Shell Houston Open

The final PGA Tour event before the Masters takes place this weekend in Texas – the Houston Open. It’s a difficult tournament to call, which has often produced decent priced winners. That’s mostly due to the fact that some players are using the event just to loosen off their swings before the serious business next week, while for others motivation might be a little higher as they try to put the final qualification points on the board to ensure they can take part in Augusta.

For us, it’s a last chance to make do with just the eight e/w places with Sky Bet before we have to grapple with the abundance of 10 places which are already available with Coral and Sky Bet for the Masters.

So without further ado, we’ll open up with Charles Howell. Down to 60th in the World, he’s been playing some decent golf again this season and has some excellent course form here, finishing inside the top 10 on three of his last five visits. He’s also ranked 10th for GIR this season, which is handy stat for this track, and you won’t go far wrong looking at that stat along with Par 4 performance for this track. He’s between 40/1 and 50/1 and we’ll be happy taking the 40/1 for the extra places on offer here.

Byeong-Hun An is another with some decent season form, but the angle in on the Korean could be his aptitude for this type of layout – especially as this is his first trip to this venue. The two events we are particularly interested in are the Wells Fargo Championship and the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Both have a strong history of producing similar leaderboard’s to the Houston Open, so the fact that he cards two of his best three weekend’s in 2017 at those venues is clearly significant. His 2018 isn’t too shabby either – a 14th place in the Arnold Palmer, T5 at the Honda Classic, T23 at Phoenix and T6 at the Dubai Desert reads nicely - with just one missed cut.

An outsider enjoying a decent 2018 is Chez Reavie, and the American ranks highly on some of the important metrics for this tournament. He currently ranks 13th for GIR in 2018 and 12th for Par 4 Performance, plus finished runner up in this season’s Phoenix Open – his best result of the season. His results most recently have been nothing to write home about, but he started the season reasonably well and has more than enough character to ensure he uses this event as a springboard for the Masters next week.

The others who hit the shortlist includes Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler, but in a competition where motivation and timing seems to play such an important role, taking 10/1-12/1 just doesn’t seem to match the sort of risk-reward ratio we look for in a bet.

1pt ew Charles Howell at 40/1 (Sky Bet-8 places 1/5 odds)

1pt ew Byeong-Hun An at 33/1 (Sky Bet-8 places 1/5 odds)

1pt ew Chez Reavie at 55/1 (Sky Bet-8 places 1/5 odds)

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