignored the fact that he'd finished 12th at the Wyndham Championship, just failing to chip in at the final hole to secure his spot in the play-offs.

And the negativity rumbled on despite JT then pitching up at the Fortinet Championship in California and banking a top five.

As it happened, he had more recent form than the vast majority of his Rome teammates when the battle against Europe actually commenced.

Thomas, while still digging to find his best, produced some gritty golf and only Homa and Patrick Cantlay banked more points than him in the USA's heavy defeat.

Earlier this month, the two-time Major winner was back in action, trying his luck on the DP World Tour when pegging it up at the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa.

Despite a sluggish start, he fired 66s in rounds two and four and took fourth place. That now gives Thomas form figures of 4-5-12 - not bad for a guy still being written off.

Now for this event. As a winner of the windy Honda Classic on Bermuda greens, you'd expect him to fare quite well in this tournament and that's exactly the case.

He didn't shine on debut but in the last three editions he's finished fifth (note: there are five each-way places on offer here this week).

In short, a motivated Thomas backing it up with results looks worth an each-way play on a course he gets on well with.

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Back Sepp Straka @ 28/129.00

For my final bet, I'll go for another player considered a tad fortunate by some to be given a Ryder Cup pick.

Sepp Straka actually lost to Thomas in Sunday's singles but he'd put his first point on the opening morning when teaming up with Shane Lowry to sink Collin Morikawa and Rickie Fowler.

The Austrian's form pre-Rome was impressive: a sixth place in the Tour Championship at East Lake and a 10th in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.

He took a deserved break after the Ryder Cup but we did see him pop up again in the DP World Tour Championship two weeks ago and that recent run will surely be beneficial to his chances here.

Straka, somewhat predictability, needed to shake a little rust off and was way down the field after an opening 74 in the UAE.

But a trio of 68s from that point was enough to lift him to tied 22nd and in a tie with Rory McIlroy.

This is the 30-year-old's second start in the event after a 10th on debut last year and there is good reason to think he can climb higher this time.

We only have to wind back to July to find him winning on the PGA Tour when a closing 62 gave him a two-shot triumph in the John Deere Classic.

And he followed that by performing superbly at Hoylake to take tied second in the Open Championship. That came two Majors on from a tied seventh in the US PGA.

Straka's other PGA Tour win was in the aforementioned Honda Classic so add that to his runner-up finish in the Open and a near-miss at Hilton Head and he's a strong performer in windy, coastal conditions.

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Now read Steve Rawlings on the Hero World Challenge