Preview and best bets for the Northern Ireland Open

Golf betting tips: Northern Ireland Open

3pts e.w. Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen at 25/1 (bet365 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

1pt e.w. Jack Senior at 70/1 (William Hill 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

1pt e.w. Bjorn Akesson at 80/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

1pt e.w. Lauri Ruuska at 100/1 (William Hill 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

1pt e.w. Jack McDonald at 150/1 (William Hill 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

Sky Bet odds | Paddy Power | Betfair Sportsbook

With no official DP World Tour event until the middle of August, it’s time for another crack at one of my favourites, its feeder tour, where another young star in the making emerged last week.

Frank Kennedy’s victory in the Adamstal Open went under the radar given the timing, but it shouldn’t have. Kennedy was born in October 2005 yet is a winner already. The 18-year-old has been pro for little more than a year and who knows how much he can go on to achieve in the sport.

For now, no doubt his target will be to go on and earn a DP World Tour card for 2025, when Tom McKibbin will hope to be taking the next step in his own career on the PGA Tour. McKibbin, only 21 himself, is well on course to achieve that goal despite missing the cut last week, and now comes to Galgorm Castle to host the Northern Ireland Open.

I’m not sure why he isn’t playing, to be honest. Given the gap in the schedule and his affiliation with the course, it would’ve made some sense to accept an invite, not least because he’s there for Tuesday’s pro-am. Perhaps he feels it would be wrong to take away prize money from those who need it, or perhaps he doesn’t need to mess with a formula that’s clearly working.

Without him, it’s 20/1 the field and there are few surprises. I wouldn’t have made in-form Jamie Rutherford favourite though, which bet365 did, and it feels like the right time to row in with RASMUS NEERGAARD-PETERSEN.

Top of the Road to Mallorca standings despite having played one less event than the only two who are close to him, this young Dane looks ready for the inevitable rise in grade which will come later this year if not sooner.

His position owes much to two wins in three starts, first in India then the UAE, and any concerns that he might stall with battlefield promotion on the line were put to bed immediately with second place in Spain. Yes, he bogeyed the final hole, but it ranked second toughest that day and was a bit of a brute.

Since then, he’s been sixth, 17th and 22nd in three Challenge Tour starts mixed in with form figures of 51-MC up at DP World Tour level. Even those performances carried promise, his driving exceptional at times and a Friday rally in the Netherlands almost enough to see him make the weekend.

Neegaard-Petersen though has doubled in price from where he was on the Challenge Tour in May and while perhaps that reflects two slightly lesser performances, the margin between finishing 17th and contending can be paper-thin. He’s probably in the same kind of form and definitely remains the man they all have to beat.

Crucially, this will be the first time in his young career that he plays the course for a second time. Not only that, but he finished 12th in the ISPS Handa World Invitational last August, a DP World Tour event, putting poorly. A reproduction of that and he might take some stopping.

John Parry was fourth in the same event and is a solid yardstick, whereas Angel Ayora makes his course debut, Felix Mory was poor on his, and Wilco Nienaber putted the lights out the one time he cut Galgorm Castle down to size. This tight, parkland course is a better fit for shorter, straighter hitters like Daniel Brown and Ewen Ferguson, the last two winners here.

I’m more interested in those at bigger prices and Cedric Gugler, the newest Challenge Tour member, is fascinating. The young Swiss has earned his own battlefield promotion from the ProGolf Tour where his last three starts read 1-2-1, including rounds of 61-61-62 to win the Polish Open by seven shots last time out.

Having made the cut in the European Masters won by Ludvig Aberg last September, his first three rounds sub-70, there are signs that Gugler might be able to compete straight out of the gate. However, his Challenge Tour record so far amounts to nothing much and while three-figure prices are more tempting than the first show of 40/1, the rise in grade will probably find him out.

Ryan Evans is another taking a similar step, the former DP World Tour contender having been generally impressive over the past 12 months on the Clutch Golf Tour. His results at Galgorm Castle read 25-13-20, latterly in a much better field than this one, and top prices of 175/1 might be a touch generous. It’s very difficult to know exactly where he stands at the moment.

On balance I’d prefer to back a recent Challenge Tour contender who is not only a course winner but who has since played to a high level in the ISPS Handa World Invitational here, JACK SENIOR.

His form has cooled since almost placing for us in Spain back in the spring, but a missed cut in the Vaudreuil Golf Challenge is not a concern as he has always struggled there. Before that, 29th at Pleneuf, similarly quirky, was by far his best effort in eight visits over the past decade or so.

Senior had previously been ninth through 54 holes before fading in Brno so there are signs that he’s not far away, which is really all we need now that he returns to Galgorm Castle, where he won a play-off for the World Invitational five years ago, the field quite well strung out behind him and Matt Baldwin.

Subsequent visits have seen him finish 28th in an Irish Open won by John Catlin at Aaron Rai’s expense, then 22nd, 13th and 24th, all on the DP World Tour, so this is a really happy hunting ground for a player whose two Challenge Tour wins both came in the UK.

Senior is a really good player at this level and anything bigger than 50/1 makes him a value bet with winning potential.

