The Tips returns this week with more expert insight to help you choose your Fantasy team as the DP World Tour returns to South Africa for the Nedbank Golf Challenge, the penultimate event on the season-long Race to Dubai.
How it works: A panel of industry-leading golf tipsters and special guests provide their expert tips for the week ahead.
Whether it’s making picks to update your Fantasy team or keep your eye on the betting markets, our experts provide their insights ahead of action taking place on both the DP World Tour and on the PGA TOUR.
Joining regular host Ollie Silverton this week are Steve Bamford and Ben Coley, who outline their picks and reasons for both the Nedbank Golf Challenge and the Butterfield Bermuda Championship on this week's podcast, which you can find here: https://linktr.ee/dpworldtour.
If you have not done so already, you can sign up to play the official 2023 DP World Tour Fantasy game and submit your six-man team before round one gets under way on Thursday: https://fantasy.dpworldtour.com/
The 2023 season-long winner will win a trip to the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai next year, enjoy a lesson with a DP World Tour professional and a round of golf on the Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates. For more information on this amazing prize and others, read here.
Nedbank Golf Challenge
The 41st edition of 'Africa's Major' at Gary Player Country Club represents the final chance for players to climb into the top 50 on the Race to Dubai Rankings in Partnership with Rolex and qualify for the DP World Tour Championship next week.
Six of the top ten on the season-long standings are in action at Gary Player Golf Course and Country Club, including Adrian Meronk, Ryan Fox and Robert MacIntyre.
Tommy Fleetwood is the defending champion and bidding to become the first player to win the event - formerly known as the Million Dollar Challenge - three times in succession.
There is also a US presence among the 66-player field, with Ryder Cup players Justin Thomas and Max Homa making their debuts after receiving invites along with Justin Rose.
Some of golf’s greatest names including Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Sir Nick Faldo and Ernie Els have won the title, helping to ensure its place as a world-renowned event.
With the course among the longest on the DP World Tour at 7,819 yards and boasting a host of repeat winners, do our experts think course knowledge or recent form is a more important factor in advance of the opening tee shot on Thursday?
"I know it's at altitude which does clearly bring that yardage down circa six-to-eight per cent but it is a driver heavy golf course and if you are missing fairways here you can get yourself into some serious thick rough, bushes, trees, all manner of hazards," said Bamford.
"I think strong drivers with high greens in regulation are the kind of players that we're looking for this week and players that have got a leaning towards bentgrass greens would be ideal."
Coley said: "We've got a bigger field [than in the early years of the Nedbank Golf Challenge] and these are world-class players, but I do think it's a mark against both of them (Thomas and Homa) that they've not been here before."
As for who our expert guests think will excel? In their first outright picks, both plumped for Aaron Rai, while Coley also gave a shout out for Justin Rose as someone to watch.
Aaron Rai
SB: Clearly he has focused this year mainly on the PGA TOUR where he has done very, very well. He was 12th at Colonial, he was third at the RBC Canadian Open. He was ninth at Detroit where they played the Rocket Mortgage. In most people's thinking, we will remember his runner-up performance at Wentworth Club last month where he came within a shot of playing Ryan Fox in a play-off. You just look at those courses; Detroit tree-lined, Oakdale tree-lined, Colonial is a short classical tree-lined affair, Wentworth is the kind of course you have to really navigate around fairways and greens and this is what I'm thinking with Rai. He's a very, very high-quality ball striker. He went back post Wentworth to America where he finished 28th at the Shriners... he was 21st at the Zozo Championship when he went over to Japan and came ninth last time out in Qatar. There have been signs recently that he's putting at neutral from a strokes gained perspective or even better and that makes him a dangerous animal where fairways and greens are the absolute key. He is 61st in the Race to Dubai as well so needs a good week to guarantee himself that top 50 spot to get into the field for the DP World Tour Championship next week.
BC: If Aaron Rai were to win this tournament, he takes care of a heck of a lot of business. He gets into the DP World Tour Championship, he earns starts in Majors next year. I mean there's a heck of a lot to play for here and they're among the reasons why I'm very much on the same lines as Steve there. I think it's a big chance for him. He's played there twice and was eighth on debut. He was not playing particularly well and he came here and he took to it and then he was 13th on his second go when again he'd been fairly quiet. He has subsequently won the Scottish Open, the biggest title of his career and I think he's come quite a long way.
