Open de Espana

Finishing Positions (0.5 pt Stakes)

Final Summary: Not a great week in the end. The decision to play the four big named players at the prices offered after R1 was the correct play, but after only Havret missed the cut we needed one other player to finish mid table at best and that didn't happen as all three moved up the LB. Profit 3.65 Pts

Round Three (Summary: The play on the tight leaderboard after R1 hasn't worked out so far as although Havret M/U 50, the others are performing well enough to stop us probably getting to the 114 points we would require. If we closed just now it would be for an aggregate 87 and a loss of 13.5 pts to rec: stakes. I think though at the prices offered we take a chance that one of the three throws in a big score and we come out ok.)

Pre Round Two Trades (Summary: Three players have gone and with three remaining bets, we need to clear 20 points from them. With the current state of the leaderboard hopefully we can achieve that by a few points.)

Buy Raphael Jacquelin at 27 with Spreadex M/U 9.5, Loss 8.75 Pts
Buy Gregory Havret at 30 with Spreadex M/U 50, Profit 10 Pts.
Buy Robert Karlsson at 28 with Spreadex M/U 5.5, Loss 11.25 Pts
Buy Paul Lawrie at 27.5 (spread free) with Spreadex M/U 14, Loss 6.75 Pts
Basically we are trading on the prices and the positions of these players at the current state of the leaderboard. Only 4 shots separates 88 players so it becomes quite a volatile day 2. What is in our favour though is that any of these players could easily miss the cut but it would take a fairly low score in relation to the rest of the field for them to be quoted a great deal lower than these numbers we are trading at come this time on Friday night.

Pre Round One Trades (Summary: A good day, with Schwartzel +4 and Sterne +1 in what looks like a really tough event. Hopefully all firms will re-price for R2 with live football on tonight meaning they all open until fairly late. The problem for compilers now is the fact that there are only 4 shots between 1st and the projected cut line.)

Buy Charl Schwartzel at 26 with Cantor Spreadfair M/U 50, Profit 11.4 Pts.
Based on current form Schwartzel is one of the co-favourites with some firms. There is no arguing over his current form where 13 events in a row of made cuts sees a record of 9 Top 10's in that list. However, if we strip it down to Euro mainland form over the last 12 months which we successfully did with some players a couple of weeks ago we see a different picture. 20 events played, 12 cuts missed and only 2 Top 10's show that Charl has a bit to prove in mainland events. His success two weeks ago point to an improvement and as a youngster with talent I am sure his 2005 stats will prove far better but 26 is low no matter the field quality.

Buy Richard Sterne at 32 with IG Sport M/U 50, Profit 9 Pts.
Another play on a South African player who so far in 05' has posted 8 from 8 cuts and 3 Top 5's but its the old tour by tour argument again and bar his 4th two weeks ago its all been elsewhere in the world. The other argument though is that some players get into a groove and follow up a good result with one or two weeks of similar form before returning to their level. Sterne has no record of this and if anything shows that he cannot play up on good weeks. After Top 20's in the last year he has finished mc/64/1st/20/34/63 so there is no definite run of form bar the 1st which followed a 16th place. The final reason for his suggestion is one of course compatibility. The need to keep the ball in play here is fairly important, Sterne's accuracy struggles to beat 50% and some players can cope with a low accuracy stat and still place high on GIR but Sterne is not in the top half of the field for that stat either. His putting is also in the low part of the field and its only his distance which contributes to him competing. On this tighter layout he may struggle unless he has a good week with the flat stick.

I am going to leave the pre event trades as the above two. There are 3 or 4 players that are borderline on price but they will be given 3 further quotes if they make the weekend and the event is not disrupted and we may get better value by waiting.