Ruuska can show his class

I’ve written before about the class drop and grades in general, something I feel remains underestimated. Several times already this year, Challenge Tour events have been won by players with DP World Tour membership, and Nicolai von Dellinghausen was close to adding his name to that list in Austria.

He’s prominent in the market again, rightly so, but LAURI RUUSKA was dangled at an enormous 150/1 and that would’ve made him one of the bets of the week. Unsurprisingly, he’s been cut over the past 24 hours, but 80/1 and bigger remains well worth taking.

It’s just two starts since he was 10th in the Italian Open, played by the way on a tight, fiddly, parkland course where Galgorm Castle ambassador McKibbin was runner-up. It might not be the worst guide you’ll find.

Wherever that tournament had taken place though, finishing 10th among far superior players would stand out like a beacon and for Ruuska, there are other indications that he’s playing much better than he was. Since a second-round 65 at the Soudal Open he’s made three cuts in five and he was fourth after round one in the European Open.

Nacho Elvira and Laurie Canter won those events, Marcel Siem the champion in Italy, so he’s been mixing it in better company and might now put that experience to use returning to the Challenge Tour, where he missed a couple of cuts by narrow margins in the Middle East before faring a little better in Spain in May.

Yes, he’ll need much more but a top-10 finish followed by a one-shot missed cut in Germany is precisely that and having seen four fellow Q-School graduates drop down and win Challenge Tour events this year, Ruuska could well be the fifth.

His form at Osteraker, Lumine and PGA Catalunya all correlates with this and he did shoot 68 at Galgorm Castle in a stronger field when last he played it, with his only previous start having come back in 2018, when he wasn’t competitive anywhere.

Open qualifier ready for next step

Ruuska of course won for us in Finland last year, where JACK MCDONALD chased him home, and the Scot is another exciting proposition at massive odds, albeit again he’s been trimmed from an opening 225/1.

The case is largely built around his narrow missed cut in the Open, from a poor set of tee-times and alongside two struggling veterans. That should prove a big boost to his confidence, particularly as it was 10 minutes from home, and his long-game was really good only for the putter to let him down.

The reason I’m drawn to this experience is that last year, Marco Penge, Alex Fitzpatrick and Brandon Robinson Thompson all went from playing in the Open to winning on the Challenge Tour. It felt back then like they’d all had a taste of life at the top and were able to take steps towards it in the immediate aftermath.

They weren’t alone in riding the wave, either. Graeme Robertson went on to win a Tartan Tour event, three of the unheralded Aussies went home and contended, while the two lesser-known South Africans, Martin Rohwer and Kyle Barker, both won on the Sunshine Tour in the months that followed.

McDonald then might just be the next to kick on and he sounded really pleased with how things had gone at Troon.

“I would love to play in these competitions week in, week out,” he told the Daily Record. “After getting a taste of it this week, yeah, I feel as if I’ll be more and more ready to come and do this because I think it’s awesome, and I think the way the course is set up and everything about it is awesome.

“You go through boys’ golf, you get to a wee milestone in the men’s golf and then you feel comfortable there and then you turn pro. It’s all just little milestones. Now I’m 31and I’ve managed to play my first major championship, so I would class that as another little milestone, and hopefully I can build on it.

“I just want to go out there, and I think now especially, even like with John (Dempster) caddying and stuff like that, it just gave me a lot of good things going forward that I can look back on.”

McDonald felt he’d played well and while his form is undeniably patchy, he was 11th three starts ago on the Challenge Tour, close to the top 10 at halfway in Brittany, and of course came through Final Qualifying to earn that Open try in the first place.

As for Galgorm Castle, he was 26th on his sole previous visit back in 2018, one of his best performances of the year, so having shown plenty when runner-up to home favourite Ruuska in Finland last August, he might just have enough about him to defy three-figure prices, which are more than acceptable.

Bjorn again?

Wil Besseling was high on the shortlist but not at 25/1 and shorter so the others I considered were all at big odds and mainly Scandinavian, with Haraldur Magnus and BJORN AKESSON the most interesting.

Magnus has played well on both visits, particularly enjoying Galgorm Castle rather than the other course which co-hosted the DP World Tour event in which he putted poorly but still finished just outside the top 20.

With some good recent efforts to his name the Icelandic pro could get involved but Akesson has been doing that regularly without putting four rounds together, and he looks a potential danger with plenty of winning form to his name.

Akesson has picked up four titles since last June and while the one he won for us earlier this year was fortuitous, with the final round abandoned, the way he rallied under difficult conditions to lead at the end of round three was impressive.

He has endured some difficult Sundays since but has been close, including last week. Before that he was three clear at halfway in France and said: “My game is feeling really good at the moment, and I have done a lot of work on my putting. I have started lining the ball up which has made a big difference and it’s good to see the ball dropping this year.”

It interested me that he talked there about how tight, difficult courses suit because he’s accurate off the tee and I’m hopeful he’ll take to Galgorm Castle. He owes us nothing and having only played poorly once this year, I’m hopeful he’ll make the cut and stick around if another winning opportunity arises.

Posted at 1000 BST on 24/07/24

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