South African Open preview & plays:
The second of the co-sanctioned events in South Africa and a noticeable increase in the quality of the field. No Els or Price this year, but Clarke and Bjorn get their season underway on the East London links. The event has a history of home winners - last year Mathias won on a different course and he was only the 2nd player from outside South Africa to win this title in the past 25 years; the other was Vijay Singh in 1997. With this in mind, two of the three outright plays are on home players.
The course is not very long, despite being lengthened on the European Tour's instructions for this event; it still measures under 7000 yards. But as with all coastal courses, the primary defense is the wind and not the length of the course. Accurate, wind players will feature this week, or more generally players with a good record on links courses.
Clarke and Goosen head the bookies' lists and while both are unbackable at such short odds, it may be worth remembering that Clarke is traditionally a slow starter each year. For example, his previous opening events read: last year he was 37th at the Dimension Data pro-am; in 1999 he missed the cut in Malaysia; in 1998 he didn't start until March, and so on. Care may also be taken with Thomas Bjorn, this is his first start since foot surgery last month.
All three outright plays are unusually just place plays this week. For the first, Paul McGinley, it is no surprise. Regularly a contender, very rarely a winner, McGinley is better bet for just a place finish. He will savor the links-type conditions and with a decent run-out last week, he stands a much better chance of a top-4 finish this week. Also, like the two other picks, he has an afternoon tee-time for the 1st round; the forecast is for rain on the first day morning, so the very important spell of perfect conditions will not be available to those players. The winds rise substantially after midday at East London.
For the second outright pick I am sticking with Justin Hobday again. He did threaten the leaderboard on the 2nd day, but fell back at the weekend in what was a very disappointing performance from the home players last week. That will be reversed this week. He has yet to bring his end-of-2001 Davidoff Tour form with him to South Africa, but there is no doubting his potential. At long odds again, he represents a value play.
The third pick is Ashley Roestoff. He has finished 13th and 23rd in the last two events in South Africa in decent fields and looks to be in good form. While not on this course, he also has an extremely good record in South African Open having finished 5th and 15th in the past two years. As a home player with an afternoon tee-time, the conditions are certainly in his favor.
Outright plays:
Paul McGinley to be placed [top-4] 33/4 @
Centrebet
Justin Hobday to be placed [top-4] 25/1 @
Centrebet
Ashley Roestoff to be placed [top-4] 20/1 @
Centrebet
72-hole plays:
Peter Baker to beat Nic Henning -111 @
DAS
The Englishman looks promising early on last week and is a regular visitor to these shores, so may not be as disadvantaged as some. For Henning, three missed cuts in the last four South African Opens do not look good
Ashley Roestoff to beat Nic Henning -110 @
Surrey [-111 @
First Stake]
As above. Very much a tale of an excellent South African Open record against a very poor one
[This message has been edited by Stanley (edited 01-25-2001).]
