BlogItalian Open Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

The national open of Italy, this event was first started in 1925 when Italian Francesco Pasquali won.  There will be a lot of pride as the Italians try to win there championship, the last Italian to win was Francesco Molinari in 2006.  He was the first Italian champion since Massimo Mannelli won in 1980.

This year’s event has a special date, it’s the last event for Ryder Cup points.  So both the top-nine in the two Ryder Cup rankings and European team captain Paul McGinley’s three wild card picks will come at the conclusion of the event.  With Jamie Donaldson winning last week at the Czech Masters he wrapped up a place on the team.  For this week eyes will be on Stephen Gallacher, who if he wins or finishes second in Italy gets the final berth.  Only problem with that, it places McGinley in the awkward spot of who does he pick.  He gets three picks and conventional wisdom thinks he will pick Ian Poulter, Luke Donald and Lee Westwood.  So if Gallacher gets a spot because of a win or a second, McDowell loses his spot. So McGinley will have to chose three out of the four.  Frankly, I have to think that Gallacher has won his spot, he has had a better year than Poulter, Donald, Westwood and even McDowell.  The only difference, the three have a lot of Ryder Cup experience while Gallacher has never played.  It will be interesting to see what happens if by chance a Francesco Molinari or Joost Luiten win this week.  They aren’t that far down the list and could a victory give them a last moment reprieve?  All good stuff.

What about Circolo Golf Torino:

The mystic of this tournament is that Edoardo and Francesco Molinari honed their games on Golf Club Torino’s two course.  The course is in La Mandria, which is at the base of the Alps and just like in the Omega European Masters this course has some great mountain views.  The club has two 18 hole courses and a nine-hole pitch & Putt.  The Blue Course is being used for this championship, it was built in 1956 by John Morrison and run through ancient trees that have been in the area for hundreds of years.

Key stat for the players to win this week:

Hit lot’s of greens and fairways.  The course isn’t terribly long and the greens are above avearge.  But you can’t wonder off the fairways, some very mature trees will make it impossible to recover if you miss the fairway.  Also look for a player that is hot, they are always favorites in events like this.

The most important stat from last year’s event was how the leaders played the par 4s.  The winner Julien Quesne was 12 under on them while runner-ups David Higgins was 10 under and Steve Webster was 7 under.  All three played the par 4s better than the par 5s which shows a key to winning.

Again we can’t stress looking to see who is playing the best coming into this week.  Eddie Pepperell has a pair of top-fives in his last two starts while Soren Kjeldsen finished T-3rd last week and T-15th the week before.  The chart above on who’s hot and who’s not is important to glance at.

Look for some unsettling weather to hit the region over the weekend.  Thursday and Friday are suppose to be nice but according to the long range plans on Weather.com, Saturday could produce rain and some thunderstorms in the afternoon.