The final Major of 2017: the Evian Championship, will be the
main focus this weekend, followed closely by the BMW Championship in the FedEx
Cup. There’ll also be plenty of interest
in the KLM Dutch Open, given Ryan Fox’s recent form, and in the Web.Com playoff
series as the pressure mounts for Steven Alker and Tim Wilkinson. In addition, New Zealand golfers are in
action in China, and in European Tour Stage 1 Q-School.
Evian Championship
Obviously this tournament has huge significance for Lydia
Ko: her victory here in 2015 gave her Major 1#, with only Tom Morris Jr being a
younger first time Major winner so far.
However, a lot of water has flown under the bridge since then, and most
commentators don’t have her in their top five picks. The NZ TAB has her on the 6th line
of betting, alongside her 1st Round playing companions Brooke
Henderson (Canada) and In-Kyung Kim (Korea) (who has not played since winning
the Ricoh Women’s British Open back in July).
Lydia’s form still looks respectable, if not quite up to the
standard of recent times: last week’s runner-up result in Indiana was her 8th
Top 10 finish for the season. She
certainly has form at Evian Resort Club course, having demolished it with a
last round 63 back in 2015.
Coverage is available from 9.00pm tonight on Sky’s pop-up
channels 56 & 57.
On the Symetra Tour, Liv Cheng is again in action looking
for a top result in the Murphy USA El Dorado Shootout in Arizona. There are only three tournaments left this
season, for Liv to lift her current 25# ranking into the Top 10, for a 2018
LPGA Tour card.
European Tour: KLM
Dutch Open/ Q-School
The KLM Dutch Open is the precursor to a huge end to the
European Tour season, with over $NZ 80 million on offer between now and the DP
World Tour Championship in Dubai in November.
Ryan Fox will fancy his chances of getting some of that, given his
performance so far in an outstanding rookie year on the Tour.
The Dutch Open could be a tasty snack to start, with € 1.5
million in prize money, on the appropriately named Dutch Course at Spijk. This is a new course, originally opened in
2011, and nominated for the 2018 Ryder Cup, but losing out to Le National near
Paris. It measures 6,384 metres and
plays to a par of 71. The course is
actually 3 metres below sea level – not unique in the Netherlands, but here’s
hoping they keep the cork in the dyke in case of rain….
Meanwhile in Kelso, Scotland, four other New Zealanders are
looking to follow in Ryan’s footsteps, and have thrown their hat in the ring
for Stage 1 European Tour Q-School, along with 890 other hopefuls at various
venues over the next couple of weeks.
Hayden Beard, Kieran Muir, Luke Toomey and Shaun Jones are playing
at the Roxburghe Hotel & Golf Course, but were all struggling at the
halfway mark. Beard and Muir were T42 on
+2, Toomey T53 on +3, and Jones T78, +7.
The top 20 and ties get through to the next stage: at this point -1 and
better are in that bracket, so a bit of work ahead for the lads to make it on
through.
PGA Tour/Web.Com Tour
Danny Lee has scraped into the field for the BMW
Championship at Conway Farms GC, in Lake Forest, Illinois, ranked 69# out of
the 70 playing. The good news is he won’t
have to worry about the cut this weekend: everyone plays all four rounds. The bad news is that Danny will need to
finish top 3 or better to have a chance of making the Tour Championship, as he
did in 2015. Nevertheless, with the pressure of the cut out of the way he has
the opportunity to play attacking golf from the outset.
He will also know how the scoring is going: Lee is in the
last group of the day along with Anirban Lahiri of India, who is one of Nick
Price’s captain’s choices for the President’s Cup at the end of the month.
Dustin Johnson is the defending champion in the BMW
Championship.
It’s a crucial week for Tim Wilkinson and Steven Alker in
Idaho, in the Albertson’s Boise Open at the Hillcrest Country Club. They need to get more runs on the board in
the playoff series, and it would be great if this happened now rather than
having to face yet more pressure in the next two weeks. Scott Hend (Australia) is also chasing a PGA
Tour card, and is obviously in great form to do that if he can build on his
recent results on the European Tour.
Other News
Michael Hendry is having a week off from the Japan Tour, as
it moves to Hokkaido for the ANA Open.
Brendan Jones will be defending his title here, and 2016 NZ PGA champion
Brad Kennedy is also in the field.
The China Tour continues this week with the Beijing Classic,
featuring Josh Geary, Daniel Pearce and Fraser Wilkin.
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