Mauritius Open

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The year’s penultimate event on the European Tour is on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Open. This is an event that is also sanctioned by the Southern Africa and Asian PGA Tour, so the field is rather weak for a European Tour event with the highest-ranked player being 66^th in the World Ranking. With 2,000 Race to Dubai points on offer, this is the joint-lowest this season, shared with next week’s Australian PGA Championship amongst others. It’s a nice place to be in December, but Europe’s best would rather be playing in the Bahamas this week.

This will be the fifth Mauritius Open and while that it is normally enough to form some angles for the event, it is much harder this week: the course is played in alternate years between this week’s host course, Heritage GC, and the Four Seasons Resort, and it was played in May in 2015 and 2016 and in December in 2017 and 2018. That means that there has only been one previous event at this week’s host course played at this time of the year. Nobody said it was going to be easy!

The course at Heritage GC is short by Tour standards, less than 7,000 yards in length. The fairways are generous and before this sounds far too easy to be a Tour course, the main defence is the sea breeze. While the weather forecast is for the winds to be relatively calm, an ability to play in such conditions will clearly be an advantage if the winds strengthen.

Given the issues with relevant course form highlighted above, the following are suggested with the appropriate caveat over limited data.

Angles to consider:

1. Power off the tee is a benefit

This links to more than the wide open nature of the course. There are two driveable par-4s and the par-5s can be reached in two for the longer hitters. That is a significant advantage. The top-two in the driving distance stats in both 2015 and 2017 finished in the top-10 on the leaderboard and more generally in 2017, three of the top-5 players on the leaderboard had finished inside the top-20 in the European Tour’s driving distance rankings for the recently-concluded 2016-17 season, while the other players in the top-5 didn’t play enough European Tour rounds to be in those rankings. Big hitters dominated on this course.

2. Class matters

This is borne of only two previous events on this course, but when George Coetzee won in 2015, he had been the player with the highest World Ranking at the start of the week. And it was more than just the winner. Of the top-5 on the leaderboard, three had held the top-5 best World Rankings at the start of the week. The predictive power of the World Rankings was also borne out in 2017. The winner that year, Dylan Frittelli, had the second best World Ranking at the start of the week behind Louis Oostuizen who finished 7^th.

3. Form also matters

Again, the sample size is small, but when Coetzee won, he was coming off a run of finishing 1^st-1^st-3^rd-17^th. And when Frittelli won, he was coming off a run of finishing 2^nd-42^nd-4^th-16^th. Admittedly, this could easily be linked to class, but for all that Heritage GC is a short, wide-open course, it has proven to deliver short-priced winners and leaderboards featuring short-priced players in its two previous events.

Selections

The above angles have been used to create a shortlist from which the following players have been selected.

Romain Langasque

Langasque was winless on the European Tour last season, having won the Challenge Tour the year before, but it was still a very impressive season finishing inside the top-6 in five events and finishing 9^th in the Turkish Airlines Open last month. It saw him finish the season in 24^th in the Race to Dubai, a feat matched by only two other players in this week’s field: Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Benjamin Hebert. He certainly meets the class and form criteria and is not short off the tee, so may certainly surpass his 3^rd place finish here in 2017.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout

Bezuidenhout did win on the European Tour last season, winning the Andalucia Masters by six shots. With four other top-5 finishes as well, it is not surprising that he ranked so high in the Race to Dubai standings. He did miss the cut in 2017, but he had missed the cut in his last two Southern Africa Tour events – lowly Vodacom Origins events – so he is a very long way in terms of form and (presumably) confidence that that player.

Justin Harding

Harding has also won on the European Tour last season, winning the Qatar Masters, as well as achieving seven other top-10 finishes plus a further top-10 finish last week in the first event of the 2019-20 season. Given those performances (and the quality of this field), it is no surprise that he has the highest World Ranking of the players on view this week. As with Bezuidenhout, he missed the cut two years ago, but he was also a regular competitor on the Vodacom Origins series on the Southern Africa Tour at the time, so his game has clearly improved enormously over the last two years.

Tips  0-3; -6.00pts

1pts e.w. Romain Langasque 18/1 (Boyle Sports 1/5 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8)  26th

1pt e.w. Christiaan Bezuidenhout 22/1 (Skybet 1/5 1-2-3-4-5-6-7)  21st

1pt e.w. Justin Harding 20/1 (Boyle Sports 1/5 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8)  mc