A late rally from headline selection David Puig that fell short of the places, combined with a pair of Sunday double-bogeys from Johannes Veerman as he slid out of the each-way positions, meant for a frustrating week at the Andalucia Masters. Congratulations to any Julien Guerrier backers who will have been delighted to eventually see their man get over the line in that marathon play-off with Jorge Campillo.
On we go and last year’s Korea Championship won by Pablo Larrazabal has morphed into what is now the Genesis Championship, previously a KPGA event that moving forward will be a co-sanctioned affair between the two Tours. The Jack Nicklaus Golf Club is the common denominator between the two events and that remains the venue for this field of 120 which features a mix of DP World Tour players alongside the best that the Korean Tour can offer.
A relatively short field and 30 or so locals who predominantly appear towards the bottom of the betting means for a relatively tight betting heat with Tom Kim and Benny An each rating around the 7/1 mark. The likes of Sebastian Soderberg, Yannik Paul and Nicolai Hojgaard follow at around 22/1.
Before we go into the detail surrounding the Genesis Championship, we always have new visitors to Golf Betting System throughout the year. Welcome and let me point you in the direction of our weekly Golf Betting System podcast (published every Tuesday of the golfing calendar), the Steve Bamford Golf Channel on YouTube and our hugely popular, 6,400-strong, private Group on Facebook – you can Join Here.
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Course Overview. Measuring 7,470 yards for its Par of 72, this course has been carved from reclaimed land close to the airport and is close enough to the sea for it to have a coastal feel to it, without actually flanking the coast.
Exposed fairways and an additional 370 yards in length compared to last week will appeal to those players who are more adept with the driver, however water hazards are aplenty to punish the wayward. Bentgrass is used exclusively from tee to green.
Aside from the Genesis/Korea Championship and Shinhan Donghae Open events that form this week’s Course Stats, the track also hosted the 2015 Presidents Cup which saw the US team record a narrow 15.5/14.5 victory of the Internationals. Branden Grace top scored with 5 points for the International team, with playing partner Louis Oosthuizen halving his singles match for 4.5 points. Zach Johnson and Phil Mickelson top scored for the Americans with 3.5 points each.
Winning scores here have varied from level par (Casey, 2011) to -18 (Seung-Hyuk Kim, 2017), so it’s clear that when conditions are challenging that this course is offered plenty of protection, and three of the six events held since Kim’s win have been won at 6-under par to further illustrate that point
Course Winners: 2023 (Genesis Championship): Sang-Hyun Park, -17; 2023 (Korea Championship): Pablo Larrazabal, -12; 2022: Yeongsu Kim, -6; 2021: Jaekyeong Lee, -14; 2020: Taehoon Kim, -6; 2019: Sungjae Im, -6; 2017: Seung-Hyuk Kim, -18; 2014: Sangmoon Bae, -13; 2013: Sangmoon Bae, -9; 2012: Whee Kim, -4; 2011: Paul Casey, Level Par.
Tournament Stats. We’ve published some key player statistics for this week’s Genesis Championship which might help point us in the right direction.
Predictor Model. Our published Predictor Model is available here. As always you can build your own model using the variables available.
Weather Forecast. The latest weather forecast for the area is here.
Rain on Monday and Tuesday could soften the course ahead of a settled 4 days of tournament play with sunny skies and light winds. Temperatures will reach the low 20s Centrigrade/low 70s Fahrenheit in the afternoons.
Tournament Trends & Key Factors. The traditional stats of our top 5 finishers here at last year’s Korea Championship were as follows:
1st, Pablo Larrazabal (-12). 298 yards (38th), 76.8% fairways (20th), 77.8% greens in regulation (5th), 62.5% scrambling (12th), 1.72 putts per GIR (15th)
2nd, Marcus Helligkilde (-10). 320 yards (1st), 75% fairways (28th), 82% greens in regulation (1st), 53.8% scrambling (30th), 1.78 putts per GIR (30th)
3rd, Jorge Campillo (-9). 312 yards (12th), 85.7% fairways (5th), 73.6% greens in regulation (15th), 78.9% scrambling (2nd), 1.76 putts per GIR (25th)
3rd, Scott Jamieson (-9). 307 yards (21st), 67.9% fairways (41st), 65.3% greens in regulation (35th), 80% scrambling (1st), 1.76 putts per GIR (26th)
3rd, Joost Luiten (-9). 304 yards (30th), 83.9% fairways (9th), 73.6% greens in regulation (13th), 52.6% scrambling (32nd), 1.72 putts per GIR (16th)
No stats were captured for Sang-Hyun Park who also finished in a tie for third place.
