This week the WGC-Dell Technologies World Match Play starts on Wednesday at the Austin Country Club in Texas. The elite field is made up of the top 64 in the WGC World Rankings who choose to play.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday see the sixteen four-man groups complete, with the round of 16 and quarterfinals on Saturday while Sunday’s finale of semi and final to find the 2022 WGC-Dell Technologies World Match Play champion.
Aggressive putters can excel at the Austin Country Club, heaping pressure on opponents on the Bermuda greens. With the odd pot bunker in fairways and several risk/reward holes, a strategic approach of when to be positive and when to fade the challenge is required.
March 23 – March 27, 2022, at Austin Country Club
Par 71, 7108 Yards
Despite the short lottery style format of eighteen-hole match play that prompts many shocks, there’s become a group of players more adept at match play than others with the sample size growing over the years. There are many logical reasons for this. A major one that springs to my mind is the freeing psychological impact match play golf has on certain players.
As far back as the 1980s, Severiano Ballesteros often seemed unbeatable in the Ryder Cup format when his all-out attacking style meant the odd double or triple bogey only lost one hole, allowing him the freedom to keep firing at pins with no normal downside.
So that group of players the sample size has brought undoubtedly will feature highly amongst potential WGC-Dell Technologies World Match Play winners.
There are several similar traits between Bubba Watson and Seve Ballesteros, both are double Masters champions, for example, both have similar swashbuckling styles of playing the game.
Like I mentioned earlier the ability to keep playing an aggressive brand of golf without the normal threat of double and triple bogeys can be an advantage in the match play format. Certainly, Bubba Watson’s results in this event would indicate he’s ideally suited to this week’s demands.
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Champion in 2018, 4th in 2011 on debut, and four other last 8 finishes during the intervening years suggest the forty-three-year-old from Florida is an event specialist. Turn the clock back a few weeks to the Saudi International saw Watson burgled out of a tournament won by a hole-out eagle on the 72nd hole by Harold Varner III.
After three lackluster weeks on the PGA Tour, this week’s match play is the perfect opportunity for Watson to bounce back and if we consider he played respectably from a poor draw at the Players Championship maybe his recent form isn’t as bad as it looks.
Either way, we are nicely compensated by a cracking price of +7500 with BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review) on Bubba Watson winning a second WGC-Dell Technologies World Match Play.
Golf Pick: Bubba Watson Win (+7500)
Golf Pick: Bubba Watson Top 4 (+1600)
Swedish, Alex Noren has been putting together a solid plethora of forms in recent weeks on the PGA Tour. No doubt the thirty-nine-year-old from Stockholm will be looking forward to returning to the elite top 64 events having missed out on the two recent renewals. He has previously been here at the Austin Country Club in Texas when he was 3rd in 2018 after a quarter-final appearance on debut in 2017.
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Noren is yet to win his first PGA Tour event but it’s only a matter of time for a guy who’s won ten European Tour events. To me, Alex Noren has that no-frills persona like last year’s winner Kevin Kisner and his chances look underrated by the firm’s early pricing. Take the +6000 with BetOnline about Alex Noren amongst your PGA Tour best bets at the WGC-Dell Technologies World Match Play.
Golf Pick: Alex Noren Win (+6000)
Golf Pick: Alex Noren Top 4 (+1400)
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.