Abu Dhabi Championship: Thomas Pieters

You’ve go to be quick off the mark these days to catch the early value on the golf markets but I still recommend taking the 28/1 on Thomas Pieters this week, especially with Betfair offering 8 places (1/5 odds).

Pieters was a winner for us last August when he won the Czech Masters and at the time I remarked how he’d been playing much better than his bare results. He obviously corrected that somewhat with the win but he’s close (if not at) the level when he was a top-50 player in the world. Last season he finished second on tour for strokes gained tee-to-green, meaning he is in the mix almost any time the putter behaves and sometimes when it doesn’t!

He rounded off last season with a T6 finish at the DP World Tour Championship and has made 13 consecutive cuts on the European Tour. His record at Abu Dhabi GC is excellent and reads MC-4-2-MC-5-16 and he would have bagged a top-10 finish last year, but for playing his final five holes in +3.

This is the year I expect Pieters to get back into the world’s top-50, win a big event on the European Tour and make the Ryder Cup team. He can kickstart all this in Abu Dhabi this week.