Soudal Open 2025: Kruyswijk the sole selection

• Look to Kenya and the Belfry for clues

• Will we get a third wire-to-wire winner in-a-row?

• Read my Charles Schwab Challenge preview here

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Tournament History

First played in 1910 and won by Frenchman, Arnaud Massy, the Belgian Open, which is now known as the Soudal Open, has been staged only intermittently since its inception.

Lee Westwood won two editions in 1998 and 2000, but it dropped off the DP World Tour schedule after his second win before returning 18 years later in a different format.

The Belgian Knockout - a match play/stroke play hybrid tournament - was staged only twice but it was staged at this year's venue - Rinkven International.

Spain's Adrian Otaegui beat Benjamin Herbert in the 2018 final and Guido Migliozzi comfortably disposed of Darius van Driel in the 2019 final. 

After another break of a couple of years, the Soudal Open returned to the schedule three years ago as a regulation 72-hole stroke play event won by Sam Horsfield, who now plays on the LIV Golf circuit.

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Venue

Rinkven International Golf Club, Antwerp.

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Course Details

Par 71, 6,940 yards
Stroke Average in 2024 - 69.89

Rinkven has been in existence since the early 1980s. Originally designed by Belgian golfer and coach, Paul Rolin, the venue has undergone a series of changes, and it's expanded to include two 18 hole courses - the North and the South. This week's course is a composite of the two.

According to the event's website back in 2019, the venue is set in "a wonderfully peaceful area of natural "Kempense" fenland just 15 km outside the city of Antwerp". The website goes on to describe the course used has a "mixture of woodland and parkland holes with water coming in play on several holes".

Rinkven was described as an exposed, flat, parkland course with poa annua tees, fairways and greens with a par of 72 and a really short yardage of just 6,622 when it was used to stage the now defunct Telenet Trophy (won by Lee Slattery by four in -21) on the Challenge Tour 15 years ago but it now measures just shy of 6,700 yards with a par of 71 and the smaller than average greens have been changed from poa to bentgrass.

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Weather Forecast

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TV Coverage

Live on Sky Sports all four days, starting at midday on Thursday.

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Last Three Winners with Pre-event Exchange Prices

2022 - Sam Horsfield -13 26.025/1
2023 - Simon Forsstrom -17 150.0149/1
2024 - Nacho Elvira -18 100.099/1

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What Will it Take to Win the Soudal Open?

None of the eight players to reach the semi-finals in each of the two Belgium Knockouts staged here hit it far off the tee and accurate types thrived.

With tree-lined fairways that all made sense but if the stats form the last three renewals can be believed, it's a different story in this format.

The first three home in 2022 ranked 58^th, 23^rd and 61^st for Driving Accuracy, the front three in 2023 ranked 62^nd, 41^st and 55^th and the first four home last year ranked 42^nd, 17^th, 60^th and 72^nd for D.A.

Horsfield ranked fifth for Driving Distance three years ago but the 2023 winner, Simon Forsstrom, ranked only 30^th and last year's victor, Nacho Elvira, ranked only 32^nd so neither driving metric looks important, although Nicklas Norgaard Moller, who hit it further than anyone else off the tee 12 months ago, did finish tied for second.

The 2019 winner in the funky format, Guido Migliozzi, ranked second for Greens In Regulation and the runner-up in 2018, Benjamin Hebert, ranked first for that stat, and that was a key metric again in 2022, with the front three ranking 15^th, seventh and 12^th.

The last two winners have ranked 16^th and 11^th for GIR so finding the dancefloors is fairly important but it's on and around the greens that this event gets decided.

Horsfield ranked second for Scrambling in 2022 and the best three scramblers all finished inside the top eight and it was a similar story two years ago. Forsstrom ranked first for Scrambling and three of the best four scramblers finished inside the top ten.

That all made sense given the smaller than average putting surfaces, but Putting Average was the most important stat 12 months ago and it was an important metric in 2022 and 2023 too.

The runner-up, Ryan Fox, ranked second for PA three years ago and the second and third in 2023, Jens Dantorp and Thorbjorn Olesen, ranked first and third.

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Is There an Angle In?

Despite last year's Driving Accuracy stats, this is still a track where players that have prospered on tight layouts have thrived.

