Tyrrell Hatton 14/1 Each-Way
Ryan Fox 11/5 Top-10 finish
Even the briefest glance at the history of winners in recent years gives you everything you need to know about this week’s lucrative and prestigious DP World Tour Championship.
Just six players have shared the last 11 runnings of the limited-field event, and they are very special indeed, with each winning at least one major title, the half-dozen combining for an impressive total of 11 elite prizes.
While the odd rag comes to challenge for places, ultimately the top spot goes to the very best. With the greatest of respect to ‘official’ world number one Scottie Scheffler, in most eyes, we have the best three players in the world here this week.
Splitting Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Viktor Hovland is a task I don’t wish to carry out. The latter may be the less fancied behind the two course specialists, but the Norwegian arrives after winning the BMW and (the US) Tour Championship before splitting his two chief rivals at Wentworth, an excellent guide to this event.
Instead of trying to split them for a win only wager, I’ll drift slightly down the board for my only each-way wager of the event.
As with the top three, opting between two time champion Matt Fitzpatrick, 2019 runner-up Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton is difficult, but I’ve landed in favour of the last-named, surely determined to stop a 70-event winless streak.
It’s not as if the 32-year-old is playing average, far from it.
2023 saw Hatton start with T7 at Abu Dhabi and T6 in Phoenix, both confirming, if we needed it, that he plays desert tracks well before recording top finishes at Bay Hill, Sawgrass, in Canada, at the Scottish Open and East Lake. The selection missed the cut at the Irish open on his return to Europe before returning to form at Wentworth, beaten just a single shot behind Ryan Fox, in front of much of this week’s field, including the top trio.
That’s been Hatton’s game for a long time now, and in 2022 he ran up a pair of runner-up finishes at favoured Bay Hill and here at the Earth Course, where he led for much of the weekend, succumbing late on despite a best-of-the-day 66.
I’m not sure there is a better correlation than his efforts at both Wentworth and the Dunhill Links. The former has seen Hatton win in 2020 and run up just a month ago, tying him nicely with the likes of Danny Willett, winner of those two plus the DP World Tour Championship in 2018. List Rahm (twice second at the BMW PGA, once to Willett) and McIlroy (one win, twice second at Wentworth, multiple times a runner-up at the Links) as even more evidence, whilst if we need to get more recent records, this year’s Wentworth champion Ryan Fox won the prestigious pro-am in 2022 before sparkling in second place just 12 months later.
For many of these, the month’s break may be an issue, though these are very unlikely to have been sitting watching re-runs of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf. Hatton took a month off after the US Open, returning with a top six finish at the Scottish Open, recording a stunning 62 in the second round.
Nine outings here have rewarded the wager with two runner-up finishes and three top 10s. He found his ‘A’ game just a month ago at a course he loves, repeats his form year after year, has shown very few weaknesses in any part of his game for a long while and, being one of just a handful that can be fancied against the top, looks a great each-way bet.
In very much the same vein, Ryan Fox should go well this week, this course suiting far better than his record of 19/45/28.
As above, wins at Wentworth and St. Andrews are perfect, as is much of his best form. Yes, we have to forgive a lack-lustre effort last week at the Nedbank and, having already secured a place in the world’s top 50 and his PGA card, he may not have much to play for. However, the Kiwi’s form for much of the last two years has been at the top of the regular DPWT class, and it’s hard to believe he hasn’t the motivation to beat a similar field to that he faced just in mid-September.
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