Fantasy Golf Predictions – 2017 Maybank Championship

European Tour Fantasy Golf Picks and Predictions for the 2017 Maybank Championship

The 2017 Maybank Championship Fantasy Preview

After the excitement of the Desert Swing, the European Tour heads to South Asia to continue its warm weather jaunt with this, the Maybank Championship from Malaysia.

The players will no doubt be happy to leave Dubai behind given the madness of the Desert Classic last week where a heavy draw bias laid waste to the tournament as a fair event.  Those with the early/late split on Thursday and Friday gained a huge advantage of settled weather in their first round and a suspension of play on Friday afternoon as winds hit 40mph.  They woke up on Saturday morning to calm and sunny conditions – happy days!

The upshot was that Sergio Garcia benefited the most, and while the Spaniard had the advantage he did play some stunning golf and fully deserved his win.  He was chased home hard by Open champion Henrik Stenson, but the Swede couldn’t catch Garcia; who went pretty much wire-to-wire.

The lure of the Desert Swing is the hot weather and the huge paychecks….and unfortunately they can expect neither here in Malaysia.  It will be warm, sure, but it’s that humid, muggy heat that leaves you soaked to your bones with sweat.  And the paycheck?  Well, the brevity of the field answers that question.

The headline trio are Charl Schwartzel, Bernd Wiesberger, and Rafa Cabrera-Bello, with the rest made up of grizzled Asian Tour veterans and exciting young talent, as well as those European Tour players who tend to do well in this part of the world.  This is an excellent opportunity for a so-called ‘lesser’ player to get their hands on a trophy.

A word of warning to DFS drafters: this week’s action will take place on the Palm Course at Saujana Country Club; a track not used since the Malaysian Open of 2009 (and unhelpfully at a time when deep stats weren’t captured by the European Tour).  So as far as insight goes, we have very little to work with.  What we do know is that it is a Par 72 stretch measuring 7,186 yards, with tree-lined fairways and small greens.  These are Bermuda grass in quality but this is a slightly more grainy, South Asian surface, and so finding specialists on this type of turf is key.

Naturally enough we’re leaning towards those who have performed well in Asia before or Malaysia specifically, and so there may be some unfamiliar names in our fantasy picks this week.  The draft is something of a drunk man fumbling to get his key in the lock after a boozy night out here; we’re in the dark somewhat given the lack of course history.  But these guys should do us proud nonetheless.

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Our 2017 Maybank Championship Fantasy Picks and Predictions

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2017 Maybank Championship Fantasy Picks

Rafa Cabrera-Bello – $11,800 – It’s been a decent few months for RCB, who enjoyed a solid enough Desert Swing of 11-6-19 where he accumulated more DFS points than his finishing positions perhaps imply.  He has done well at a couple of correlated events – finishing second in the Hong Kong Open in December, which features these tricky putting surfaces, as well as a T10 at Malaysia’s co-sanctioned CIMB Classic in a high-quality field.  We know that RCB can play in these conditions then, and in hitting 72% of greens last week he is striking the ball nicely enough.  He hasn’t won on tour since 2012, but you suspect an event like this is his best opportunity to break that duck.

Thongchai Jaidee – $8,900 – The Desert Swing went by in pretty unremarkable fashion for the veteran Jaidee until his final round of 67, which was only bettered by two other players.  That will have given the Thai star plenty of confidence for an assault on a course on which he has actually won twice in the past, albeit more than a decade ago.  But these tournaments are where specialists like Jaidee tend to shine, and while he might not have the consistency to take down the European Tour’s flagship events, smaller fry like this play nicely into his hands.

Peter Uihlein – $8,200 – We’re going into battle this week with this talented American who offers a happy marriage of good form and an excellent record in Asia.  Uihlein bagged a pair of top-10s from the three-event Desert Swing, and that’s a handy indication ahead of a trip to a part of the world he knows well.  Returns of T9 and T16 from the Malaysian Championships of 2016 and ‘15, albeit on different courses, show his hand, as do top-20 returns from his last pair of attempts at the Hong Kong Open.  If this event does descend into a putting contest on an unfamiliar surface for many, expect Uihlein to shine.

Marcus Fraser – $7,600 – The defending champion who finished third last week?  We simply have to get Fraser on the team. He’s a player whose slow and steady approach tends to work well in humid conditions and where rough is deep and filled with a variety of exotic creatures, and as a South Asian specialist in particular we have to take a chance on the Aussie defending his crown.  His T3 at the Victorian Championship last time out indicates he is striking the ball cleanly at present, and that bodes for a player who has habitually performed well in Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and beyond.

JBE Kruger – $6,600 – Here’s a talented South African who has spent a large chunk of his career on the Asian Tour.  A European Tour winner (in India), he has made the cut in his last four high-profile events with a T10 at the Hong Kong Open in December his best work, while a 67-65 for his second and third rounds in this event last year threatened to get him into the title picture before a Sunday fall-away.  He finished second at the Singapore Open two weeks ago, and frankly looks a bargain at the price this week.

Danny Chia – $6,600 – In these tough-to-predict events it is worth taking a risk at the low-end of the salary scale so let’s have a punt on Malaysia’s own Danny Chia, whose record at this course reads 8-11-MC-28.  He finished eighth at the Hong Kong Open in December too, and had the honor of representing Team Asia on Malaysian soil against Europe in the EurAsia Cup in January of 2016.  He and partner Nicholas Fung twice halved contests with Victor Dubuisson and Soren Kjeldsen before he went down 4 & 3 to matchplay specialist Ian Poulter, so Chia is an intriguing proposition this week.

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Cover photo via Instagram