Otaegui, who won here in 2018, was a very impressive winner of the Andalucía Masters at Valderrama in 2021 and form at both Karen Country Club and Muthaiga in Kenya has come to the fore too. All three venues are fiddly tree-lined tracks.

For the last two years, the Kenya Open has been staged at Muthaiga, and last year's winner there, Darius van Driel, was runner-up here in the Belgium Knockout. The man that beat him in the final, Guido Migliozzi, won the Kenya Open at Karen before he won here in 2019.

The 2022 winner of this event, Horsfield, finished eighth in the Kenya Open and third in the Kenya Savannah Classic at Karen in consecutive weeks in March 2021.

Although last year's winner, Elvira, hasn't won in Kenya, he finished tied second with Joe Dean at Muthaiga behind Darius Van Driel before winning here, he was leading the Kenya Open at halfway three years ago, and he finished 11^th there in February.

The British Masters venue, the Belfry, also correlates very nicely.

Migliozzi lost a playoff there four years ago, the 2023 British Masters winner, Thorbjorn Olesen, was third here in 2023 and Norgaard Moller won at the Belfy in September last year, having finished tied for second here 12 months ago.

Several lowly ranked players have performed nicely here and at the Jeremy Pern designed Diamond Course, that hosted the Austria Open up until 2021 but that's fairly old form now, so I won't go into detail.

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Is There an Identikit Winner?

We don't have much evidence to go on but the last two winners have both gone off at a triple-figure price and many of the placed players have also been outsiders so don't be afraid to back a longshot or two.

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Winner's Position and Exchange Price Pre-Round Four

2022 - Sam Horsfield - solo second, trailing by one 4.216/5
2023 - Simon Forsstrom - led by one 3.3512/5
2024 - Nacho Elvira - led by four 1.758/11

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In-Play Tactics

With only four stroke play events having been played here, we don't have much data to work with but up with the pace certainly looks the place to be here and siding with the frontrunners from very early on looks like the way to play the event in-running.

Horsfield was in the van throughout, sitting tied first after rounds one and two and solo second, trailing by just one, after the third round, and the last two winners, like Slattery on the HotelPlanner Tour back in 2010, won wire-to-wire, so it looks a really tough place to play catch up.

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Pieters and Smith the market leaders

This is a wide-open market, but a strong case can be made for the two market leaders.

This is probably not the ideal venue for the big-hitting local hero, Thomas Pieters, but after three poor efforts here, he was ninth in 2022 and second last year. He arrives in fair form having finished 15^th and fourth in his last two outings on the LIV Golf circuit.

Odds of around 22/123.00 are probably fair but he doesn't win enough for my liking and the same can be said of the bang in form Englishman, Jordan Smith.

The 32-year-old has only two wins on the DP World Tour and, as demonstrated as recently as last month at the China Open, when he traded at as low as 1.75/7 when leading with just three holes to play, he really isn't one to trust in-contention.

This is Smith's third visit to Rinkven and he's yet to impress there but he arrives in fair form given he followed his second in China with a seventh in Turkey last time out.

He missed the cut playing alongside Laurie Canter in the Zurich Classic pairs event in-between his second in China and his seventh in Turkey. But he won the US Open qualifier at Walton Heath on Monday, so he's clearly in good shape.

I never quite know how to interpret the form in the two-round qualifier at Walton Heath. On the one hand, anyone who makes it through to the year's third major is bound to be on a bit of a high. On the other hand, you could argue that the inconvenience of playing 36 holes in one day in the same week as a DP World Tour event is far from ideal.

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Kruyswijk the sole selection before the off

As he was always top of my list here, I'm going to view Jacques Kruyswijk's qualification to Oakmont on Monday as a positive, especially given he's trading at a bigger price than I'd have been happy to take.

The South African was a disappointment when missing the cut when selected in Turkey last time out but he was in decent form before that and the fact that he won the Kenya Open as recently as February is a big plus given the strong course correlation.

Kruyswijk didn't make it through to the match play stage on the two occasions that he appeared in the Belgian Knockout here, in 2018 and 2019, but he wasn't in great form on either occasion and I'm happy to overlook that.

I thought he was very fairly priced at 85.084/1 and it's good to see that Matt Cooper likes his chances too.

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*You can follow me on Twitter @SteveThePunter

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