Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club in Johannesburg, South Africa, plays host to this week’s Joburg Open, as it has done in every year since 2007. Because of the event’s massive 210-player field, the first two rounds are split between the Par-72 East Course — also home to the final two rounds — and the easier West Course, a shorter Par-71 track. Players will want to take advantage of their one round on the West Course to set themselves up for a weekend run at the title. Six of the last seven champions at this event have been South Africans.
In addition, golfers yet to qualify for The Open Championship will have added motivation to play well, as the three top finishers will secure invitations to Royal Birkale in July.
The Top Contenders
The Local Favorite
South African Brandon Stone ($11,500) leads the field with 7.7 percent odds to win. Stone recently missed the cut in both of his attempts at PGA Tour events (The CareerBuilder Challenge and Farmers Insurance Open), but he wasted no time when he arrived back in Europe, promptly posting a T7 at the Dubai Desert Classic, scoring 90.0 DraftKings points.
Stone’s 71.1 Long-Term Adjusted Round Score (LT Adj Rd Score) is tied for 11th in the field. His LT 68.3 percent Greens in Regulation (GIR), 295.7-yard LT Driving Distance (DD), and 13.6 LT Adjusted Birdies Per Tournament (Adj Bird Avg) will suit him well this week. Stone has sandwiched 16th- and 28th-place finishes around a missed cut at this event in his three most recent appearances.
The Local Veteran
Another South African, Jaco Van Zyl ($10,900), will celebrate his 38th birthday on the tournament’s first day (for those of you looking for the #BirthdayNarrative). Van Zyl missed the cut here last year but prior to that had second-, third-, 11th-, and 22nd-place finishes in four consecutive years. Van Zyl has 15 professional wins, including 14 on South Africa’s Sunshine Tour.
Van Zyl’s 70.7 LT Adj Rd Score ranks third, his 68.2 percent LT Driving Accuracy (DA) is 12th, and his 69.9 percent LT GIR is 34th overall. His FantasyLabs projected ownership — available in our Player Models — is currently 17 to 20 percent in large-field mid-stakes tournaments.
The Local Former Champion
George Coetzee ($10,600) won this event in 2014 and has been amazingly steady in his appearances here: He has made six straight cuts with no finish worse than 24th and five finishes of 14th or better. Cotzee has missed two of his last three cuts on the European Tour, but he did post a seventh-place finish at the Dubai Desert Classic earlier this month.
Coetzee’s 70.9 LT Adj Rd Score is tied for seventh, and his 302.4-yard LT DD is 22nd overall. He’s one of the better putters in the field: His 29.0 Adjusted Putts Per Round ranks 10th.
Per our Trends tool, golfers with similar salaries and LT metrics have produced a solid +7.11 Plus/Minus with a reliable 75.0 percent Consistency.
The Local Two-Time Champion
Richard Sterne ($10,300) won this event in both 2008 and 2013. He also posted a top-10 finish here last year. Overall, he has the eighth-best Course Adj Rd Score in the field (71.4) among golfers with more than one start at this event.
That said, this will be the first time Sterne has teed it up in 2017: He hasn’t played since his runner-up finish at the Alfred Dunhill Championship in December. Sterne’s 70.6 LT Adj Rd Score ranks second in the field.
The Bump and Run
Choke up and take a narrow stance.
Thomas Aiken ($10,100): I might as well write about every South African in the f*cking field, right? (I’m somewhat sure I can write that because my Editor-in-Chief once said, “When you write for Labs, you bring your expletive A game, muthaf*cka.“) But, seriously, Aiken is not only from the country but is also a local Johannesburg guy. His 70.5 LT Adj Rd Score is the best in the field, and both his 73.8 LT GIR and 70.2 LT DA percentages rank sixth. Aiken has three straight top-10 finishes at this event and has been inside the top-25 in five straight Joburg Opens.
Dean Burmester ($9,000): Burmester’s 71.2 LT Adj Rd Score ranks 21st, his 72 percent LT GIR is 14th, and his 314.7-yard LT DD is third overall. Burmester has made four straight cuts at this event, and he finished 13th in 2015. He has started the year off well with two top-10 finishes in three tournaments. His 69.1 Recent Adj Rd Score and hefty 20.3 Adj Bird Avg both rank second among golfers who have made more than one start in the past six weeks.
Alexander Bjork ($8,300): Bjork has finished no worse than 28th in his three tournaments this season, submitting a seventh-place performance at the South African Open in January. Bjork’s 69.4 Recent Adj Rd Score is fourth, his 79.2 Recent GIR percentage is eighth, and his 16.8 Recent Adj Bird Avg ranks fifth among golfers with at least three starts the past six weeks. Bjork has absolutely destroyed his salary-based expectations so far in 2017, posting a +34.19 Plus/Minus in three events this year.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout ($7,500): CB finished 22nd here in his debut last season and posted a 37th-place finish at the South African Open in January. His 81.9 percent Recent GIR ranks third overall, and his 16.0 Recent Adj Bird Avg is 25th this week.
Joel Stalter ($7,200): Stalter’s 69.8 Recent Adj Rd Score ranks sixth, his 79.2 Recent GIR percentage is eighth, and his 18.7 Recent Adj Bird Avg is seventh overall. The 24-year-old Frenchman won the Challenge Tour’s 2016 Swedish Open.
The Euro Course Horse
Anthony Wall ($9,200) has been dangerously close to winning this event in two of the last three years with third- and second-place finishes. In 2014, he finished 10th. His 70.1 Course Adj Rd Score is tied atop the field among golfers who have made more than two starts at this event. Wall’s 70.7 Recent Adj Rd Score and 75.0 Recent GIR percentage both rank 21st in the field.
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Be sure to visit our suite of Tools to research all of the golfers. Good luck this week!
