Ben Coley's golf betting tips: Dimension Data Pro-Am preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: Dimension Data Pro-Am

4pts e.w. Laurie Canter at 16/1 (Coral 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

3pts e.w. Jayden Schaper at 16/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

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The Dimension Data Pro-Am is one of the most prestigious events on the Sunshine Tour calendar, one won by Lee Westwood, Darren Clarke, Retief Goosen and Trevor Immelman in a four-year run of world-class champions at the beginning of the century.

As times changed it lost much of its international appeal, despite the odd overseas flourish including Open champion Paul Lawrie's winning visit in 2017, and it's taken on a new kind of meaning since the Challenge Tour came along to co-sanction it back in 2020.

Rather than being the destination it is now part of the journey for Sunshine Tour players in particular, who as I've written over the last two weeks have this golden opportunity to progress in their careers. So far, with winners from Wales and, gallingly, from Sweden, they have largely failed to take advantage.

That opportunity remains, but there is a complicating factor in this event in particular, one exacerbated this year by a brief pause in the DP World Tour schedule: the presence of a handful of players who are dropping down in grade, including one who arrives from the latest LIV Golf event in Las Vegas where he earned another $200,000 or so as one of the travelling reserves, about four times the money for finishing first here.

My feelings on the entry list are mixed and that's not just to do with LAURIE CANTER, able to play free from the financial pressures many at this level face having earned almost $6million in LIV prize money alone over the past couple of years.

To a lesser extent the same applies to those coming from the European Tour and while they've all earned their right to be here, it's likely their presence has a material impact on the outcome of the tournament and ultimately takes away a lot of what is meant to be up for grabs, as well as denying some players the chance to even tee off.

One look at the list of winners since this event became co-sanctioned underlines the point.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout won in 2020, soon after he'd lost a play-off for the lucrative Dubai Desert Classic. In 2021, Wilco Nienaber captured his first pro title while he had conditional DP World Tour status and would go on to play with some success on the PGA Tour that summer. Last year, Oliver Bekker dominated at a time when he was flying high on the Race to Dubai.

Only Alexander Knappe has managed to fend off those class-dropping class acts and that was with some help, as tournament favourite Dean Burmester hit his very first shot out of bounds, made a triple-bogey seven, and went on to lose by one. We really ought to be looking at four renewals and four champions who were neither Sunshine nor Challenge Tour members by the strictest definition.

They're not only the better players, but their careers are unlikely to change much if at all with victory. They can play with freedom, a luxury most do not have, and that is a potentially significant advantage.

There's no doubt at all that Canter and Zander Lombard are the two standout golfers in this field. Canter has finished 15th and 21st in two LIV Golf events after an admittedly lacklustre start to the year on the DP World Tour, where Lombard is one of the best players yet to have won. He's contended to some degree in all five starts so far in 2024 and is up to a career-high 100th in the world.

Lombard though will be teeing it up for the sixth week running and all that time in the spotlight must surely take its toll at some point, so at five or six points bigger preference has to be for Canter, who could easily have elected to put his feet up and prepare for next week's Kenya Open instead.

He was eighth in this event in 2017 and 14th on his return two years later, both well before his started to fulfil the potential he'd shown back in 2010 when capturing the South African Amateur Championship at East London. This gives him a course form edge over the favourite, too.

Third at Leopard Creek last time he visited the country and second to Louis Oosthuizen in Mauritius before Christmas, he will be more than comfortable and having played in fields featuring the likes of Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Dustin Johnson so far in 2024, he really ought to be a major factor returning to the Challenge Tour for the first time since the early months of 2020.

Canter does have to cope with the long flight from Las Vegas via London but left the US in plenty of time, the latest LIV Golf event having finished on Saturday, and that's more than factored into his price.

Ryan van Velzen is promising and bang in-form, Nienaber is a course winner, but right now Canter is a significantly better golfer than both of them. He's a bet at double-figure prices and I find the standout 16/1 to be extremely generous about arguably the best player teeing it up in this second-tier event.

Side with promising Schaper

While Canter boasts much of the standout form, JAYDEN SCHAPER has more potential than just about anyone in this field and I'd rate him the third most likely winner based on his ability right now. While the opening 20/1 has been taken, I'm happy to side with him at a general 16s.

