With the British Masters having concluded on Sunday, Open qualifying taking place on Tuesday, the Scottish Open under way next Thursday and the Open Championship itself after that, it's fair to ask whether this is really the best slot in the calendar for the Made in HimmerLand.
Held last year in September having been moved from May, it seems a shame that we couldn't have come back later in the year and for now remained in the UK, or else paused for breath altogether. Instead, this fabulous tournament risks getting lost a little, its field thinning out quite quickly after the handful of top-tier DP World Tour players who shape the betting.
It is at least of some comfort that three of them are Danish as the search for a home winner continues but at the time of writing it's a Swede, Alex Bjork, who looks set to make his way to the top of the betting. Bjork is playing the best golf of his life and loves HimmerLand so this is easy to understand, but I can't entertain backing a poor driver with one win in five years to his name when he's priced up as the man to beat.
The fact that this dynamite putter happened to putt badly when he produced the best tee-to-green display in the entire field at the Belfry last week should serve as a warning to potential backers rather than encouragement, as should the fact that his best putting display in the past year came during his worst ball-striking week. Coincidence, maybe, but emblematic of someone who finds it hard to put everything together at once.
With Nicolai Hojgaard not especially well suited to this short, exposed course, and brother Rasmus having withdrawn with an injury problem last time, there's a sound case that THORBJORN OLESEN should in fact be heading the betting and I'm more than happy to side with this Ryder Cup hopeful at 20/1 and bigger.
Olesen is not only the most decorated and prolific player at the front of this market, he's also the best in the field on 2023 form – the only other DP World Tour golfer gaining more than two strokes on the field on average is Adrian Meronk, with Bjork third, and then a big gap back to the rest headed by another pair of absentees.
That's a good reminder of how shallow this particular field is and Olesen, who is relatively lightly-raced for the season, stands out following two wins in 13 months and what was a strong title defence at the British Masters last week.
Otaegui rediscovered his form when contending in Italy in May despite that course favouring bigger hitters, and he's built on that by finishing 15th in Belgium and runner-up to compatriot Pablo Larrazabal in the Netherlands, where he was the best player in the field from tee to green.
I'd read nothing into a stateside missed cut between these two as he was by no means disgraced at Oak Hill and while initially somewhat concerned over a five-week absence, Otaegui was in action in his homeland last week when finishing second in a decent little Spanish PGA event.
Jordan had been in poor form back then whereas this time around he's found his game, finishing 16th, 22nd, ninth and 34th across his last four starts, latterly at the Belfry where he'd missed the cut in each of the last two years following a solid but unspectacular top 20 on debut.
As a quality driver whose distance off the tee belies his frame, Jordan probably isn't all that well suited to the Brabazon, where so often that club is taken out of his hands. That's somewhat true here in Denmark, but the pay-off is that we have links-like conditions that will suit a former winner of two prestigious amateur titles by the coast in England.
Pepperell ranked 76th of 79 players in strokes-gained off-the-tee at the British Masters, where an average driving performance might've seen him crack the top 15 instead of having to settle for a mid-pack share of 34th.
However, the fact he managed to get round a difficult course without more than a bogey despite those issues says a lot about the rest of his game, as for the second time in three starts he produced a top-notch display with his irons.
Now he comes to a shorter, less punishing course, one at which he was fourth when in poor form back in 2014, long before strokes-gained statistics were able to fill in the blanks in terms of our understanding of DP World Tour events.
Guerrier has since produced stacks of good golf under exposed conditions including at HimmerLand, where he was 14th in 2015. That was his best performance anywhere during a difficult year spent on the Challenge Tour, so it's well worth upgrading.
Something similar happened upon his return six years later as Guerrier's 15th place was his best finish of the year and would remain that way all the way through to October, which means that the only blip on his record came last September. Context is again required: it was missed cut number two in a run of six to end the season.
Having ranked third in the tee-to-green stats in that 2021 performance it's clear that Guerrier likes this course, and I've been generally impressed with the state of his game. Even last week, when missing the cut, he did well to shoot a second-round 70, 17th among a field of 154, and only just failed to advance to Saturday's third round.
Having graduated in fifth place on the Challenge Tour last season, Lindberg had been a bit of a disappointment until finding something like his best golf again with 12th place under exposed, familiar conditions at Bernardus in the Netherlands.
Although he went on to miss his next two cuts, Lindberg proved that his KLM Open display was no flash in the pan with a staying-on top 20 in Munich, which he this time backed up with 23rd place at the Belfry in a considerably better field than this one.
Four times in five starts now he's driven the ball to an extremely high standard, the only exception when that club was often taken out of his hands in his native Sweden, while we saw some improvements in his approach play to rank 27th last week – this vital department is the one in which he'd looked lost until recently.
Most likely is that he regresses rather than takes another step forward but the latter is not impossible during what had already been a good year for his fellow graduates before Daniel Hillier's exceptional display at the Belfy.
With McKibbin and Matthew Baldwin already winners the 2023 intake are well ahead of the curve and Lindberg, twice a winner elsewhere in Denmark and with plenty of experience of this course, could spring a surprise at enormous odds under familiar conditions.
Posted at 1900 BST on 03/07/23
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