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European Open.

This year played on the Smurfit course, only used on the tour once before in 2004. Easier than the usual Palmer course it still demands accuracy especially from fairway to green. Interestingly on the only year it was used the top 5 were not the best putters that week, but they all had excellent GIR stats and were solid drivers off the tee, not ultra long but a good combination of accuracy and distance.

1 point e/w Maarten Lafeber Top European @ 28/1 with Stan James.

lost 2 points

No one is better from tee to green on the European tour than Lafeber on recent form, he has always been very strong in this department and explains why he was 5^th in this event on this course in 2004. His recent form is not inspiring, missed his last 2 cuts, but one of those was the US Open which would have been very alien to him. Before that he had a good 5^th in the Irish Open and 14^th in the BMW Championships where is accuracy paid off. When 5^th here in 2004 his form coming into this was much worse. He is a hopeless putter, so the fact that the last time this course was used showed that putting was much less important than GIR, is encouraging.

2 point  Paul Casey to win at 14/1 with Paddy Power.

lost 2 points

I have always been wary of backing Casey at short odds but he fits the bill for the winner here very well. Excellent current form, good course form (14^th 2004), excellent GIR (71.5% greens hit in regulation) and second for total driving. In the past he has often got into winning positions only to blow it in rd4. Hopefully his win from the lead at Gleneagles will help give him the extra confidence to believe that when he is in the lead, he can be aggressive and go on to win more often, rather than getting tight and blowing it.

8 points Karlsson to beat Fasth @ 10/11 with SportingOdds.

won 7.27 points

Karlsson has not played the course before but he is a model of consistency at the moment (last 5 events 5/14/1/9/17) were as Fasth’s form has dropped off since his win at the end of April. Karlsson is shooting 2 shots a round lower and while Fasth has played the course, he finished a moderate 44^th. Karlsson has better total driving and GIR stats, he has won the last 5 H2H’s and looks a generous price to make it 6.