Thailand Classic Tips 2023

Greens in Regulation has always been the cornerstone of former Amata Spring winners Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia’s games, so heading the team with a player from this week’s field who also pounds the dancefloors with similar regularity seems a sensible ploy, and to that end Antoine Rozner fits the bill.

3^rd for GIR for the full 2022 season behind the metronomic duo of Jordan Smith and Tommy Fleetwood tells us the sort of player we’re dealing with in Rozner, and 13^th for the embryonic 2023 season – despite a couple of poor results – suggests that the Frenchman has lost none of that ability in recent times.

Since the start of the new wraparound season, Rozner has missed the cut at Leopard Creek, finished 50^th in Abu Dhabi and a tailed-off 78^th in Dubai, yet outside of that he’s also won in Mauritius and finished 6^th last week in Singapore, where only a level-par round on Friday prevented him from really pushing on for what would have been a 4^th title at DP World Tour level. Despite that flat day, he still recorded a streak of 5 consecutive birdies in the middle of the round and produced 22 red numbers on the week to suggest that he’s in good enough scoring form to seriously contend here.

Having previously converted a resort-style winning score in the 20- to 25-under region is also a good pointer for this week, with each of the 4 winners having won at least two professional titles at 20-under or deeper prior to their success here at Amata Spring. If we’re splitting hairs then Rozner’s 19-under title in Mauritius last December falls just short of that mark, however 25-under to win the Golf in Dubai Championship 2 years before that certainly qualifies.

7^th for SG Off the Tee and 10^th for SG Tee to Green last week in Singapore, fuelled by conventional stats of 7^th for Driving Accuracy and 2^nd for GIR, is ideal for this and if he can find that final magical ingredient with the putter – as he did in Mauritius when he led the field for SG Putting – then he’ll take a lot of beating here in my view. RESULT: T5

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Another eye-catcher last week – and the week before at Ras al Khaimah for that matter – is Marcus Helligkilde and he deserves support this week as he seeks out his first win at DP World Tour level.

A third round 75 at RAK was the chief reason that the Dane wasn’t in the thick of things on Sunday on his penultimate start, with a Friday 66 putting him inside the top 10 heading into the weekend. A closing 66 was positive though and it was a similar story in Singapore with a single bad round holding him back – this time on Thursday. 73 to open was followed by rounds of 66, 68 and 69 as he posted the lowest final 3 round aggregate score bar just two players, including eventual winner Ockie Strydom.

Challenge Tour wins in 2021 at 23- and 25-under par preceded his biggest career victory at the Rolex Challenge Tour Grand Final later that year, and in those efforts he recorded rounds of 61 and 62 to add support to the argument that lower-scoring tests are a strength of his.

4^th at last year’s ISPS Handa World Invitational is the closest that the 26 year-old has come so far to breaking through at the upper level, however 8^th at the Made In Himmerland saw him in the mix throughout and finishes of 8^th and 13^th at the PGA Tour co-sanctioned Barbasol and Barracuda Championships offers far more potential than the majority of this week’s field.

Like most here, Helligkilde is playing this course for the first time this week, however a new or sparsely used track is often an advantage for the less experienced players on Tour, and that can only help to level the playing field for Marcus this week. RESULT: MC

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Although the weekend didn’t quite go to plan for Andy Sullivan last week in Singapore having opened with rounds of 69 and 65 to put him into the penultimate group on Saturday’s 3^rd round, there was still plenty to like from his 17^th place finish and this week’s task in Thailand should suit.

A 7-stroke win at the English Championship at Hanbury Manor in 2020 came at a massive 27-under par, rubber-stamping his credentials at birdie-fests like this having previously won the Portugal Masters at 23-under. When he’s playing well and scoring well, the 35 year-old can simply blow fields of this quality away, a fact that his 9-stroke victory at Vilamoura underlines.

9^th at the Soudal Open, 8^th at the Cazoo Classic and 3^rd at the Cazoo Open were all positive efforts in an inconsistent first half to last year; since that point the Nuneaton man has been far more consistent, missing just one cut and that came recently in Ras al Khaimah. Last week’s effort seems to have put that blip behind him and for the first two days at least he looked in the kind of form that we come to expect when he’s seriously contending for titles at this level.

The most glaring similarity in the records of the winners here from Asian Tour days was a previous top performance at the Nedbank Golf Challenge, so Sullivan’s 3^rd place finish there in 2016 is noteworthy, even if the link proves to be little more than a tenuous coincidence in the fullness of time.

17^th in a far better field in Abu Dhabi to start his 2023 campaign was fuelled by a SG Putting performance of 2^nd on the Paspalum greens, and if the trimmed-down Sullivan can get the flat stick going again this week then he could go close. RESULT: MC

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After a 2^nd place finish at last year’s Abu Dhabi Championship where Shubhankar Sharma topped the field for SG Putting on the Paspalum greens – gaining nigh-on 10 strokes over the course of the week – the talented Indian’s form seemingly fell off a cliff.

14 missed cuts followed, interspersed with the occasional weekend’s work, before he found a little bit of confidence with the flat stick in Mallorca before finishing 3^rd at last year’s Nedbank in far stronger company than this. 7^th in Abu Dhabi to start the year was also positive before a weekend off in Dubai, however 12^th on his last start at the Asian Tour’s Saudi International cannot be overlooked given the strength of the opposition, and he should arrive here rested having opted to miss last week in Singapore.

A couple of career wins on the PGTI at 20- and 24-under tick the resort scoring box, and he underlines that point with his two wins on the European Tour as it was at the time, winning the 2017 Joburg Open at 23-under before adding the Maybank Championship at 21-under the following February.

Sharma does have some practical experience of Amata Spring, having shot 73/72 here to narrowly miss the cut in 2015 as a teenager. 7 years later and with 7 professional titles added to his name since then, I’d expect the 26 year-old to improve considerably on that effort here this week. RESULT: MC

Finally, one of the handful of players with some positive course form who appeals at three figures is Clement Sordet.

The Frenchman finished second to Jamie Donaldson here at Amata Spring back in 2015 on the Asian Tour, and whilst I tend to reserve eventual winner Donaldson for more stringent tests nowadays, Sordet is still aggressive enough to compile a competitive score when everything clicks.

Last week was a case in point when it comes to birdies: 24 on the week matched the total of eventual winner Ockie Strydom and was beaten by just one 1 player, Ryan Fox, who we know is a strong birdie-maker when at anything approaching his best.

30^th overall last week in Singapore was due to too many mistakes – 14 bogeys in total –  however eradicating errors is often easier than finding a way to make birdies, and any kind of improvement on what should be a forgiving track should help the 30 year-old’s cause.

2^nd at the 2019 Oman Open ranks as Clement’s best OWGR-yielding DP World Tour outing to date, however he matched that finish as recently as December with a runner-up finish to Thriston Lawrence at the SA Open and a breakthrough at this upper level isn’t out of the question in my view, having won 5 times on the Challenge Tour over the years.

2 of those 5 wins have come at 20-under or deeper, including last March when he won the Sunshine Tour co-sanctioned SDC Open at 21-under, and a return back to Amata Spring may well add further positivity in his game and allow him to build on last week’s effort. RESULT: T22

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