Ben Coley's golf betting tips: Italian Open preview and best bets

• Originally published with Connor Syme among selections - he has now withdrawn, bets void

Golf betting tips: Italian Open

3pts e.w. Jayden Schaper at 28/1 (Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1.5pts e.w. Alex Fitzpatrick at 50/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

1pt e.w. Oliver Lindell at 66/1 (William Hill, 888sport 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

1pt e.w. Brandon Robinson Thompson at 70/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

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There is one thing a Challenge Tour member never wants: to defend a title. To do so is to have failed to capitalise on that win and make it to the promised land of the DP World Tour. If you're a defending champion, the rest of the season cannot have gone to plan.

That was never a concern for John Parry when he won the Italian Challenge last September, because not only did he already have sufficient points to earn promotion, but this was in fact his third win, which secures it automatically.

And it means that as well as avoiding the ignominy of defending a Challenge Tour title, he now gets to enjoy some of the attached benefits here in the Italian Open, because it's being held at the very same place he won at just 10 or so months ago.

Argentario GC is a straightforwardly Parry course: sub 7,000 yards, a mix of tree-lined and exposed holes, built for the precise instead of the powerful. He was pursued by a host of good iron players and generally tidy sorts, including runner-up Justin Walters and third-placed Nicolai von Dellingshausen, who recently went on to capture the Austrian Alpine Open at a course with apparent similarities.

Parry did his work on the front-nine, for which he was a remarkable 16-under par, and his sole blemish of any kind came in a double-bogey at the 13th. Three of the top four in bogey avoidance filled those top three positions and keeping out of trouble seems key to this place; both Parry and von Dellinghausen now rank inside the top 30 in greens hit for this season and Parry in particular is a tidy player intent on limiting mistakes.

Parry also ranks fifth in approach play so far and what's striking about that Challenge Tour leaderboard is that you see a couple more subsequent graduates who now rank inside the top 10 on the DP World Tour in strokes-gained approach, namely Martin Couvra and Oliver Lindell.

That's the profile I'd focus on again. Everything about this place, from its length and location to the fact that there's not a single long par-four, whereas the par-fives are all hard to hit in two, suggests we want a measure of accuracy to allow quality approach work to shine. Even with a calm forecast it seems most unlikely Argentario is overpowered, but it will be very much scoreable if you're playing from the fairway.

Plenty of this supports the case for a back-to-form Francesco Laporta and so does the fact that he's a past winner at Alcanada, home of the Challenge (now HotelPlanner) Tour's Grand Final.

Not only has Parry been second there, but Walters has been ninth, von Dellingshausen 14th, Angel Ayora second, Conor Purcell sixth and Lindell fourth. That means the entire top six from Argentario have Alcanada form despite having played there just a handful of times between them.

Novo Sancti Petri and Muthaiga in Kenya also crop up when you cross-analyse the results of this clutch of players and Laporta has form at both of those, too, hence he was first onto my shortlist. However, despite the potential benefits of home advantage, he's just not a player I can go rowing in with at 25/1 – any further support and he could even challenge favouritism, and he looks short enough as it is.

Preference at just a slightly bigger price is for the much higher ceiling of JAYDEN SCHAPER.

This young South African, considered by many to be the best of a decent crop on the DP World Tour (albeit not perhaps as promising as a couple who are out in the US at the moment), has emerged from a quiet start to the year to finish fifth and third on his last two starts, taking his tally of top-10s to five in his last 10 appearances.

With a brutal Indian Open and a long Singapore Classic among his only failures lately his form book looks extremely solid indeed and it's no surprise that his stats are too. Through the bag he's 30th in driving accuracy, 10th in greens, ninth in strokes-gained approach, 13th around the greens and sixth from tee-to-green, the only thing holding him back having been the putter.

That though has also come to life lately, helping to power this brace of top-fives, so there are no particular weaknesses in the game of a player who also ranks third in bogey avoidance, just ahead of Laporta and with Parry not too far behind in 11th.

In other words, there's a chance Schaper is coming to a course that is made for him and while he lacks experience of the two correlating Spanish venues I've mentioned, he was fourth at Muthaiga and thrives when the emphasis is on accuracy rather than power. That's the one department in which he does lag behind those better-known compatriots, Christo Lamprecht and Aldrich Potgieter.

Calm, warm conditions are a plus albeit he also contended in a breezy Mauritius late last year and providing a fortnight off hasn't stopped him in his tracks, Schaper can threaten a breakthrough win.

Couvra bagged his in Turkey when last off the shortlist at 80/1 but he does merit these revised prices after another top-10 finish last time. The Frenchman is looking like a supreme iron player with a bit of an X-factor about him and it wasn't a surprise to see him attracting support on Monday.

We are though on a run of breakout winners on the DP World Tour and as well as Schaper, I'll turn to ALEX FITZPATRICK to keep it going.

For my money, Fitzpatrick has been one of the most quietly notable performers of the last few months, leaving behind a slow start to the year to bag five top-30s in seven without ever really putting himself under the spotlight.

Most pleasingly, these have largely been the product of quality play from tee-to-green and while in particular he's living up to his brother's claims that he excels when chipping and pitching, the younger Fitzpatrick has also been driving it nicely and hitting quality approach shots on a consistent basis.

