Welcome to India - the country of Bollywood, excellent programmers and cricketers. Imagine, golfers there are good too. Hero Indian Open will be the part of the European Tour and will be held at the golf club of New Delhi, not a much known course to many players. As this is a new course, we have little statistics and history of performances at our disposal.

The Delhi course

So, a few words about the field. It differs radically from the previous ones: it is a brute. It is rather long and still demanding off the tee. As water is present at a number of holes, the analysis of recent tournaments gives a clear correlation of winners with the excellent sharp long game and playing on the green.

The Favourites

As a rule, local golfers are successful at this tournament, and Anirban Lahiri has good chances as he has already won this tournament and in general, he shows good results recently. Although he is in a good shape with a top 15 posted last time out at the Honda, he is a bit short enough around the 8/1 mark, so we offer to invest money in Rafael Cabrera-Bello, who has shown a fair share of near misses lately. For his many steers clear, the price of 11/1 is a tempting enough.

During the previous 1 year and a half, he has missed one cut (Sawgrass), which is not a bad record. He showed average results in the last 2 weeks at the WGC and the Honda, but in the beginning of the year, he was rather good. A couple of years ago, Bello won at the Emirates in Dubai and it is a 7300+ yards layout. As the Delhi course is a long one, his tee to the green game could make him the favourite.

Bello’s class is above all those in behind. Peter Uihlein is rather short this week and it is difficult to imagine that he is able to influence the leaderboard over the course of a year. Coetzee and Aphibarnrat do not present a real danger to Rafael as well. The main concerns for Bello are Lahiri and Jordan Smith. As to Lahiri, everything is clear. And Smith seems to develop into a top player this week. He began the year very well for a rookie.