After a four-month hiatus, The European Tour makes its return with the Austrian Open (2 a.m. ET on Thursday).
Diamond Country Club, which is about an hour outside of Vienna, has hosted this event each season since 2010 except for last year, when the tournament was dropped from the schedule.
The most recent iteration of this tournament was the Shot Clock Masters in 2018 where players were given a strict time limit for each stroke. Despite positive reviews, the event didn't return last year and those rules do not appear to be in effect this week.
This field is a mix of players with European and Challenge Tour status, making it Europe's version of a PGA TOUR alternate-field event like the Puerto Rico Open. It's a smaller prize pool and a weaker collection of players compared to a normal Euro Tour event.
The Course
Diamond CC is relative long, measuring around 7,450 yards for a par 72. It has a lot of water in play as well as some difficult rough.
Mostly we'll be looking for a complete tee-to-green player. You'll need a good combination of length and accuracy to go along with strong iron play to compete this week.
The prototype for success here has been Joost Luiten. Not only does Luiten have a win here, but he's finished inside the top-10 in all five appearances he's made at Diamond Country Club.
Luiten ranked 16th in driving distance, 33rd in driving accuracy and 21st in Greens in Regulation (GIR) in Europe prior to the hiatus. We'll be looking for players who check all three of those boxes.
The Favorites
Luiten is a deserving favorite at +600 with Thomas Detry right behind him at +700.
Conner Syme drew the most attention from me near the top at +2500.
I was hoping for something in the +3000 range, but that was probably optimistic given his runner-up finish here in 2018. Syme was first in GIR, third in accuracy and 27th in distance on the Euro Tour prior to the shutdown. So he's got the Luiten boxes covered.
I'll keep an eye on him to see if that number gets a little bigger. If not, I'll look to add him live if he gets off to a slow start.
The Mid-Tier
Two names jumped out to me here at +5000.
Both Antoine Rozner and Adrien Saddier were solid from tee to green in the early portion of the European Tour season. Rozner ranks inside the top-25 in both driving categories and is ninth in GIR, while Saddier is top-20 in both categories off the tee and is second behind Syme in GIR.
We'll have to take a bit of a risk that the same form will carry over, but in this type of field, that price is fair for both.
The Longshots
There's not really too much to work with in this section of the board. The players in this range have basically played exclusively on the Challenge Tour in 2020.
The problem with that is that we only have three starts in South Africa to go off of and no stats are available for any of those events. So we're at a bit of a loss for how those results were achieved.
Rhys Enoch (+11000), Santiago Tarrio (+17500) and Aron Zemmer (+30000) all strung together three made cuts, so they were at least consistent, but these fields will be a little better so I'll probably just look at a Top-20 play or a live-bet once I have a round or two of data on what that form may have entailed.
The Austrian Open Card
- Antoine Rozner +5000 (.66 units)
- Adrien Saddier +5000 (.66 units)
Total Stake: 1.32 units
