Yannik Paul heads a speculative staking plan as Ben Coley seeks to follow-up a 45/1 DP World Tour winner in the Turkish Airlines Open.
Golf betting tips: Turkish Airlines Open
1pt e.w. Yannik Paul at 60/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Romain Langasque at 66/1 (Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Nacho Elvira at 100/1 (Paddy Power 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
1pt e.w. Marcus Kinhult at 110/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Davis Bryant at 150/1 (Paddy Power 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
1pt e.w. Alex Levy at 175/1 (Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
The DP World Tour begins its European Swing with the Turkish Airlines Open, and that's welcome news if you're a low-category member who earned a card of some kind through the Challenge Tour or Qualifying School last year.
Such are the times that co-sanctioning events with tours in Australia, Asia and Africa is an absolute necessity, one which provides playing opportunities for the fully exempt and pathways for emerging talents on this global golf tour. But it comes with compromise: no longer does 'earning a card' have quite so literal a meaning as it once did.
Many players, particularly those who survived six rounds of Q-School, have had to map out a schedule on the fly, some of them dropping down to the Challenge Tour where they know they can get a game. Others slightly higher up have had to make difficult decisions, such as whether to travel to a tournament as an alternate or stay at home. It's doubtless a very difficult thing to manage at a level where making ends meet is priority one.
Thankfully, that ends in Turkey. Here and hereafter, everyone who should get a game does get a game, and that means more depth to fields than we've had in China, India, and South Africa throughout spring. This is nowhere near the standard of 2018, when world number one Justin Rose defended his title in a dramatic play-off, but it's one of the best tournaments the DP World Tour has held since the Dubai Desert Classic.
What it'll take to win here at Regnum Carya isn't quite so cut and dried. Rose was, at the time of both his wins, a world-class all-rounder, whereas before him Thorbjorn Olesen arrived in Turkey in pretty rotten form yet won comfortably. Olesen can be errant off the tee and that's something he has in common with Haotong Li, runner-up to both him and Rose, as well as Dylan Frittelli and Nicolas Colsaerts, who chased home Rose the first time the Englishman won.
Perhaps then that sense of not being under major pressure from the tee is a good starting point and it's ed by more than one player having said that you have options here. Carya is a resort course, built for the holiday golfer, and that means the rough isn't penal, while its fairways are lined by trees but not suffocated by them. There's certainly an element of risk-reward and that quality of luck determining what sort of shot you have available if you do stray from the fairway.
Scoring should in theory be low but it wasn't exactly lights-out when better players came here so I doubt we'll see things get out of control around a par 71 which has been extended to 7,220 yards, with the 15th and 18th holes made that little bit tougher. As you might expect, the three par-fives are the easiest holes, including that 15th, and the 10th may well prove to be the hardest.
Ultimately this is a little tricky to get a handle on. My inclination is that driver won't matter too much and if we do follow Olesen's strengths, approach play and putting, we may not be far away from the winning formula. That's not to say I'll have landed on the right one, as my selections are intentionally speculative.
Haotong Li has those Olesen-like qualities when firing and is the right favourite at a fair price given his course history, but I'm not really interested in playing towards the top of this market and will make YANNIK PAUL the first pick.
Paul almost won the Open de in October but then went through a really quiet spell, going without a top-30 finish until contending for the China Open, where he finished third behind Ashun Wu.
Perhaps that'll prove the flash-in-the-pan that it looks on paper, but there had been a clear upturn in his long-game prior to it. To my eye, it looks a performance of substance and as one of the best iron players in this field when firing, to see him hit those irons better and better throughout March and into April feels significant.
Ninth in strokes-gained approach in China, Paul has also started to dial in the driver and therefore it only took a better putting week to contend. In his previous two events, he'd actually produced near-identical tee-to-green numbers, only to struggle with putter in hand.
We've only seen him once since, in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, where he and twin brother Jeremy missed the cut narrowly. Back to business on the DP World Tour, the German can hopefully prove that China was a turning point, one which hasn't exactly sent his price into collapse.
A final note with Paul is that, for one reason or another, his best form shadows Olesen's. Indeed he's been runner-up to him in Thailand, fourth behind him at Al Hamra, second just as Olesen has been in Paris, and eighth at the Belfry, where Olesen secured his comeback win a couple of years ago.
It's fair to say that both are better off on courses where driver isn't the key club and if I'm right to suggest that it won't be here, Paul could once more follow Olesen's lead at a mid-length, mid-tier-scoring course, the kind he seems to prefer.
Romain faithful to Frenchman
Martin Couvra continues to show promise and he's interesting but as his price contracts, ROMAIN LANGASQUE is preferred as a pure value play.
Langasque was 28-33/1 in India recently and is set to go off double that here having missed the cut there, but he's made both since and while hardly spectacular in the way he performed in China, there's been enough to like.
This is a player who started the year in the Hero Cup after a fine end to 2024, arguably his best season yet on the DP World Tour. At the conclusion of each of the last two he's been in Dubai, right in the mix for a PGA Tour card, and I still think he's a class act at this level, with one low-key win not nearly doing justice to his talents.
Langasque threatened a second all of last year, finishing runner-up in the Nedbank, in Denmark and in Belgium (largely tree-lined courses), third in an elite Scottish Open, fifth in India and seventh in Spain, but it's a second top-10 finish in the BMW International Open at Eichenried which piques my interest.
