Magical Kenya Open Tips 2023

Having backed Antoine Rozner on his last start in Thailand where he finished in a tie for 5^th, I’m going to have to keep the faith again this week in a similar level field.

Robert MacIntyre rates as the bookies’ favourite this week at around 14/1, however Bob’s hardly been setting the world on fire this year with form of 20/39/MC/57/37 and nursing a putter that’s been stone cold for a few months now.

Rozner, on the other hand, has shown some fantastic flashes of form in the recent past, none more so than in Mauritius in December where he completed a 5-stroke victory to make it a hat-trick of career titles at DP World Tour level.

2^nd for SG Approach, 3^rd for SG Tee to Green and 1^st for SG Putting is a lethal combination on any track, let alone against a poor field in Mauritius, and anything approaching a repeat performance is likely to see the 30 year-old seriously challenge for a quick-fire fourth title, given the correlation between those stats and those that Ashun Wu produced here 12 months ago on his way to a similarly impressive victory.

6^th at the Singapore Classic last month showed a more balanced performance with SG Off the Tee the highlight; the putter warmed up again for that aforementioned 5^th place finish in Thailand with a SG Putting rank of 8^th in the field catching the attention.

34^th here last year came in a period when he was performing way below his current levels – 39/MC/47/MC were his 4 previous starts – and the putter back then showed very few signs of life compared to the current day. The man to beat in my view. RESULT: MC

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Perhaps the biggest challenge to Rozner this week will come from Adri Arnaus who’s shown more than once that he enjoys these short, altitude tracks in Kenya.

2^nd at Karen Country Club back in 2019 when still searching for his breakthrough victory at DP World Tour level, the putts wouldn’t quite drop on the Sunday as he saw playing partner Guido Migliozzi edge him out by a single stroke from a tie for the 54-hole lead.

8^th here at Muthaiga last year is of course more tangible form, although Karen CC isn’t a million miles away and shares a number of characteristics with this week’s test, and again that effort 12 months ago could again have been better still were it not for a flat round of 71 on Saturday which effectively took him out of the reckoning. A closing 66 was positive though and he followed that up with another near miss the following week at Pecanwood, losing out to Pablo Larrazabal in a 3-man play-off.

It was third time lucky though a couple of months later when the Barcelona man won the Catalunya Championship in a play-off over Oliver Bekker, finally exorcising the demons from that Pecanwood play-off loss as well as the extra-time defeat to Rafa Cabrera-Bello at the Spanish Open the year before.

Much has been said about the 28 year-old’s transition from strong ball-striker and poor putter to the polar opposite over the recent past, however there’s enough evidence to suggest that the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive for Adri and any week he puts it all together at this level will see him go very, very close.

13^th at the Dubai Desert Classic at Rolex Series level in January saw Arnaus rank 2^nd for SG Putting on the week; 7 days later he finished 6^th at Ras al Khaimah with 7^th place rankings for both SG Approach and SG Tee to Green catching the eye. Rested since after missing the cut in Singapore, Arnaus may well have targeted this event specifically for his next big effort as he looks to improve on his OWGR ranking of 86^th with Major season fast approaching. RESULT: T30

The danger of looking at last year’s Kenya Open here at Muthaiga in isolation, which is the only event where any player statistics have been captured at all, let alone for Strokes Gained enthusiasts, is that it could lead us down a certain – and potentially incorrect – path.

Ashun Wu’s win here should be contrasted by the previous successes of Lorenzo Gagli (2018) and Aaron Rai (2017) whose games differ quite markedly to the defending champion.

Rai as we know is a metronomic sort who plies his trade courtesy of his tee-to-green game without being long from off the tee. Gagli, when he’s playing well, is of a similar style: 6th and 1st for Driving Accuracy combined with 1st and 7th for GIR on his 2 events immediately before winning here tells us that he was in a purple patch of long-game form heading into this event 5 years ago on the Challenge Tour.

