That link may be lost slightly with the Spanish one-two from last season but just in behind, the ‘other’ Hojgaard (Rasmus), Kiradech Aphibarnrat and Adrian Meronk have all gone to produce enough form at St. Andrews for it to count.
As with links, the weather will play a part but this isn't the exposed West of Scotland, so enjoy the driving, pick your spot on the green, hit the short stuff and away you go...
Selections
With Tom McKibbin coming off a tough but relatively successful four days in North Carolina, even his undoubted promise is overlooked, whilst I've yet to be convinced that Rasmus Hojgaard is anywhere near his best despite a reasonably promising top-20 at the Scandi Mixed.
Class-dropper Matt Wallace aims to repeat his excellent third place in 2019 and, with memories of a 67/63/68 through the final three rounds, and coming off four successive cuts on the PGA Tour, has to be the danger to anyone going into the weekend.
I'm not quite tempted enough by his current price, but will be looking carefully of the 72-matchups against the two that rival the top spot.
Instead the main from the top is going to Bernd Wiesberger, for whom this is yet another chance and, on current form, is surely trending to the day he falls over the line.
Whilst he tends to be a tad shorter than most of his main rivals off the tee, the Austrian ranks in the top-5 for par-5 performance over the past three months, and 15th for the season thus far. On a sub-7000 yard track, that supposed lack of length may not matter given the main selection leads the tour in tee-to-green stats for the year, ranking 2nd for greens-in-regulation for the season (5th over three months).
The eight-time European Tour winner shows no sign of letting his tee-to-green game decrease in quality, leading the way at Green Eagle a week after ranking 2nd in Belgium, the peak of six outings in the top-10 from eight starts. usually you might expect a relatively poor short game to have been the reason for lack of success but Wiesberger has been showing excellent scrambling skills (2nd for scrambling over three months) and it's surely a matter of those pesky 8-footers dropping.
At 38 years-of-age, the Austrian can relate to the likes of Garcia and defending champion Larrazabal, both of whom won this event well past their mid-30s, and his two wins in Himmerland plus four top-14 finishes at St. Andrews speak volumes for his chance.
32-year-old Niklas Norgaard Moller might well enjoy this test as he did when never leaving thje top four places at the Soudal Open and at the much longer European Open, eventually finishing runner-up and in fourth place.
A stalwart in the Danish amateur side, he won the Nordic Golf League in the same year this venue held this event, his victory coming at Himmerland, two years before Wiesberger won at the same venue oin the main tour and his progress since has been quietly eye-catching.
Rookie season 2022 saw the Dane rack up three top-10 finishes, at the huge Green Eagle, Scandi Mixed and the Dunhill Links and whilst last year was a mixed bag, top-15 finishes at the longer events in Thailand and at Albatross read well, as does the ability to get round The Belfry and rack up the best finish of the year in 7th.
Norgaard plays an awful lot of golf - 28 events in each of the last two seasons - but he's keeping it going again through '24 thus far, steadily working his way into form at the start of the year - T63, T34 and then T8 in Bahrain - and, more recently after a break T35 in China and the pair of top-five finishe smentioned above.
The Dane ranks 5th for driving distance, 2nd off the tee, 12th for tee-to-green, anfd around 30th for both greens-in-regulation and par-5 performance.
Afetr finishing 31st and then 21st around Bernardus, this looks right up his street with bettors safe with the security of Dunhill Links form - 7th on debut before rounds of 68 and 63 sandwiched a second-round 76 in appalling conditions.
Dan Bradbury was tempting on his best work, whilst Johannes Veerman is surely better than that missed-cut in Sweden. However, the final outright wager comes via links stalwart Callum Shinkwin, for whom any semblence of form will see him right there under preferct conditions.
On form from just 18 months ago, any triple-figures would look huge when chatting about the Moor Park star, but things haven't gone as well as planned.
Back then, the 31-year-old gagged up at the Ryder Cup course on Celtic Manor, thrashing his field by four and seven strokes before running-up at the Dunhill Links to Ryan Fox, beating course specialist McIlroy and Hatton by a shot and more.
However, despite a pair of top-10s early in 2023, only a 7th at Wentworth prevented the second half of the season being a complete wash-out, the former English Amateur winner failing to break the top-40 in five subsequent starts.
In truth, this season hasn't been a party either, but there are signs.
11th at the Dubai Desert Classic and 4th at Ras read well, particuarly for both tee and approaches and whilst he's missed four of the subsequent six starts, top-30 finishes in Qatar and India are encouraging enouigh to think he's a play when the price is right.
A huge talent, Shinkwin boasts four successive cuts at the Dunhill Links since 2019, the best two finishes being runner-up and 10th, on both ovccassions coming through the field as the event closed on the Old Course.
After disputing the lead for over 62 holes on his event debut here in 2019, he will have no fear of the realtively unused course, and with a plethora of links skills, can show that anything over 80/1 is too big.