We've only had three DP World Tour events here at Carya yet all of Haotong Li, Thomas Detry, Pablo Larrazabal, David Lipsky, Joakim Lagergren, George Coetzee, Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Dylan Frittelli, Sam Horsfield, Danny Willett, Alex Levy and Justin Rose have performed well at both courses and, Rose aside, these are not top-notchers.
Visual similarities and comparable scoring make it an angle I'm happy enough to pursue in a speculative way and that leads to Langasque, who could so easily have been vying for favouritism in a field like this a few months ago. It's hard to know where his game is but that's more than ed for in prices north of 50/1.
Langasque's compatriot ALEX LEVY first came onto the radar at Eichenried and later demonstrated a liking for Carya, finishing 25th on debut, 30th next time, then 10th in 2018 when right in the mix heading into Sunday.
Clearly, he's not the same player these days but there have been some signs of improvement of late, with good ball-striking in India and Hainan, and high-class approach play between the two. In India, poor work on and around the greens meant another missed cut, but 36th and 23rd since is progress.
Levy said he loved this course the first time he saw it, largely because it allows a player to attack when they want to, and while his DP World Tour return hasn't yet yielded anything substantial, his last two starts have been his best.
That they came in China, where he enjoyed so much success during his peak years, may not be a coincidence and a return to Turkey therefore comes at a good time. He's a bet at bigger than 100/1.
Adrian Otaegui has attracted and again that's because we have some clear course form, but he's become a troubled putter since last playing here and even recent signs of improvement aren't enough. I'd want to know that his relentless accuracy is going to be a notable advantage and around a resort course like Carya I'm really not sure.
In fact I'd rather chance the far less reliable driver NACHO ELVIRA, a former compatriot of now UAE-representing Otaegui and a player who did us a favour or two last season.
Elvira is one of the weaker drivers on the circuit, neither as long as you'd think he would be given his frame, nor very accurate. That means it can be a bit of a slog on some courses, including the bombs-away layout they visited last time in Hainan.
But this in turn means he's almost always a big price and if we are able to identify the right course, and see positives enough in his game, then there's a real chance to get him in the mix and even over the line, which is what happened in Kenya and Belgium last year.
With three top-10 tee-to-green displays in his last five starts, those positive signs are certainly there and this often red-hot putter can do better in that department returning to a course where he was ninth on debut, played reasonably the following year, and was out of form when returning for a third time in 2018.
Eighth at Eichenried, together with his win at the tree-lined Soudal Open, is another handy little clue and while like Langasque he disappointed when we were on in India, form at DLF is always to be treated with caution. It's just such a horribly penal course, where good golf doesn't always lead to good scores.
Bar that and completely the wrong course in China last time, Elvira has gone 25-11-20-26 recently and he might just relish returning to Carya. This is one of those places where he can certainly be dangerous.
So could MARCUS KINHULT, another for whom the venue matters a lot.
This short-hitting Swede was 30th here in 2018 and played well at other courses in Turkey either side of that, finishing eighth on the Challenge Tour and then a handy 17th on the DP World Tour in 2019.
To me this feels like the right sort of course for him, tree-lined and not overly long, where you can get on a run of birdies and where short-games can matter a lot. That was true of the course which hosted the China Open and, having led after round one in India before that, he shot a third-round 64 en route to his best result of the year.
Again he was poor in Hainan but he's a very different player to winner Marco Penge and it doesn't seem like much to overlook, particularly as he carded a second-round 70 on a tough day of scoring where the best round was 67.
Kinhult has long been a player I like and while he will never be reliable, there's upside at three-figure prices given his propensity to stick around when in the mix. That helped him to twice finish second last year and he looks ready to contend again soon.
Some Davis love among outsiders
I thought Gardagolf, where Olesen won the 2018 Italian Open, might also offer up some clues and the names Andy Sullivan and Jacques Kruyswijk pop up there, although the one I looked at more than once was in fact 400/1 chance Rafa Cabrera Bello.
Twice third at Eichenried as well, the Spaniard makes his debut at Carya and does so following stronger starts in China, where he sat 26th and then fourth after round one but faded each time. His long-game has been a bit of a mess, however, and a couple of speculative course ties, from a time when he was a far better golfer, aren't enough to go on.
With Ricardo Gouveia the right sort of price, ditto Jorge Campillo who would nevertheless be my pick of what you might call the realistic (i.e. sub-50/1) winners, the final selection goes to DAVIS BRYANT.
This young American was a top-100 amateur who made a bit of a name for himself in minor tour events, although that description doesn't do justice to the $100,000 cheque he won for capturing the Colorado Open close to his childhood home.
He came through all three stages of DP World Tour Qualifying School last year, playing beautifully for third place at Final Stage where he was the only player in the field to break 70 every day, and is one I've been keeping an eye on as will plenty have others.
As one of those unable to put together a full schedule, he did just fine from December through to February, missing a couple of cuts narrowly while picking up a couple of small cheques, but things have improved quickly over the past six weeks or so.
Yes, his two top-10s during this time came down on the Challenge Tour, but with that behind him it wasn't a surprise to see Bryant finish a good 23rd in China when returning to this one, another new experience he'll have had to adapt to quickly.
This resort course in Turkey might feel a bit more familiar – certainly it would be more alike what he encountered at Q-School – and having shown himself to be a so-so driver who hits good approaches and can putt, I've just a sneaky feeling it might prove a good fit for him.
Sneaky feelings aren't all we have to go on this week but I certainly don't think it's a tournament to go steaming into, at least not now the players who first made my shortlist have all somehow decided not to come.
Posted at 1800 BST on 05/05/25
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