Perhaps the closest fit to that pair in this week’s field is Jayden Schaper who’s the sort who pounds fairways and greens with regularity, a strength which may be magnified this week with a dry and at times breezy forecast.

6^th for Driving Accuracy and 9^th for GIR for the DP World Tour season to date sounds very Aaron Rai-esque to me, and a cursory look at his Sunshine Tour efforts since hitting both Tours reinforces the fact that this is how he plies his trade.

Of course, with players of this ilk the trade-off is inevitably with the putter otherwise they’d be superstars, and the young South African – who celebrates his 22^nd birthday next week – can undoubtedly let a few shots go on the greens. A return to more familiar Bentgrass surfaces should help in that respect though as he looks to build on promising form of 17^th at the Thailand Classic and 13^th at the Indian Open on his last 2 starts.

A play-off defeat at the Sunshine Tour’s Fortress Invitational in October is the closest that Jayden has come to breaking his professional maiden, however this well-regarded youngster also finished 2^nd to Christiaan Bezuidenhout at Leopard Creek in 2020 and 6^th at the SA Open on just his third outing at this level earlier that year, suggesting to me that he’s well capable to getting over the line in this kind of company. RESULT: T7

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I backed Marcus Kinhult here last year on the strength of a spark of form on the Nordic circuit before heading to Kenya, and he went on to finish 8^th here and 3^rd on his next start at the Qatar Masters.

9^th and 1^st in back-to-back events 12 months ago as the Nordic Golf League ventured to Spain 12 months ago clearly got his game back on track after a slow start to his season, and 11^th and 8^th again on Spanish soil last week may well see him peak for this week at an admittedly higher grade.

Not that performing at DP World Tour level should remotely bother the talented Swede who bagged the British Masters at Hillside in 2019, holding off the high-profile trio of Eddie Pepperell, Matt Wallace and Robert Macintyre into the bargain. That form alone should be enough to shortlist the 26 year-old in this level of field; add into that recent enough top 10s at Valderrama (6^th after an opening round of 76) and at the Dubai Desert Classic (8^th at Rolex Series level) and perhaps we should be seeing Marcus a little higher up the betting board this week.

Although we can’t delve into Kinhult’s stats from those recent Nordic events, when he’s played his best golf in the past it’s tended to coincide with an up-tick in his long game performance. 8^th for Driving Accuracy and 12^th for GIR when winning at Hillside is a case in point and he produced similar metrics when recording competitive totals at Le Golf National (11^th – 2019) and Wentworth (10^th – 2020).

2^nd at the Nedbank Golf Challenge in 2019 was the closest that Marcus came to adding a second trophy to his cabinet at this level, ultimately he was thwarted in a play-off by Tommy Fleetwood, however that’s good altitude form on a longer but comparable layout in South Africa.

12^th here at Muthaiga in 2017 came after an opening 72; only 2 players beat his final 54-hole tally from there and of course we can add last year’s improvement on this track to the argument for this year’s renewal. RESULT: T65

Finally, another player to catch the eye in recent times who’s already hinted at an aptitude to play this course in Nairobi is Angel Hidalgo.

This time last year the 24 year-old arrived here with just a handful of DP World Tour level starts to his name, having spent his first 3 years on the Alps Tour, where he won twice, and the Challenge Tour, where we won the German Challenge the previous September.

5^th to halfway here at Muthaiga after an opening pair of 68s, the weekend saw him fall back to a tie for 17^th, however that was no disgrace and the Spaniard went on to improve on that with a 15^th place finish at the Soudal Open, 8^th at the Cazoo Classic and 4^th at Valderrama where he shot a 2^nd round 63 to lead at the halfway point. All 3 are relatively short tracks with bentgrass-based putting surfaces to hint that this kind of test might be the best fit for the Spaniard.

8^th at the Dubai Desert Classic and 10^th last time out at the Indian Open were both driven by a hot putter on less familiar agronomy to suggest that Angel’s game is in great shape right now, and any further improvement this week could see each-way backers rewarded with a place payout or potentially better. RESULT: T75

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