The European Tour is in Switzerland this week for the Omega European Masters at the stunning Crans-sur-Sierre Golf Club. This venue has hosted the event every year since 1948 and our stats guru has studied the form to offer three suggestions for your teams.
Favourite – Rory McIlroy
Rory McIlroy starts the week as the strong favourite with the chance to win in his eighth country as a professional and that’s hardly surprising when you look at his recent form.
You only have to track back to last week, where the Northern Irishman took home his third PGA Tour win of the season and was crowned FedEx Cup champion for the second time.
McIlroy is currently enjoying one of the best ball-striking spells of his career and the results back that up. In his last twelve worldwide starts, the 31-year-old has recorded seven top tens and only missed two cuts.
It is worth mentioning that this is McIlroy’s first visit to Crans Montana since 2011, but on all the three occasions he’s played there previously it’s resulted in a top ten finish – his best being runner-up in 2008.
Form Horse – Matthew Fitzpatrick
Loving life with his feet back on European soil, Matt Fitzpatrick comes off the back of a solo-second finish at the Scandinavian Invitation last week taking his total of runner-up finishes this season to three.
However, it’s his love affair with Crans-sur-Sierre that makes him a must-watch this week. Rewind 352 days and the Englishman won the Omega European Masters for a second time in consecutive years, defeating Lucas Bjerregaard in a play-off.
Since 2013, Fitzpatrick leads players in the field with 3.2 strokes gained per round at Crans and during the 2018 tournament gained more than seven strokes off-the-tee, ranking first.
These impressive stats in Switzerland mean the five-time European winner has found the top ten in each of his last four years here and only suffered one missed cut, which came in 2014.
Wildcard – Miguel Ángel Jiménez
Although Miguel Ángel Jiménez may not be enjoying his most consistent year on Tour, the 21-time European Tour winner is a force to be reckoned with at Crans.
He won this event in 2010 when he was 45-years-old, has recorded seven top 10s in the Swiss Alps since 2001 and in his last twelve rounds on the course, six have been in the 60s taking his scoring average to 69.01.
This year will be Jiménez’ 30th start at the Omega European Masters, seeing him overtake Manuel Piñero for the most starts at this event since 1972. One thing that has rarely changed in that time is the length of the course. Coming in at 6,848 yards Crans-sur-Sierre is the third shortest course on tour and in an age where driving distances usually dominate a sub 7000 yard course could play into the hands of the Spaniard.
Last year, Jiménez missed the cut even though he bowed out with a respectable round of 66, but his recent form on the Senior Tour is something to write home about. He had a top ten finish at Royal Lytham and St. Annes and was in contention at the US Senior Open Championship, just missing out on the top five.
Those are our picks, did we do enough to convince you? Add them to your European Tour Daily Fantasy Game and your line-up in the Fantasy Race to Dubai before the action begins on Thursday.