Schaper is an absolute star in the making, probably more so than Nienaber whose extraordinary talents have earned so much attention.

Former winner of the Junior Players, Schaper was a gun on the competitive amateur circuits both at home and in the US, and his professional career is going nicely, this having the look of his breakout season. He's played eight events so far, making seven cuts, and the first four of them resulted in top-10 finishes.

Only on that silly golf course in Bahrain has he struggled and last week's 24th in Qatar, where he gained strokes in all departments, is very strong form at this level. He was 16th in a PGA Tour event won by Vincent Norrman last summer and while he is destined for bigger and better things in time, he's already operating at a very high level in the context of this field.

Schaper also has plenty of experience across all three courses used here at Fancourt, dating right back to winning the 2017 DiData Junior Open. Since turning professional, he's been 42nd as an 18-year-old when he sat 10th with a round to go, climbed to 27th aged 19, and then finished 24th at the age of 20 when one bad round cost him.

Having missed last year's renewal he returns still only 22 and far more established, so the only real issue is that he's yet to win a professional title. That's not a great concern and having grown up playing out of Benoni, an inland links course, these three layouts at Fancourt, two of them quite well exposed, are certainly not going to be an excuse.

Nienaber's sole professional win came here in 2021 and he's since finished 10th and ninth, despite being thee-over through two holes of his title defence, so his chance is obvious. Unfortunately, that course form has kept his price quite a bit below where I think it should be.

Ultimately, Schaper is comfortably outperforming him at the moment and if you want evidence of that, he's beaten Nienaber in each of the last eight tournaments they've both played in. Seldom has it been particularly close and with Nienaber in the midst of a putting crisis, I couldn't go any lower than 20s despite being a big believer in a player with a bright future of his own.

Jarvis rated best of the rest

Casey Jarvis is another big talent who has a DP World Tour card thanks to a strong rookie campaign on the Challenge Tour, which featured a win in Austria before he gamely climbed from near last to finish seventh in the Grand Final.

Seventh again at Leopard Creek where he was the 36-hole leader, we should probably expect him to get back into that sort of form after an educational month in the Middle East, where he made two cuts and wasn't disgraced generally.

Jarvis was ninth here last year after a slow start to the season, shooting 64 in round one, following it with a 76, then firing rounds of 69 and 67 to climb back inside the top 10. One bad day prevented him from giving Bekker plenty to think about, and like Schaper he won a junior title here not so long ago so he's got plenty more experience at Fancourt.

He's preferred to Alex Levy, who also has a ninth place to his name in this event, albeit from back in 2013. However, I didn't want to go lower than 40s with Jarvis given that there are some question marks as to the overall state of his game, and with all bar one bookmaker going shorter than that he's left out of the staking plan.

We saw how much grades matter when Mikael Lindberg won on Sunday, which was hard to swallow having put him up at 125/1 the week before. Concerns over the extent to which he could put his driving prowess to use were the reason for leaving him out, as well as a sluggish start at Zebula, but ultimately he confirmed that we should take a favourable view of anyone who is dropping down.

There are around a dozen other players who either have DP World Tour cards or did until recently, and it's they who I expect will produce the winner, but I'll certainly be keeping an eye on another youngster, Joshua Berry, who did play in Qatar last week and has DP World Tour status having come through Qualifying School.

Although he missed the cut at Doha, Berry's ball-striking was excellent and prior to that, he'd flown home with a best-of-the-week 61 for 12th place in the SDC Open. He's learning on the job and we're learning about him, too, after that fabulous effort at Q School, but bookmakers are taking a bit of a chance at 200s for all that 18-year-olds almost always need a bit more time to figure things out.

Others of some interest include Craig Howie and Lars van Meijel, who are what they are but have plenty of good form in this event, and Hennie O'Kennedy, who was third in it last year, 19th in 2022, and found a welcome step forward in Cape Town which has not gone unnoticed as he attracts some early support.

I'll state again that Jovan Rebula might pick up a small title this year but the Dimension Data Pro-Am is a deal and I anticipate a leaderboard to suit, headed perhaps by a player who may not worry too much about the wider implications along the Challenge Tour's Road to Mallorca.

Posted at 1700 GMT on 13/02/24

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