Dan Roebuck’s European Tour preview – Avantha Masters

The European Tour heads to India this week for the Avantha Masters, staged for the first time at Jaypee Greens Golf & Spa Resort. The Greg Norman- designed layout hosted the 2008 SAIL Open on the Asian Tour but, aside from that, there is no course form for punters to peruse.

The mixture of Asian Tour and European Tour players makes for a difficult event for odds compilers to price up – and that’s reflected by the fact there are five players all above 20/1 vying for favouritism.

Two of those have to be backed. Ricardo Santos (20/1) and Felipe Aguilar (25/1) are head and shoulders above the rest in terms of current form. Of course the problem with lower grade players is that they don’t hold their form as well as those that populate the top 50 in the world rankings, but that’s not to say Santos and Aguilar cannot be trusted with your hard earned.

The Portuguese, let’s not forget, was the rookie of year in 2012, winning the Madeira Islands Open thanks to a stunning nine under par final round. He is no mug, as recent form figures of 4-22-7-3-9 prove, with two of those top tens coming in high class Gulf events.

Aguilar has a different profile but has just as much chance of winning this week. A Challenge Tour graduate with multiple wins in his home nation of Chile, like Santos he comes into this event off the back of four top-ten finishes, including ninth in Qatar and third in Dubai.

Lastly, Bjorn Akesson has been on shrewdies’ radars since late last year and, after fifth place in the Tshwane Open last time out, where he kept up an impressive putting average, he is worth an interest to run a place again at 50/1.

So it’s Santos, Aguilar and Akesson this week.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.