European Tour Fantasy Golf Predictions – The D+D REAL Czech Masters

2018 D+D REAL Czech Masters Preview

The Ryder Cup is nearly upon us, and team selection is adding to the motivation factor for a couple of players in the field for this week’s Czech Masters.

Thomas Pieters was so impressive in Europe’s defeat to the US in the last edition, and the Belgian is creeping his way up the Race to Dubai ladder. A former winner here, he won’t lack for effort – occasionally a problem for this notorious hot head.

And then there’s Eddie Pepperell, a curveball selection if ever there was one, but somebody who can’t be a million miles from Thomas Bjorn’s thoughts. The Englishman is a winner on Tour this season and banked a pair of top-10s on the Links swing.

It’s probably too late for the likes of Danny Willett, Matt Wallace and Lee Westwood to force their hand, but victory at the Albatross club in Prague this week would certainly make Bjorn sit up and take notice.

Thomas Pieters of Belgium plays his shot from the 16th tee during the…

Thomas Pieters of Belgium plays his shot from the 16th tee during the final round of the 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club on August 12, 2018 in St Louis, Missouri. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images

For the rest of the field, there’s Race to Dubai points up for grabs and a chance to find some form ahead of a mainland continental surge which takes in Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Portugal in the next four weeks.

One player who found a unique way to get his game into gear is Paul Waring, who recently had an undulating putting green build in his backyard. And as if by magic, he won last week’s Nordea Masters; ranking first for Strokes Gained: Putting. Not bad for a guy making his 200th European Tour start and without a victory to his name at this point.

A hot putter is only part of the equation at the Albatross club, which is a long old Par 72 at 7,467 yards. Curiously, this isn’t a bomber’s paradise, although making hay on the Par 5s, of which there are four including a run through nine, ten and twelve, is essential.

Indeed, with plenty of hazards around – particularly water, with a number of lakes added or extended in recent years – finding greens is key. Haydn Porteous, the 2017 champion, ranked second for GIR and Paul Peterson, the 2016 winner, ranked first, so that gives a good idea of what works at this layout.

Accuracy off the tee is not a pre-requisite, with Porteous only finding 66% of fairways 12 months ago, but an ability to scramble and hit good irons from the rough stuff is a clear help.

Weirdly, course form is almost an irrelevance, with Pieters, Porteous, and Peterson all missing the cut at Albatross prior to their triumph!

What is important, as ever, is current form. Porteous had banked a top-10 at the previous week’s Made in Denmark, while Peterson was T3 at an Asian Tour event just a couple of weeks prior to his victory.

So, who is likely to prosper on an aptly-named course, and who makes our draft for the D+D REAL Czech Masters?

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This Week’s D+D REAL Czech Masters Fantasy Picks & Predictions

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This Week’s D+D REAL Czech Masters Fantasy Picks

Thomas Pieters – $11,700 – There is one rule of thumb in DFS that if you want to take down a big cash tournament, you need to take a risk or two in your draft.

Pieters is the headline pick this week at $11,700, and yet oddly you expect his ownership will be quite low.

Why? Because he’s as likely to snap his putter over his knee and throw it into the lake as he is to sink the winning putt with it.

But the Belgian is focused on winning his place back in the Ryder Cup team, and that sort of concentrated mind should help a tempestuous sort who can be very good or very bad in any given week.

A winner and a runner-up in consecutive years here, Pieters has delivered top-10 finishes in two of his last three starts – including T6 at the PGA Championship – and looks well placed to outdo a fairly weak field in the Czech Republic.

Lee Slattery – $8,900 – There are some players who we might refer to as ‘flat track bullies’, and one of those is Lee Slattery.

He tends to excel in weak field events like this; evidenced by his second-place finish here 12 months ago. He actually held the 54-hole lead but couldn’t quite convert, which has been a theme of his career to date.

Maybe, just maybe, he will have been inspired by the antics of another serial non-winner, Paul Waring?

Either way, Slattery is in good nick with a top-10 finish at the Nordea Masters last week, which follows a solo third at the Italian Open back in June.

Haydn Porteous – $8,200 – Defending a title is notoriously difficult, particularly when you don’t win often, but it’s perhaps no coincidence that Porteous’ game has gone up a few gears recently.

After a horrid 2018 by all accounts, his best performance of the campaign came last week at the Nordea Masters, where he finished T6 after an opening round of 72 was backed by 67-67-65.

The South African is consistently good off the tee with long, straight hitting, and he really did impress here 12 months ago when overturning a two-shot deficit to Slattery on a pulsating Sunday finale.

Nino Bertasio – $7,500 – It does seem strange that for a player of his obvious talents, Bertasio hasn’t achieved more on the European Tour.

In two-and-a-half seasons on Tour, he has just six top-10 finishes to his name.

The Italian can be rather wayward off the tee, but he seems to have gotten a hold of that of late, particularly at the Nordea Masters last week where he was excellent with driver in hand. It’s no coincidence that he recorded a respectable T17 finish on the back of that.

What Bertasio does do well is putt superbly, and so all we need is for him to have a decent week from tee-to-green.

He should have fun on the Par 5s, at least, with plenty of birdie looks if his straight driving of a week ago travels to the Czech Republic with him.

Adam Bland – $7,000 – The Aussie looks curiously underpriced this week despite the fact he opened his account at the Nordea Masters last week with a pair of 67s.

He fell away slightly from there but still banked a T13 finish, and that’s not the first time he has shown up well in a weak-field event.

Bland finished T12 at the Shot Clock Masters and T23 at the Italian Open in back-to-back weeks in June, and so he is edging towards a massive performance on European soil.

There is a feeling that he could be the next elite-level Aussie to make their mark in world golf, and a T3 at the Australian PGA Championship – a big deal for the local boys – is a sign of such.

Pedro Oriol – $6,700 – When the eyes of the golfing world were on the PGA Championship a fortnight ago, over in Europe there was a low-key team event going on.

The European Championship was won by Spain, whose team featured Pedro Oriol; his first European Tour victory (of sorts).

You would expect the Spaniard to take genuine confidence from that, and it was certainly evident in how well he was striking the ball off the tee in Sweden last week.

Oriol closed with a round of 65 – not bad considering it opened with a seven, and on debut here 12 months ago he finished T34, a return which could have been so much better given that he was inside the top-20 with 18 holes to play.

A winner on the Challenge Tour, Oriol can get the job done when in contention.

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