Last week's Italian Open threw up a finish fitting of an event which swapped a big course in Rome for a slightly silly one elsewhere, as Marcel Siem somehow denied Tom McKibbin just when it looked like the latter had stolen it. McKibbin was a 500/1 chance when he finished his round on Sunday but ended up twice being turned over at odds-on, once in regulation and then again in the play-off.
It was chaos from start to finish, albeit in golf's understated way, as Adriatic Golf Club didn't play to the original scorecard put forward by the DP World Tour. Not that it mattered where my pathetic attempt was concerned, but still – the details do. There's enough guesswork involved without being mislead as to whether a hole will be a par-four or a par-five.
Pieters finished runner-up at 20s in the Soudal Open when last playing on this circuit and this is a stronger field, but equally true is that the course is so much better for him. In Belgium, he lost strokes off the tee and while that's because he wasn't at his best in that department, my view is that Rinkven makes it much harder for him to be.
Around here, he's been dominant with driver in two visits since withdrawing way back in 2015. Upon his return in 2021 a shocking short-game week confined him to 29th, but better in that department helped him to finish a luckless runner-up two years ago, when Haotong Li's performance wasn't far off that of Siem on Sunday.
Luiten produced his best ball-striking numbers in 18 months in what is his home event, but his chipping is always a problem and he was also unable to sustain the putting improvements he's shown since March.
The positives are easy to find in his long-game, however, as his approach work has improved throughout his last five starts and his driving has really never been better than it has since the Tour landed in Europe in May.
Luiten now returns to Eichenried where, as touched upon, he has some demons to banish. Perhaps that'll be a problem, but this is a player who has gone through all kinds of frustrations before, firstly with injuries, then with a host of close calls before his breakthrough in 2011.
Whenever he does that this prodigious driver and quality iron player is a big threat and Eichenried is a course he likes, having made four cuts from five and struck it beautifully when 14th last year.
In fact, this was the event in which he made his DP World Tour debut back in 2017, when still an amateur, and his opening 69 offered a hint as to what he might be capable of in years to come. For now, we've not seen him scratch the surface of his potential even if he did putt well enough to win at Fairmont St Andrews a couple of years ago.
More recently, Crocker has gained more than a stroke per round off-the-tee at this course over his measured starts and is up at 1.62 for approaches over the last couple, all of which has generally been undermined by a poor short-game.
Hopefully it holds up this time and there are signs that it might, as Crocker has produced positive putting numbers in each of his last three starts, as well as around-the-green. It was in fact some modest ball-striking by his standards which prevented him from winning in Italy.
Still, third place there followed 23rd in the Netherlands, where his long-game was excellent, and on both occasions he was bang in the mix. It's now three of his last four starts that Crocker has entered the weekend inside the top 10, the exception in Sweden where he missed the cut on the number.
Crucially, this course is so much more suitable on paper than the last three he's played so with confidence building following his best finish in a year, the American seems likely to give his running. That's what he did here last year, when he arrived on the back of a runner-up finish, and I expect him to do so again arriving now after third place on Sunday.
Returning to those correlating courses and the K Club strikes me as the pick. Luiten, Vincent Norrman, Daniel Hillier, Jordan Smith, Rikuya Hoshino, Ryan Fox, Thriston Lawrence all played well there last year having already done so in Germany and it's a shame we've only one recent edition of the Irish Open to go on.
Hillier, Luiten, Richard Bland and a few more help draw ties to the Belfry, Hillier in particular, while Mount Juliet is another which could help via the likes of Fox, Lawrence, Adrian Meronk and even Rikard Karlberg, who doesn't exactly pop up often but always seemed to prefer a parkland golf course like these and the one he won at in Italy.
I've tried to find something out of left-field by following that path but it keeps leading me back to MARTIN KAYMER, although he's actually priced as a bit of a curveball at 66/1 and bigger, with a best of 80s available for seven places at the time of writing.
Third at the Belfry and fifth at the K Club in the past, the thing with Kaymer is that we don't need evidence that Eichenried suits, because he won here in 2008 and was second in 2021, when I'd made him my headline selection at 28/1 in a field featuring eventual champion Viktor Hovland.
Three years on and it's hard to know how far he is from that sort of level, but injuries have been a problem and only in advance of the US Open did he reveal that he's back to full fitness after a prolonged struggle, occasionally forced to sit out LIV Golf events despite being a team captain.
He started to turn things around in Singapore when second after round one, then made the cut in the US PGA, before adding ninth in Houston – his very first top-10 finish on the Saudi-funded circuit, which he joined two years ago. After that, he showed up well for two rounds in the US Open, where his trademark approach play was excellent.
That golf course just won't have played to his strengths at all so starting well and finishing with an under-par final round is enough for me to pull the trigger at Eichenried, where he was 12th last year when not in great form before going on to finish eighth at the Belfry.
It's not just that Green has been shooting the odd low one, it's that all aspects of his game have fired separately over the past month – during this spell of mid-pack finishes he's ranked inside the top 10 in strokes-gained off-the-tee, approach, around-the-green and putting at one time or another.
Last week he put both long-game pieces together but endured a shocker around the greens, a department which is inherently volatile, and it was at least encouraging to see him putt better. On his day, Green is among the very best on the DP World Tour, which is why we can mark up 39th in Sweden and 23rd in the Netherlands where he ranked near last.
Further support and information can be found at and .