Ben Coley's golf betting tips: Challenge Tour Grand Final preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: Challenge Tour Grand Final

4pts e.w. Angel Ayora at 18/1 (Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5)

2pts e.w. Lucas Bjerregaard at 28/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5)

1pt e.w. Mikael Lindberg at 66/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5)

1pt e.w. Joel Moscatel at 100/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5)

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You'd think the Rolex Challenge Tour Grand Final (supported by the R&A) would lend itself to trends: established commonalities between champions of an event which is about much more than one trophy. The dynamics, after all, are constant. The idea of this tournament isn't so much to crown an individual champion, but to provide the finality you'd expect when arriving at the destination of the Road to Mallorca.

A grand total of 46 players will tee off at Club de Golf Alcanada and come the end of the tournament, the top 22 on the season-long points race will graduate to the DP World Tour. The identities of around half are known already and while each player in this field can mathematically reach the promised land, the reality is that there won't be many ins and outs. Last week, three DP World Tour players salvaged their cards in Korea, and history dictates that a similar number would be a fair guess at how many move from out to in here in Spain.

• Although 20 cards are available via the Road to Mallorca, two players (Robin Williams and Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen) have earned superior DP World Tour status for 2025. As a result, their Challenge Tour-category cards go to those ranked 21st and 22nd and the Grand Final field size increases to 47. Williams elected not to play, reducing it to 46.

Nicolai von Dellinghausen is the man on the bubble in 22nd and his advantage over 23rd-placed Jamie Rutherford is tiny: 2.52 points, which equates to about two places low down on the Grand Final leaderboard. There is then much to play for and that's without dwelling on whether John Parry or Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen or somebody else altogether will cop the season-long prize. So, to those trends...

Since 2011, all bar one (12/13) winner of this event had already won on the Challenge Tour that year. But wait a minute! From 2001 to 2010, all 10 winners were doing so for the very first time that year. Back to square one.

From 2006 to 2022, just one winner had started the week ranked outside the top 20. But wait a minute! Every one of the top six in 2023 ranked outside the top 20 before the event began, including Marco Penge who, by way of coincidence, was one of those card-saving DP World Tour members last week. Back to square... one and a half?

Clearly, there's a potential advantage for those who've got their cards sewn up already and are able to focus on what's a difficult enough test as it is, Alcanada typically playing as one of if not the toughest course on the entire schedule. When it comes to finding the winner, this is the angle I like best, my suggestion being that Penge (who had at least won recently) was if not an outlier, then someone doing something that is very difficult.

The toughness of Alcanda comes from the fact that it is exposed to strong winds, lying as it does on the northeastern coast of Mallorca. Not even the generosity of four par-fives and a short par-four can prevent scores from getting out of hand, such as in the first round last year when there were more rounds of 80-plus than there were sub-70s.

Course winners before powerhouse Penge were Nathan Kimsey and Francesco Laporta, neither anything like as long off the tee, so profiling champions is no easier than establishing robust trends. When the wind is such a factor you simply have to be on it, and when greens are this hard to hit, you certainly need to be managing your game, missing in the correct spots, and remaining patient.

In fact if there is one way to link these three it is their work around the greens. Kimsey (2023) and Laporta (2024) have over the last couple of years ranked among the best on the DP World Tour in this regard and while Penge hasn't, he did talk about how good he'd been during his runaway win, while also alluding to the fact he had to hit plenty of irons off tees on the front nine in particular.

But whereas all three of these players battled those strong winds which make this such an engrossing spectacle, the forecast for this week is for little more than a breeze until Sunday, when it'll get up a touch. Alcanada seems sure to play easier than it has tended to, a belief strengthened by recent rainfall to soften up the greens and little in the way of rough.

Penge might've been an outlier from a Road to Mallorca point of view, but when it comes to how to score here, he might now be the blueprint.

Angel ready to shine

At 18/1, we're able to back another powerful, young player, with a recent win to his name, just like Penge. And he happens to be from Spain, too, so there's a lot to like about the potentially top-class ANGEL AYORA.

In his first full year as a professional, Ayora has got better and better and after a good start on the Challenge Tour, lately he's been on fire. In his last seven starts he has a win, a second, and two other top-fives.

The most recent of these came last time out in China, where he finished runner-up, and again this was evidence of a teenager who learns quickly. Just a week earlier he'd made his first start in the country, finishing a respectable 28th before contending throughout the next event.

Since then he's been back at his base in San Roque, practicing by the coast, and having grown up in Malaga this test should hold no fears whatsoever. In fact, he's even been to Mallorca and won a good amateur event at Pula, the former DP World Tour venue which was always known to favour those who can play in the wind and unearthed an Open champion in the shape of Darren Clarke.

I'd still prefer the anticipated calmer conditions given that Ayora remains lacking in experience but he showed plenty of pragmatism when plotting his way to victory in Poland, his 13-under total there the sort of number I see winning this.

