Three members of the beaten Great Britain and Ireland side from last week's Hero Cup head the betting for the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, an event which last year boasted three members of the game's elite but this time around does not.
That's no slight on Tyrrell Hatton, Tommy Fleetwood and Shane Lowry, each of them all but certain to play in September's Ryder Cup, but there's no denying this is weaker than a blockbuster 2022 edition which saw Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa all take part.
Seldom is the golf course anywhere near the top of the list of reasons for absence or indeed attendance so we shouldn't hold anything against Yas Links, widely considered superior to the old venue across town and a welcome sight once it finally graced our television screens.
As had been expected, this Kyle Phillips design proved trickier than Abu Dhabi GC thanks to a consistent breeze, though this week's forecast and one or two lessons learned might change things a little. Still, it's a different course in nature, far more rugged, exposed and downright interesting, and it wasn't a big surprise that it threw up a leaderboard of all sorts.
That contrast means we can't assume a prep run in the Hero Cup will prove to be advantageous, but I strongly suspect that it will. In 2018, this tournament followed the EurAsia Cup, and 10 of the 11 European team members who took part in Abu Dhabi went on to finish inside the top 20, including winner Fleetwood, the runner-up, the third, the fifth, the seventh, eighth and ninth.
While the benefits of an outing hadn't been quite so apparent two years earlier, the 2014 EurAsia Cup also threw up the Abu Dhabi champion Pablo Larrazabal who, like pretty much every winner of this early-season temperature check, had ended the previous year in good form. There's a very good chance that this week's champion is both sharp from the Hero Cup and was playing well at the back-end of 2022.
Such a formula won't help you narrow things down much at the front of the betting, with Min Woo Lee the only prominent player who wasn't in action last week. He was just about the hottest player around prior to Christmas, so unless Patrick Reed aggravates another new set of people, the market and the form book point to this tournament's trends extending through to 2024.
Cases can be made for pretty much every Hero Cup player, but I've narrowed it down a tad and will begin with ROBERT MACINTYRE, who top-scored for his side along with captain Fleetwood.
I doubt anyone was surprised that MacIntyre took to team golf in the way that he did, given his hyper-aggressive playing style and the fact he's been earmarked for Ryder Cup selection since his rookie 2019 campaign. Still, it was important to impress and he did just that, thrashing Alex Noren in the singles to go 3-1-0 for the week.
MacIntyre is a team player at heart, hence his love for shinty, and was disappointed to have been on the losing side. Despite that it was clear that he felt really pleased with his own performance, having admittedly ended an important 2022 campaign somewhat on the back foot for all that he was still competitive for the most part.
Asked what it told him, he replied: "That the work I've been doing over the winter is looking decent. Tee-to-green has been solid. Today it wasn't as good off the tee but it's been good all week.
"Yeah, I've been happy this week. I’ve been driving it well. I’ve been putting it well. I’ve been doing most things really well."
Like Noren, he does make his first trip to Yas Links and that's a bit of a negative, but this former Open champion has a strong seaside pedigree and also boasts a fine record in the Middle East, registering multiple top-10 finishes across all three of the main events that come to Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Hand on heart I'd prefer the event to be returning to the old venue, one he knows, but for all that downside there is so much upside packed into these prices. Remember, at the Italian Open in September he was a 22/1 shot alongside Hatton in a field which featured McIlroy, Hovland and Matt Fitzpatrick. Hatton is half the price here, but Molinari is double it.
That was on the back of a top-10 finish at Wentworth, and the argument is that he's not in the same form this time having missed the cut at the RSM Classic to end 2022. However, he actually hit the ball well in an event which seldom holds any weight as a form guide, and before that he ticked over nicely with a run of good performances.
Perez endured something of an up-and-down 2022 but it ended with a good effort in Dubai, and of course included that dramatic and scarcely believable victory in the Dutch Open.
Played at Bernardus, that's a line of Kyle Phillips form and not the only one he has to offer, as his previous victory came in the Dunhill Links where he again showed a fondness for Kingsbarns.
You'd think Yas Links would be a fine fit then and he suggested as much last year, opening with a round of 66 to lie fourth and still in the mix at halfway before a quiet weekend, at a time when his game had been far more miss than hit.
These Rolex Series events really do remain the domain of the best players on the circuit for the most part and that's what Fox was in 2022. Indeed I think it's worth revisiting just what he achieved to make the case for him here: two wins, three seconds, two thirds, a fourth, and two more top-10 finishes from 21 starts on the DP World Tour.
Both victories support the view that exposed courses are best for him, one coming at Al Hamra in Ras al Khaimah and the other in Scotland, and he'd have won at the Phillips-designed Bernardus but for some absurd scenes on the 18th hole albeit he had himself to blame for some of them.
Larrazabal won twice last year to take his tally to seven, the pick of them in this event when not for the first or indeed the last time he took out some mighty names – in this case McIlroy and Phil Mickelson.
2022 was the first season in which he managed more than one victory and it's on that basis that he was extremely disappointed to be overlooked for the Hero Cup, as were all the Spanish players including Ryder Cup hopefuls Adrian Otaegui and Adri Arnaus.
That's the sort of thing that could conjure a response from Larrazabal, one of the toughest operators on the circuit, and where better than in an event he not only won in 2014, but almost won again three years later, and then contended when sixth in 2019.
All three performances came at Abu Dhabi GC but he was 25th here at Yas Links on his first go and, just as is the case now, he'd ended the previous campaign in largely poor form.
That's always a worry but less so with Larrazabal, an enigmatic sort who struggles off the tee but is a wizard around the greens, the kind of formula which really seemed to work for some of those who finished on the heels of Pieters 12 months ago.
He's far from certain to play well but just as he felt he deserved more respect from those picking the teams for the Hero Cup, I feel he deserves more from the market.
This is a player who won the Open de France after he'd shot 82 in the final round a week earlier, and it won't surprise me whatsoever if he's back to his best on his return.
Posted at 1750 GMT on 16/01/23
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