Driving accuracy stats were pretty inconsequential at last year’s Korea Championship with even the more typically wayward players hitting 70% or more fairways, with eventual winner Pablo Larrazabal very much a case in point.
With putting stats also fairly consistent, the deciding factors were either who hit most greens and/or who scrambled best on the week.
From a Strokes Gained perspective, the same top 5 finishers fared as follows:
Key: T: SG Off the Tee; A; SG Approach; T2G: SG Tee to Green; ATG: SG Around the Green; P: SG Putting.
The most consistent stat from a Strokes Gained perspective was Tee to Green with the top two finishers ranking first and second on the week on that count. Similar to the traditional stats, putting was the least impactful metric with only Scott Jamieson on the top five ranking inside the top ten on that measure..
Current Form Of Winners: Incoming form of the winners here at Jack Nicklaus Korea is varied, although the past six winners here had each recorded a top-10 finish in one of their previous three starts.
Paul Casey (2011) and Sangmoon Bae (2013) had the most inconspicuous incoming form of the winners, however both had won earlier that season with Casey having won the DP World Tour’s Volvo Golf Champions in Bahrain, whereas Bae had broken through on the PGA Tour at the Byron Nelson.
Last year’s Korea Championship winner Pablo Larrazabal had enjoyed a solid start to 2023 before a 2 month break, then he missed the cut at the ISPS Handa Championship the week before his victory here:
2011: Paul Casey: 38/MC/MC/17/24/MC/MC/54/MC/45/72/47
Course Form Of Winners: Excluding Pablo Larrazabal’s debut win last year, course form would appear to count for something around this layout, despite relatively patchy history. Jaekyeong Lee, Taehoon Kim, Seung-Hyuk Kim and Sang-Hyun Park had each recorded a top-4 finish before winning here, and in the case of Sangmoon Bae, he successfully defended here in 2014:
2023: Sang-Hyun Park: 12/16/6/18/41/4/16/24/3
2023: Pablo Larrazabal: Debut
2022: Yeongsu Kim: 51/25/21
2021: Jaekyeong Lee: MC/34/2
2020: Taehoon Kim: 3/36/31/MC
2019: Sungjae Im: Debut
2017: Seung-Hyuk Kim: 59/4
2014: Sangmoon Bae: 1
2013: Sangmoon Bae: Debut
2012: Whee Kim: 47
2011: Paul Casey: Debut
Of those players finishing inside the top 7 and ties here in last year’s Korea Championship, 8 of the 9 were regular DP World Tour players with only Sang-Hyun Park proving the exception to the rule. Park went on to win this corresponding event on the KPGA this time last year though so clearly has some affinity to the course.
Northern European conditions on a course that’s close enough to the coast to be affected by the sea breeze should feel comfortable for many of the DP World Tour regulars, and the extra yardage might have a select few licking their lips at the prospect of competing and contending on this Jack Nicklaus design.
My selections are as follows:
Yannik Paul 2.5pts EW 22/1 (8EW, 1/5) with Betfred
After a gruelling 10 weeks on the road playing competitive golf, a weekend off in Andalucia for Yannik Paul will have probably done him some good so I’m taking last week’s missed cut as a tentative positive rather than a negative.
After a patchy start to that marathon run of events which saw him miss three cuts in five starts, 18th at Wentworth, 24th at the Spanish Open and 19th at the Dunhill Links all looked encouraging before he finished runner-up at Le Golf National on his penultimate start when carrying our money. Weekend rounds of 67 and 66 left the German an agonising single shot short of Dan Bradbury’s total with his final putt at the devilish 18th hole burning the edge, but he can and should take great heart from that effort and this week presents another suitable assignment in my view.
The top two in the betting look vulnerable to me with Tom Kim making no impression last week when defending the Shriners Open over in Las Vegas, and Benny An tough to consider backing at around 7/1 given it’s more than 5 months since he recorded a top 10 finish at any level. Both men are making their course debuts and there’s no guarantee that they’ll immediately take to this track.
Paul on the other hand has shown some aptitude here on this Jack Nicklaus design, despite his only effort here at last year’s Korea Championship ending in a tie for 38th. A pair of 68s to start saw the 30 year-old head into the weekend in pole position before the wheels fell off on Saturday and Sunday, however that’s at least more than a hint that he’s comfortable on this layout.
