Magical Kenya Open 2025: Course and current form stats

• Accuracy the key at tight, tree-lined layout, with quick greens

• Cantero [40/1] ready to make DP World Tour breakthrough

• Former champ Jorge [22/1] can double-up in Kenya

Tournament and Course Notes

For the fourth year in a row, Kenya's national open will take place at Muthaiga Golf Club. Despite only making its DP World Tour debut in 2022, Muthaiga has been a regular venue on the Challenge Tour having hosted 17 events since 1991.

Laid out close to the Karura Forest, Muthaiga Golf Club has a history which dates back more than 100 years. Early in the new millennium, South African architect Peter Matkovich was commissioned to update the layout, and when the renovated course was re-opened in November 2004 he had created a venue with the fastest greens in East Africa.

Muthaiga Golf Club, which is situated around five miles north of Nairobi city centre, is a lush parkland course with tight tree-lined fairways and water hazards on eight holes.

There are plenty of testing dog legs to be conquered on a layout where good course management and accurate iron play are especially important.

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Six To Watch

With none of this week's competitors currently ranked inside the world's top 100, opportunity knocks for a large number of players.

If current form is anything to go by, then three golfers who will fancy their chances at Muthaiga are Brandon Robinson-Thompson 50/151.00, Ivan Cantero 40/141.00 and Martin Couvra 60/161.00.

All three should be rested, following a week's break on the DP World Tour, with each of them already posting a brace of T10s since the start of the year. This trio also make up an attractive group of each-way candidates.

Robinson-Thompson spent most of last year on the Challenge Tour and this week's event certainly resembles - with its mediocre field - a second tier tournament.

Cantero, meanwhile, has made a strong start to 2025 and could be ready to make his breakthrough as a Tour winner.

Elsewhere, Eddie Pepperell 80/181.00, who played in a second tier tournament last week when finishing sixth in South Africa, hasn't won on the DP World Tour for seven years.

But the Kenya Open certainly provides the 34-year-old Englishman with a chance to re-enter the winners' enclosure. He tied-23rd here last year.

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The experienced Jorge Campillo 22/123.00 will view this week's tournament as a chance to grab European Tour title No 4.

He won here two years ago but didn't defend in 2024 because he was playing on the PGA Tour in the States.

Finally, one other player you may wish to check out is 24-year-old Wilco Nienaber 40/141.00.

The big-hitting South African arrives in Kenya on the back of Sunday's victory in the NTT Data Pro-Am, an event co-sanctioned by the Sunshine Tour and the Challenge Tour (now called the Hotel Planner Tour).

He's been talked about for a number of years as a likely top-50 player and maybe his chance to shine at this level has finally arrived.

Stroke Averages

Lowest Eight At Muthaiga (2022-24)
Average .... (Rounds)
67.75: Jorge Campillo (8)
68.38: Lukas Nemecz (8)
68.50: Darius Van Driel (10)
68.58: Santiago Tarrio (12)
68.75: Nacho Elvira (8)
68.75: Jayden Trey Schaper (8)
68.88: Adri Arnaus (8)
68.90: Ashun Wu (10)
Min. No. of Rounds = 6
Only those entered this week are included in table

Note: List Contains Leading Reserves

The Punter's Kenya Open Preview