I can't recall seeing a market quite like this week's Honma Hong Kong Open, where there are six players priced between 6/1 and 16/1, and the seventh man can be backed at 40/1. That void between sixth and seventh is, within the parameters of my flawed memory recall, unprecedented, and it hints at a belief that we'll be in for a high-profile winner at the course once known simply as Fanling.

On the one hand, the market is perfectly understandable. Patrick Reed, Tommy Fleetwood and Sergio Garcia are world-class players; Rafa Cabrera Bello, Matthew Fitzpatrick and Lucas Bjerregaard are not that far behind. All have form at the course, all have played well in fairly recent memory and all were in Dubai last week, testament to their achievements in 2018. There have been high-profile winners here in the past, too, most recently Justin Rose but before him Rory McIlroy, Ian Poulter, Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington.

And, perhaps crucially, the rest are simply not (yet) in the same league. Marcus Kinhult is highly promising but remains in search of his first win, and the presence of Marcus Fraser alongside him inside the betting's top 10 tells you plenty. Fraser, verifiable course specialist though he may well be, has always been hard to get over the line and he was three-times the price and more to beat an inferior field in Malaysia when last successful.

All of that makes the case for any one of The Six quite straightforward to make, but let's check the negatives first.

Fleetwood has been on the go since winning in January and, for all his brilliance, built on consistency, he's not prolific just yet. That may come but he was emotionally exhausted at the end of a vain pursuit of back-to-back Race To Dubai titles and this could come too soon, even if his performance in Hong Kong two years ago was a key part of his transformation from wasted talent to world-class Ryder Cup star.