European Tour Fantasy Golf Predictions – 2018 Tshwane Open

2018 Tshwane Open Fantasy Preview

You wait an eternity for a talented Englishman to land his maiden European Tour titles….and then two come along almost at once!

Following in the footsteps of Chris Paisley at the BMW SA Open, the superb Eddie Pepperell took the honors at the Qatar Masters last week to end a long old wait for a first senior-level trophy. He has undoubted talent, and you wonder what kind of a springboard this will prove to be for the likable 27-year-old.

Maybe we’re just biased, as Pepperell gave this column our second consecutive winner after Joost Luiten did the business at the Oman Open a week prior.

Eddie Pepperell of England poses with the trophy following his…

Eddie Pepperell of England poses with the trophy following his victory during the final round of the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters at Doha Golf Club on February 25, 2018 in Doha, Qatar. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images

With the great and the good of the European Tour either having a week off or chasing the riches at the WGC-Mexico Championship, the field is looking rather sparse for the Tshwane Open, which is very much playing second fiddle to the action in Mexico this week.

The field….well, let’s just say this is going to be a tricky renewal to pick through. The favorite is George Coetzee ($11,700), a member at this Pretoria Golf Club who won the title here in 2015. But as anybody who follows ‘Big George’ knows, he is as unpredictable as the wind, and can often leave his backers in the depths of despair as he finds a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

There’s not a huge amount that excites about the other big guns this week either, with Alexander Bjork ($11,500, no European Tour wins), Julian Suri ($10,500, formline of MC-68-MC-63) and Marcus Kinhult ($10,300, just 22 European Tour starts to his name) not exactly setting the pulses racing. It could be one of *those* weeks.

Of course, a field lacking star quality offers players a chance to make a cut and find their form, or pick up that maiden title they have been waiting for. But an examination of the last four winners of the tournament – Ross Fisher, Coetzee, Charl Schwartzel and Dean Burmester – suggests that, more often than not, the cream rises to the top at Pretoria GC.

Perhaps that is due to the nature of this stretch, which is a tight, tree-lined and testing layout that requires a decent all-round game. It’s a short assignment at around 6,830 yards for its Par 71, and the insinuation is that it can be overpowered: last year, the first four players home all averaged over 315 yards off the tee. Accuracy and finding greens in regulation didn’t seem to be a massive deal; it was more of a bomb, scramble and putt your way to success kind of week. With minimal rain around in Pretoria, that might just be the route to glory once again.

In a tough old week to whittle down a shortlist of maybe’s and possible’s, who has made our cut for our Tshwane Open draft? Let’s have a look…

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This Week’s Tshwane Open Fantasy Picks & Predictions

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This Week’s Tshwane Open Fantasy Picks

George Coetzee – $11,700 – Prepare for a week of possible heartache. We’ve mentioned that the classier sort tend to thrive at Pretoria, and by that token we have to suggest that Big George is, by all accounts, the most likely winner this week.

First here in 2015 and second in a Sunshine Tour event in 2011, Coetzee finds himself on his home patch this week. That isn’t necessarily a hall pass to success – check out Rickie Fowler’s failings at PGA National last week for example – but at least he has a couple of good runs to call upon here (even if he did miss the cut last year!).

He arrives back home in decent enough form too. A fortnight ago he played at the Sunshine Tour’s Dimension Data Pro-Am, opening up with a nightmare round of 78. But from there he carded 67-66-66 to finish a respectable T13, given the circumstances.

Then he flew to the Middle East for the Qatar Masters, where he finished T8 and ranked first for Putts Per Round.

If our insinuation that bomb-scramble-putt is the road to success this week, then we can’t really ask for much more from Coetzee, who offers power off the tee and a deft touch with the flat stick in hand in equal measure.

He’s a three-time European Tour winner – twice in South Africa and once in nearby Mauritius – and while he has that ability to reduce his backers to tears, the upside is that this is a genuine champion looking in the kind of form to break back into the winner’s circle.

Aaron Rai – $9,100 – While we should be looking to classy operators given the history of winners of this event, there is no reason why the 23-year-old Aaron Rai can’t be added to that category in years to come.

Africa holds a special place in Rai’s heart: one of his three Challenge Tour titles in 2017 came at the Kenya Open. That was the homeland of his mother, who made her first visit to the country in some 47 years to watch her son lift the trophy.

He had finished T7 at the Joburg Open a month prior, and followed up with T19 in that same event this season, which suggests a fondness for Kikuyu.

Holding a share of the lead at the Qatar Masters after the first round last week, Rai slipped to T19 from there but played some good golf – ranking eleventh for GIR – and so our confidence remains undiminished.

A fondness for tree-lined layouts was confirmed by a T8 return at October’s Valderrama Masters.

Hennie Otto – $7,900 – In a week of difficult decisions, perhaps siding with a course horse is wise in the pursuit of some reliable DFS points.

Hennie Otto won here in 2010, finished in the top-ten in two other Sunshine Tour events, and was T12 in this tournament 12 months ago, so in a field of question marks he at least offers some reassurance.

The veteran has won 12 times on the Sunshine Tour, has performed well in a couple of co-sanctioned events this term (T13 at the Joburg Open, T12 at the BMW SA Open) and is generally excellent off the tee.

Trevor Fisher Jnr – $7,400 – For reasons largely unknown, Trevor Fisher doesn’t play a huge amount of golf these days; but when he does it is typically well worth following.

He has bagged three top-20s in his last four starts on the European Tour, including a T15 at the BMW SA Open back in January.

Indeed, form in that event – Fisher’s form there reads 15-5-8 – is interesting because it is also played on a tree-lined, parkland layout at Glendower.

The 39-year-old is a European Tour winner (Africa Open in 2015) with eight titles to his name on the Sunshine Tour, so if we’re following the ‘classy South African’ narrative then he is worth a look here.

Nino Bertasio – $7,300 – Long and straight off the tee and decent with the flat stick, Nino Bertasio will be hoping for a good week in Pretoria.

For some reason, he appears to thrive in tree-lined layouts: perhaps it trains his eye to hit the ball straighter off the tee. So while he didn’t light up the Links-style stretches of Oman and Qatar, he finished T5 at the tree-lined Saujana for the Maybank Championship and was T8 at the Valderrama Masters in October.

The trend continues with T23 at the Hong Kong Open and T14 at last year’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.

He’s a curiously unpredictable talent, that’s for sure, but if he (and Coetzee) both come off this week then gamers could be in for a treat.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout – $7,200 – One talented young South African that is being hotly tipped by the golfing fraternity out there is Christian Bezuidenhout, and he showed glimpses of fine form in Qatar last week.

The 23-year-old finished T28 but ranked fourth for Putts Per Round, and hopefully he can take that confidence with the flat stick back to the Bentgrass surfaces of Pretoria GC.

Bezuidenhout finished T58 in this tournament 12 months ago but actually ranked third for GIR, and that offers some guidance that this is a track that suits his eye to some extent.

A winner on the Sunshine Tour already and second in the BMW SA Open of 2016, you suspect that Bezuidenhout has a bright future of competing well in co-sanctioned events on African soil.

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