Justin Rose
BC: I guess people might look at his form and think he's gone off the boil, but he's had two of the worst putting weeks of his career at Wentworth and then in Spain. In between the two, he putted perfectly fine to my eye at the Ryder Cup. I didn't see any major issues there. He gained over six strokes on approach in both of those tournaments, either side of the Ryder Cup. That's the sort of level of ball striking he was producing when he was winning on the PGA TOUR when he was ninth in the PGA Championship, when he played well at Sawgrass, when he could have won the Canadian Open. He's basically hitting the ball to the same standard as when he was producing world-class form. You look at this event's role of honour and the name Justin Rose would make perfect sense.
Fantasy Insight: As it stands, Max Homa is the favourite for players of our Fantasy Game this week, featuring in 73.70% of teams. Other popular players include Tommy Fleetwood (59.92%) and Justin Thomas (48.52%). Of those, none feature among our expert picks' leading selections but Justin Rose is the fourth most-picked player by 44.94% of users.
| Expert | Player | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Steve Bamford | Aaron Rai | There have been signs recently that he's putting at neutral from a strokes gained perspective or even better and that makes him a dangerous animal where fairways and greens are the absolute key. He is 61st in the Race to Dubai as well so needs a good week to guarantee himself that top 50 spot to get into the field for the DP World Tour Championship next week. |
| Matt Wallace | He is 55th in the Race to Dubai. He has been playing quite a lot of DP World Tour action over the late summer, he was second at the Czech Masters in August. He was sixth at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and ninth last time out in Qatar. So, he's playing some great stuff, and we know Matt Wallace clearly can mix it and win at this level on the DP World Tour. He won of course this year on the PGA TOUR over at the Corales Puntacana Championship, so the PGA Tour card is all signed up. He's got no concerns about that so can focus solely now on the DP World Tour and getting into the DP World Tour Championship next week. A fortnight ago in Qatar he was positive across every statistic from a strokes gained perspective. He was fifth here in 2018, so he's got course experience too. Classical long tree-lined, tougher golf courses is something that Matt Wallace can certainly cope with. | |
| Marcel Siem | He's sitting in 13th spot in terms of the top 10 non-exempt that can go and obtain a PGA Tour card for 2024. So, he's just below the cutline and with Siem you can see just the way that he's been playing recently. He was fourth in Madrid, seventh at Sotogrande respectively in two of his last three outings. | |
| Ben Coley | Justin Rose | I guess people might look at his form and think he's gone off the boil, but he's had two of the worst putting weeks of his career at Wentworth and then in Spain. In between the two, he putted perfectly fine to my eye at the Ryder Cup. I didn't see any major issues there. He gained over six strokes on approach in both of those tournaments, either side of the Ryder Cup. That's the sort of level of ball striking he was producing when he was winning on the PGA TOUR when he was ninth in the PGA Championship, when he played well at Sawgrass, when he could have won the Canadian Open. He's basically hitting the ball to the same standard as when he was producing world-class form. |
| Jason Scrivener | He was in fact born in South Africa in Cape Town and didn’t move to Australia until he was about 10 years old. The case for him here is more nuts and bolts if you like. He played really well in 2018 and 2019 at the course, third in 2019 behind Tommy and Marcus Kinhult was a fantastic effort. He didn't putt well that week and generally speaking throughout his career that club has been one of his strengths and I've just felt he's been coming to the boil after a really poor spring and early summer by his standards. He was finally rewarded for some eye-catching performances when he finished in the top 10 in Qatar last time. Suddenly he's now got a chance to qualify for the DP World Tour Championship and the good thing there is that he's been here and done it before because at the 2019 Nedbank, I think he was 57th, something like that in the Race to Dubai, he was asked about it all week and he finished third and that's really one of the best performances of his entire career. | |
| Sean Crocker | Sean Crocker has the game to go and play at the very highest level if he can figure out the putter. It hasn't necessarily happened for him yet. When it did at Fairmont St. Andrews last year, he obviously won his first DP World Tour title. I've just got an inkling that this is a good course for him. There's no point in me sitting here and trying to make a coherent case for him suddenly putting well, it'll either happen or it won't. |
To find out more about their opinions on this week's Nedbank Golf Challenge and hear their tips for the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, listen to the podcast in full here: https://linktr.ee/dpworldtour.
