BMW International Open

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Joost Luiten to beat Bernd Wiesberger - 5 points @ Evens (Spreadex) 10-11 (general)

A matchup between two genuine improvers on Tour and whilst a case can be made for both, Luiten comes across as the type to keep going forwards on a course he clearly likes and perhaps could be classed as slight favourite.

Having suffered a major downturn form after injury, the Dutchman's game has now surpassed the promise he showed pre-injury and he looks a complete player now and well capable of making an impact on the bigger stage. 6th in Abu Dhabi at the turn of the year, he has now recorded  form figures of 22/15/21/8/mc/11/1, the latest an impressive victory in Austria when holding off a charging Thomas Bjorn et al. Luiten's major stats read well being top-15 off the tee and GIR, whilst scrambling (important here) when he does miss the green sees him rank somewhere in the top-30, perfectly respectable for the BMW. Further qualifications are the last two runnings of this event when finishing 11th and 3rd (2011 and 2012 respectively) with weekend rounds no worse than 69, and his twitter feeds report that he has done a lot of practise and gym work. I see no reason why he should not keep rising up the RTD rankings with a solid effort this week after a week off..

Matchbet rival Wiesberger will be a tough one to beat on promise but he has not impressed here with form figures of 51 and 43. In contrast to Luiten, Bernd has not broken 70 in any of his eight rounds and lags a long way behind in weekend play, despite his two efforts being two years apart. All these young players can clearly improve at any point and it may well have been home pressure that caused some serious mid-round mistakes in Austria, but he did not impress with the short iron approaches and may struggle to keep getting it up-and-down. He does seem to need a bit of space to play and may simply not be accurate enough at the moment to be a challenger this week.