Andalucia Valderrama Masters The European Tour heads to Spain for this week’s Andalucia Valderrama Masters with the Race to Dubai firmly on the majority of the players’ minds. The notorious course in Sotogrande is often referred to as the European Tour’s spiritual home given its links with Seve Ballesteros and the Ryder Cup, and this is a layout that has stood the test of time. Scoring around here has always been brutal. Fairways are like bowling alleys and the greens are minuscule. Simply put, Valderrama has always favoured an accurate player, and as a result, we have seen Sergio Garcia - the ball striking extraordinaire - dominate at this venue. Indeed, the Spaniard has won here twice, but more impressively he has only finished outside of the top-10 once in 13 attempts. It’s a remarkable record, so it’s of no surprise to see the Ryder Cup star as the heavy favourite to land his 15th European Tour title. This is a fairly poor field for a European Tour event. It falls at an awkward time on the schedule, right at the end of a good stretch of events with a WGC next week, and for most, this is an easy pass. Why would you want to play a course that will likely beat you up and knock your confidence before we head into the final stretch of the Race to Dubai? Instead, this is a vital event for the players that find themselves battling to keep their Tour Cards or even the players that are trying to advance to the Turkish Airlines Open – the lucrative Rolex Series event that kicks off the three-event season finale. Player Watch Sergio Garcia: Garcia has struggled in the past month (4 MC in six starts) or so after a string of top 10’s at the start of the year - but there’s a reason why he’s the joint-favourite this week. He’s won three of the four times this event has been staged here, was a three-time runner-up in the Volvo Masters at Valderrama and finished T3 in the Open de Espana when the tournament was staged at this course in 2016. The defending champion will be hoping to make it four titles in a row with a bounce-back win and ranks 1st for GIR, 5th for SG: Tee to green and 8th for scoring average on the European Tour this season. Joost Luiten: Despite going T64-T62-MC in his last three starts, there have been pockets of excellent play this year for Luiten, and Valderrama is somewhere he’s had quite a bit of success. T11 In this event last year but 2nd in 2017 and 2nd in the 2016 Open de Espana. Ranks 2nd SG: Tee to green, 6th GIR and 9th SG: Approach. Edoardo Molinari: After a T3 finish last week, Molinari at 100/1 seems like a good each way bet to me. Sure, it was his only result of the year inside the top 25, but he’ll be hoping to carry over that momentum to a place where he finished T22 last year.
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