5th for the season to date for Greens in Regulation tells us that Paul has the raw credentials to compete on this course, with many of those putting surfaces found coming from less than ideal positions given that he’s mid-division in terms of Driving Accuracy at 77th on Tour. That combination looks pretty potent given that the landing areas here are pretty generous, and for me he has all the tools to take on and beat the market leaders this week.
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Brandon Stone 1.5pts EW 40/1 (6EW, 1/5) with Unibet
17th in Sotogrande when carrying our money wasn’t what we wanted from Brandon Stone last week, however there were enough positives for me to take away from his performance to invest again this week, albeit at a lower price.
I remarked last week about the South African’s putting performance at Le Golf National where he gained more than 5 strokes with the flat stick over the four days, ultimately finishing in a tie for 10th place. For a player who’s normally middling at best on the greens, that was a standout statistic and he improved further on that last week in Spain, ranking 3rd for SG Putting and gaining more than 7 strokes on the field overall on that count.
Stone’s bread and butter though is hitting greens, a statistic which he sits 4th on for the season to date and from what we saw of the stats captured at last year’s Korea Championship is a great starting point for a contender here. Couple an atypical week with the irons then with his new-found – and likely transient – putting prowess and we could have the potential winner here in South Korea on course debut.
Last week’s effort, although ultimately disappointing for us from a betting perspective, did nevertheless elevate Stone up to 73rd in the Race to Dubai. The immediate target now is for a strong week here to qualify him for Abu Dhabi the week after next and give him a chance of making the Earth Course finale the week after.
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In my mind, 2023 Korea Championship winner Pablo Larrazabal and the enigmatic Haotong Li are players who react on similar tracks and who both need courses that are generous from off the tee to allow them to put the rest of their game to work.
Larrazabal arrived here last April with a 10th place finish in India on his penultimate start before missing the cut the week before in Japan, and Li’s 7th place finish at the Dunhill Links followed by 49th last time out in Paris doesn’t feel dissimilar to me. The 3-course rotation around St Andrews didn’t stifle the Chinese star and allowed him to record a strong finish that’s left him in 81st the Race To Dubai and with a chance of making Abu Dhabi in a fortnight’s time if he can produce another big effort here this week.
Le Golf National, on the other hand, whilst not visually claustrophobic doesn’t leave much room for error, so the fact that the 29 year-old was 9th after day 1 and made the cut should be taken as a positive. This week’s venue though plays far more into his hands in my view.
71st here in 2023 needs to be taken in context as it was one of just two cuts that Li made in that entire year and featured a second round 66 that was just a stroke off the best effort of the day, dragging him back from the brink of another weekend off to at least secure a pay-cheque that week.
Wider Asian form is encouraging though with 5 wins in his homeland over the years plus success at the 2018 Dubai Desert Classic, and allowing for the normal caveat with Haotong that anything is possible from first to dead last, he’s worth taking a chance on here in my opinion.
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Marcel Schneider 1pt EW 125/1 (6EW, 1/5) with SpreadEx
Finally, of those defending a Race to Dubai position from marginally the right side of the top 114, Marcel Schneider makes the most appeal here this week from 111th spot.
The German remains a maiden at DP World Tour level and changing that fact next season – should he not win here this week – will be a whole lot easier if he can stay the right side of the line this week in the season-long rankings, and after what’s been a largely poor season it looked like reality hit home last week in Spain where he halted a run of six straight missed cuts with a 12th place finish at the Andalucia Masters.
3rd for Driving Accuracy, 1st for GIR and 1st for Scrambling were eye-catching traditional stats on a week where he was Strokes Gained positive in every category over the four days combined.
The reason that the 34 year-old finds himself in such a predicament has been his form since finishing 3rd in Japan at the ISPS Handa Championship back in April. Aside from last week’s effort, the only other effort of note was 15th at the KLM Open with poor finishes and weekends off commonplace. That effort in Japan was interesting given its geography and his best effort of the previous year also came out in the East when he again finished 3rd, this time at the Singapore Classic.
South Korean form is limited to just the one event, the Korea Championship held here last April. 38th overall doesn’t tell the whole story though as Marcel was 8th heading into the final day before shooting 74 and should he find himself in a similar position this week with his card on the line perhaps we’ll see something better to close his 2024 campaign.
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