BlogISPS Handa Wales Open Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

The buzz for this week, last week and next week and the week after is the lack of buzz.  With the FedEx Cup playoffs going on all of the marquee players are over playing in that instead of the European Tour.  So that is the big problem that the European Tour has, when the PGA Tour is better for a week, it sucks all of the marquee players out of the picture for a European Tour event.

It’s not a kiss of death, if you look 12 of the top-100 in the rankings and 23 of the top-50 in the Race to Dubai are in the field, but when your missing the stars like Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell, Lee Westwood and Justin Rose to mention a few, you can see that a sponsor could be a little weary about spending millions of dollars to get so little buzz.

So this brings up an important question, what does the European Tour do?  This is the peak time for many of the courses, you wouldn’t want to be in Wales in two months because of the weather.  Remember how much it rained during the Ryder Cup in 2010, yes this is the same place so we can see how ugly it could get.  Back to the European tour’s problem, do you close up shop and not play anything from the Scottish Open till the week after the Tour Championship?  You can’t.

If you look and disregard the lack of marquee names the field in Wales this is a good field with almost half the top-50 players off the money list.  Many will point out that just four years ago every Ryder Cup player was in the event, yes that is true and in looking at the field for this year’s event Francesco Molinari is the only player that was on the team that played at Celtic Manor in 2010.  Of the players in the field you only have a scattering of past Ryder Cup players, Darren Clarke, Thomas Bjorn, Ross Fisher, Ignacio Garrido, Soren Hansen, David Howell, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Jose Maria Olazabal, Paul McGinley and Francesco Molinari.  Hey ten is a pretty good number so the field is not all that bad.

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the ISPS Handa Wales Open:

Key stat for the winner:

If you look at the last four winners, they have something in common, hitting lots of greens.  2010 winner Graeme McDowell led the field while 2011 champion Alex Noren was T2nd.  Last year Thongchai Jaidee was T7th, hitting 53 of the 72 greens so look for good ball strikers to rule.

Here are some more key stats to look to for this week:

• Length is obviously not an issue so that opens things up quite a bit. Look for the winner to be someone who doesn’t like to muscle up with the driver, and just settle for using a long iron for control. Look at some of the past winners of the event they don’t over power the course so looking for accuracy over length.
• Water hazards come into play on 10 holes, and wind is often a factor on this relatively flat course that sits in a Valley.
• The weather looks like it’s going to be perfect for all four days with the exception of a slight chance of rain on Saturday so that brings a lot of players into focus.
• Just because a player won this event in the past doesn’t mean instant success this year.  Of the past champions done of them have had much success in years after so just because someone played well the previous year doesn’t mean he will play well this year.  I would look at our who’s hot list of players from the European Tour to find a winner.