NEXT EVENT - ABU DHABI NOV 6

COURSE NOTES

It’s a new venue this week for the Genesis Championship, and it’s actually a pretty sweet course. It’s a Dye design - Perry, not Pete - and at 7,300 yards with hazards aplenty it’s one of the sterner ball striking tests we’ve seen on the DP in a while. Overall, there is likely to be a lot more separation via the ball striking categories this week than in a typical DP event. Both OTT and APP will be key, but the fairways are wide enough that the point of separation should be the iron play here and ideally a profile with strong approach upside and balanced driving (tilted toward accuracy) is what we’re after.

This venue has hosted the Korean Open for many years and has delivered single digit, major championship scoring in five of the last six renditions. Two of those were won by generational ball striker Mikyu Kim which tells us all we need to know about minting fairways and spiking with the iron play here. The stronger field will probably push scoring down a bit, but ability to grind is going to be a big plus this week nonetheless.

The streak of Tour invader dominance continued last week with Tommy’s win and it’s now nine straight events where a Tour player or Penge (soon to be a Tour player) have lifted the trophy. It’s seemingly a much thinner pool of options to continue the trend this week, but we shall see.

OUTRIGHT SELECTIONS

Each week 1 point (minus any pre-tournament WDs) will be risked to win the amount defined.

Vincent (+14.1 Point YTD; this week is to win +16.0 points)

Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen (+1600)

Neergaard-Petersen brings the balanced ball-striking profile this Dye design demands with proven ability to separate through iron play. His accuracy-tilted driving game fits perfectly with wide fairways where position matters more than pure distance, allowing him to attack pins from optimal angles. The Dane has shown consistent form throughout the season and possesses the type of steady, workmanlike approach that thrives on courses requiring precision over power. At 16/1, he offers solid value as a proven ball-striker capable of handling championship-level conditions.

Adam (-2.4 Point YTD; this week is to win +16.2 points)

Angel Ayora +2500

The young Spaniard has been showing us Tour level ball striking for a while now, and he finally comes to a spot that should really reward that skill set. Five Top 13s or better in his last eight starts shows the game is trending firmly in the right direction, and I can forgive last week’s result at a very quirky venue. Looks the part of a future Tour stalwart, and we will see if he can alter the trend of Tour winners but with skills that are already at that level.

Daniel Hiller +5000

Trending nicely off of T23, T9 finishes the last couple of weeks and was firmly in the mix in India last weekend. Has been gaining consistently in both ball striking categories for a couple of months, and tends to do his best work in more difficult scoring conditions. Played nicely in the early season Asian swing as well, and in this form he can build on that here.

Matt (-17.1 Point YTD; this week is to win +11.0 points)

Nothing like having three of the top four heading into the weekend and a two shot lead heading into Sunday and having no chance on the back 9 Sunday… We move on. The Genesis Invitational. Expect to see a difficult test this week. This Dye design has hosted the Korea Open various times. We have seen winning scores drift from -16 to -2 so I would expect something in the range of -12 to -13 this week. This par 71 at about 7,400 yards will test players both off the tee and on approach. You must hit your spots and avoid a ton of water. It looks like a slightly longer, but slightly wider TPC Sawgrass. 

Hideki Matsuyama +1100

I will gladly take double digits on Hideki in a weak field like this. We have seen bigger names come to the top in events like this and Hideki should be next to fit that bill. Matsuyama was okay at the Baycurrent, nothing special but I am glad he got that start over with. That was his first start in over a month and it was a clean T20. He has a nice track record around TPC Sawgrass which I love and was recently in contention at a difficult Wentworth. I’ll ride the single B.