Less consistent has been the putter but four top-30 displays represent sufficient promise and he looks very close to the form which saw him put together a run of 6-12-6-9 when the DP World Tour returned from a break last summer, itself encouraging after a few weeks away since the KLM Open.

Fitzpatrick was a solid 26th there but it's his form at Crans (fifth and sixth), in Sweden (fourth), Belgium (11th), Turkey (17th) and Kenya (19th) which further encourages me as to his suitability to Argentario, while the fact that he's contended on one of just three previous trips to Italy is another small positive.

Above all, he's lurking just off the radar of the layers at the moment and this particularly weak field, on a golf course where few have an experience edge and one which ought to suit, makes for an ideal opportunity to capitalise.

I'll return to the long list of potential breakout winners in a moment but one player who is hard to price, but who I feel merits the benefit of the doubt, is CONNOR SYME, runaway winner of the KLM Open when last in action.

I can't recall when last I'd have sided with a last-time-out winner and it does feel a little bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, made worse by the shorter price which comes as a consequence of his victory in the Netherlands.

However, Syme's best golf would have him much closer to the front of this market and he really did produce it when beating our longshot selection Joakim Lagergren, impressing in the way he went about it: no fuss, few mistakes, long-game excellent, putter good enough.

A positional course like this one ought to be no less suitable for Syme, who does have form at both Muthaiga and Alcanada for good measure, but what I like most is that he's always been a player who finds something and runs with it for a while.

In 2019, he actually contended the week after his first Challenge Tour win and then later put together back-to-back top-10s, before beginning his second season as a DP World Tour member with 11th at Leopard Creek and ninth in Mauritius.

The following summer, when golf returned following the Covid break, he went 3-8-8 not long after fourth in Austria, while in the spring of 2021 he managed two top-fives in three. In 2022 he finished runner-up in successive weeks, in 2023 he put together four top-10s in a row, and in 2024 he almost did the same when rattling off three of them.

Even this year, despite struggling for large parts of spring, he was in the mix in two of his three starts in Africa so I certainly won't be surprised if there's more to come very soon, especially with the Scottish players surely inspired by watching Robert MacIntyre almost win the US Open.

Syme can also draw encouragement from the fact that Kristoffer Reitan followed his first win with second place, Eugenio Chacarra was the 54-hole leader and eventually finished fourth right after his win in India, Marco Penge contended in Belgium soon after his, Couvra was eighth on his second start following Turkey, and even von Dellingshausen was seventh after his shock win in Austria.

Confidence counts for plenty, particularly at this relatively low level, and there's no reason Syme can't contend again.

Nacho Elvira is a strong iron player whose weakness off the tee may not matter too much here and his brother Manuel is playing nicely, but next on my list is the aforementioned OLIVER LINDELL.

The Finn has long been a player held in high regard back home and having turned professional very young, there should be plenty more to come now that he's finally beginning to establish himself on the DP World Tour.

We've seen lately that he's a quality iron player, ranking sixth, 15th, second and seventh for his last four starts, and having produced a career-low 62 at this golf course last September he returns to it at a nice time, ready perhaps to properly contend.

Lindell has been fourth at Alcanada and fifth at Novo Sancti Petri as well as sixth here and seventh on his very first start in Italy a few years ago, so there's correlating form to substantiate his course form, not to mention an eye-catching run of current form.

Yes, he's ruined plenty of good work with a poor final round in Belgium (fell from fourth to 12th) and a genuine shocker in round three of the KLM Open, but the other 13 of his last 15 rounds have been quality and all at courses which were either totally new to him, or in the case of Rinkven where he'd struggled badly before.

Perhaps then the fact that he knows and enjoyed this one will be key to making it four good rounds instead of just three and he definitely has the talent to go ahead and win.

So does Jacob Skov Olesen, buoyed perhaps by seeing his partner win on the LET recently when he carried the bag, but my preference is for BRANDON ROBINSON THOMPSON.

Another with course form having been 12th last year, he'd previously been fourth at Alcanada. I also like the fact that he's high up in bogey avoidance (25th if you include those who've seldom played, higher still if you don't) and greens hit, and I'm hoping that his sometimes poor driving is less of an issue at a short course where that club won't always be required.

BRT has four top-10s this year and has played in the final group on Sunday on more than one occasion, looking like a player who is cut out for the DP World Tour despite having taken a while to get here, and a coastal course like this one ought to suit a player raised on the Isle of Wight.

He has missed back-to-back cuts but his approach play remained of a good standard in each and the KLM Open can certainly be forgiven. Providing he can avoid the same kind of mistakes off the tee, which the weather and the course should both help with, he can earn another crack at winning. Note you can get eight places at 60/1 with both bet365 and Betfred at the time of writing, or 70/1 with six generally.

Darius van Driel has all the correlating form and a recent runner-up finish to his name and is respected as perhaps the pick of the genuine outsiders while of the home brigade, Edoardo Molinari appears to have solved his putting crisis, Renato Paratore is back in excellent form on the HotelPlanner Tour, and Gregorio De Leo has been fifth at Muthaiga and ninth at Alcanada.

Perhaps returning home will spark something from him but only Molinari made serious appeal of this trio. It's his type of course, but right now the young guns are dominating the DP World Tour and Schaper could be the next cab off the rank.

Posted at 0800 BST on 24/06/25

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