A while before that he'd been ninth in the Challenge de Cadiz, played at an exposed par 72 by the sea where big-hitters were favoured, so everything looks to have come right for him after that performance last time out.

Ayora looks the chief threat to Parry and Neergaard-Petersen, who head the betting. Both have won three times this year but the latter is playing his sixth event running and, after a poor finish in Korea, might just have done enough for now. That gives the edge to Parry, second here two years ago, though he certainly would've preferred a windier forecast.

Jack Senior has six top-10s on the DP World Tour and four of them came in Spain, while von Dellinghausen has been placed in both Tenerife and Mallorca at that level. Both these quality iron players are respected, but the class of LUCAS BJERREGAARD is just preferred.

It's been a strange year for me on the Challenge Tour, with one nice but admittedly fortuitous winner set against a host of near-misses, but perhaps the most pleasing part has been being on the right side of a few players who are now here in Mallorca. Bjerregaard is one example, as it's only a few months since we were on him at 200/1 for a run-of-the-mill event in his homeland.

Unfortunately you don't get paid out for that alone but having also been on John Axelsen at 200/1 and a couple of other players in this field at similar odds, at the very least I can look back on these previews and feel readers were getting value together with what's a small Challenge Tour profit for now.

Perhaps Bjerregaard can weigh us in to cap things off as the blend of coastal golf where power should count for plenty is ideal for a big-hitting player whose two DP World Tour wins were both achieved under similar conditions, on exposed courses, at this time of year, in Scotland and Portugal.

A former winner in Spain on the Nordic Golf League, Bjerregaard arrives with his game in really good shape. Only once recently has he taken a false step, that from a bad draw in the Swiss Challenge, and two solid performances in China set him up perfectly to get the job done here in Mallorca, with 11th last time out set to be much better until a sloppy finish.

At 21st in the standings, there's a clear argument that he could be looking over his shoulder but I thought Ricardo Gouveia's comments on Sunday were revealing. The Portuguese, who finished third at a huge price in the Genesis Championship to save his card, said that he didn't think about his Race to Dubai predicament until the 72nd hole and in fact benefited enormously from being able to focus on winning the tournament.

Hopefully that's a mindset the equally experienced and even more classy Bjerregaard can adopt. He has the game to do what Penge did and get on the front foot, his blend of power and a nifty short-game a potentially dream formula, and if he can club down on a few tees then all the better.

Swede success for powerhouse Lindberg

Felix Mory is playing nicely again and this will be his third try at the Grand Final, always from the outside looking in. Mid-pack on both previous Alcanada starts, I can see him going well but he's a bit limited in scope versus some of these and I'm not sure 40/1 is giving much away.

Wilco Nienaber was more tempting but he's been disappointing when selected on three occasions recently and doesn't have Bjerregaard's touch, so I'll go further down the market to find MIKAEL LINDBERG.

At the beginning of the year I argued that Lindberg would likely establish himself as one of the best players on this circuit when selecting him at 100/1 and he's done that, winning a week letter (to my aggravation), then later missing out on a golden opportunity to double up (to his own).

It seemed to take him a little while to recover from that capitulation on home soil but after a good second round on an unsuitable course in Italy, he stepped up a little in China, first finishing well for 45th and then starting brightly only to fall to 22nd last time.

More is clearly needed as these were limited fields padded out with local players who aren't up to Challenge Tour standard, but Lindberg has course experience having been a decent 18th in 2022, and I'm certainly of the view that conditions will suit much better this time round.

One of the longest and best drivers on the circuit, the Swede has a first, second, third and fifth this year so while volatile, his best golf is more than good enough. In this small field, following flashes of encouragement, the general 66/1 looks generous and he's a bet at 50s too.

Finally, JOEL MOSCATEL looks value at similar odds, with some firms offering three-figure prices at the time of writing.

A two-time winner this season, Moscatel has taken his chances when they've arrived, first making birdie on the 72nd hole to deny Tapio Pulkkanen (and us) in the Challenge de Espana, then winning a play-off against home favourite Benjamin Hebert in France.

Zero top-10 finishes since that second victory in June explain the price but since a strong start to the Open de Espana, Moscatel has finished 28th and 34th in China, a second-round 64 last time out enough to see him enter the weekend in fifth place.

Long enough off the tee and with his game improving, he has to be of some interest on home soil, having spoken about how he's got the better of nerves when playing in Spain. Winning the Challenge de Espana was a massive thing for him and a double here in the Grand Final is far from out of the question if the best version of Moscatel turns up.

There were two Spaniards in the top five there, another in the Challenge de Cadiz, and the one-two-three in the Open de Espana were all from the home team. Jorge Campillo could easily have added another win for Spain in Andalucia a couple of weeks ago and more so than just about any other golfing nation, they seem to rise to the occasion on home soil.

At the prices, I'm happy to have both Spanish players on-side before they take the step up in class.

Posted at 0930 BST on 28/10/24

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