Irish Open

The European Tour heads to Ireland this week for the Irish Open, and a strong field is headed by Rory McIlroy, who hosts this tournament on behalf of his charitable foundation. World No.2 Hideki Matsuyama is also here, as is Justin Rose and John Rahm, back from his time spent playing over the pond.

The Irish Open moves courses year to year, and this year’s stop is Portstewart – located alongside Portrush – the home of the 2012 installment. This is a links course and as such we’ll focus on players who have performed well on similar tracks in the past, particularly when this event has taken in these types of course.

We’ll start with Rafa Cabrera Bello, who looks overpriced at 30/1 with Betfred given they are offering 6 places at ¼ odds. The Spaniard always enjoys this event – finishing in the top ten in four of the past five renewals, and tellingly he has posted a 2nd and a 4th on the two occasions that a links course has been used.

With recent 4th place finishes in both the St Jude and the Players Championship, he is also playing well right now, and we are more than happy to put an e/w bet on him at 30/1.

Our second pick is a rather less well known player – Anthony Wall. The Englishman has previous form on links course, so can make up for his weaker all-round game thanks to the conditions, and could be a lively outsider. He’s a massive 300/1 with Sky Bet (6 places ¼ odds) which stand out when you consider he finished 10th in this event in 2015 and 2nd in 2012 (both links tracks). He’s currently ranked 258th in the world, and it’s also worth noting that prior to those results in 2012 and 2105 he was ranked 198th and 256th respectively, so it’s not like he was playing consistently better at the time.

1pt e/w Cabrera-Bello to win at 30/1 (Betfred)

0.5pts e/w Anthony Wall to win at 300/1 (Sky Bet)

1pt Anthony Wall to finish in the Top 20 at 10/1 (Bet365)

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