Another week, another globe-trotting adventure on the European Tour, another chance for Thomas Pieters to win - without the help of a partner - for the first time since 2016.

With the exception of a missed cut in Qatar last time, Pieters has been playing superbly ever since he threatened to pinch the PGA Championship last August. But his reward for this, bar some healthy cheques and useful world ranking points, has been the World Cup. Solo silverware remains elusive.

Jorge Campillo and Mike Lorenzo Vera, the next two in the market, are yet to win at this level between them. Both have come close, tearfully so in the case of the Frenchman. Campillo, meanwhile, arrives on a brace of runner-up finishes, during each of which he looked like striking, first at the 225th and then at the 226th attempt.

If it seems unnecessary to highlight the lowlights, the point is to underline the fact that we are, again, dealing with a collection of market leaders who come with serious risks attached. And, when you consider that the Maybank Championship Malaysia has thrown up three surprise winners, it's surely time to get creative.

One year ago, Shubhankar Sharma landed an almighty gamble with one of the best final rounds of the season, and the formula for finding him was straightforward. The Indian has the class and the course form - more than that, he is straightforwardly suited to Saujana - yet a run of so-so golf in the Middle East had put people off the scent.

This comparatively short, tree-lined layout, which needs attention but does yield opportunities, is a very different test to those in the Gulf, and while the schedule means Saujana no longer follows on the heels of the Middle East swing, it still allows us to put the theory of relativity to the test.

Aaron Rai, then, gets the headline vote on what's in fact his first appearance here.

Other than the absence of a previous, positive course spin, Rai holds much in common with Sharma. Both are young, immensely talented, straight-hitting players who appear already to favour old-fashioned courses; both have played well in Hong Kong and, as Sharma had before him, Rai ended last year with a win.

That it came in Hong Kong, where so many Saujana contenders of the past boast strong records and where Sam Brazel won before playing so well here, is of particular significance. These are courses on which hitting fairways and finding the middle of greens carries definite value.

Rai missed the cut in Qatar last time, a little disconcerting given that he'd played well there in 2018, but the preparation was very different. It included a trip to Mexico for the WGC, which in turn came after a one-week trip to Australia, and perhaps he was in need of a weekend off following a busy start to the year.

The decision to skip Kenya last week will not have come easy - Rai's mother is Kenyan, and he won the event on the Challenge Tour two years ago - but it can pay dividends as he arrives in Malaysia fresh and ready to continue on what's generally been a sharp upward curve.

Anyone who has listed to this week's , on which I featured, is entitled to expect Ryan Fox's name to feature next.

The New Zealander is back from a break having played seven weeks in a row, a stretch which included his European Tour breakthrough and a very solid share of 11th back on home soil a fortnight later. In between, he joined Rai in the field for the WGC-Mexico. He needed a rest.

Fox was third here last year, at the time his best finish on the Tour, and it included the rarest of birds on the first hole during round three. He did very little wrong as Sharma ran the table and returns having ticked off the next job on his list.

Ultimately, he looks short enough to my eye having looked through the market in greater detail, but if you do want one from the top of the betting it perhaps ought to be him. Alex Bjork, who has been hitting the ball as well as ever and has all the right correlating form, is also worth considering.

However, I prefer the classy Pablo Larrazabal, who in eight starts in Malaysia is yet to finish worse than 30th.

Here at Saujana, where his shot-making is an asset and his creative mind is nurtured, Larrazabal's form reads 29-3 and he's ranked seventh and fourth for greens, having also topped the all-around stats last year.

That's a level of comfort which suggests he can be a factor at a generous price for one so decorated compared to many of these, and the golf he played over the weekend 12 months ago was nothing short of world-class.

Slow starts have cost Larrazabal on both visits and that was the story in Qatar last time, as he climbed 75 places on the leaderboard from Friday to Sunday. However, a closing 66 puts him in good shape for a return to familiar terrain and having arrived in Malaysia on Saturday, he'll be raring to go.