Golf betting tips: The US Women’s Open at Pebble Beach
Golf betting tips: US Women’s Open
1pt e.w. Jiyai Shin at 55/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
1pt e.w. Miyuu Yamashita at 28/1 (William Hill 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
1pt e.w. Yuka Saso at 50/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
1pt e.w. Linn Grant at 50/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
It’s the third major championship of the women’s season and a significant one, too, because for the first time in its 77-year history the US Women’s Open will take place on the craggy and dramatic Californian clifftops at Pebble Beach.
The splendour of the stage has tempted past champions Michelle Wie and Annika Sorenstam to tee it up on a course that will play to a par of 72 and a yardage of 6,509 yards. At the opposite end of the career timeline is the 20-year-old hot shot Rose Zhang who turned pro last month, won the Mizuho Americas Open in her first start, was eighth in her second (the KPMG PGA Championship) and has excellent vibes heading into her third because she set a women’s course record at Pebble in her last year of college golf, a nine-under 63 when the layout played 400 yards shorter that it will do this week.
Despite her inexperience, Zhang is vying for favouritism alongside Jin Young Ko who won her 14th and 15th LPGA titles earlier this season but who has not added to her tally of two major victories since 2019. In a tale of two Kos, Lydia’s drift is even more profound. The last of her pair of major wins came in 2016 and since she was sixth in the Honda Thailand event in February she has gone seven LPGA starts without a top 30 – and that’s why she’s a big price this week.
Zhang will garner plenty of attention but the player who really piques my interest is the South Korean JIYAI SHIN. Yes, that Jiyai Shin. The one who between 2008 and 2013 won 11 times on the LPGA and who, in 18 majors during that period, claimed 10 top-10 finishes including two wins in the Women’s Open. In the middle of that spell she also became the first Korean woman to top the world rankings.
And then? Then she left the LPGA. Officially resigned, no less. When Shin was 16, her mother was killed and her siblings badly injured in a car accident, and, despite her success in the decade afterward, she wanted to be closer to her brother, sister and father. She’s played only five majors since the end of 2014 (and not one since 2019).
She continued to play golf, however, and has continued to rack up the wins. Shin competes on the Japanese Tour which allows her to be near the family and she has 30 wins there in all, 21 of them since she left the LPGA.
Earlier this year she won the Women’s Victorian Open down under, swiftly followed by another win in her first start in Japan this year and she added another victory last week. In between she’s registered another seven top-10 finishes, four of them in the top three.
She’s in her best form for at least five years but, on its own, that would be insufficient for a pick. The clincher is that the weather forecast is currently suggesting blustery wind at some stage in the week and Shin has the game (and the mindset) to cope with that.
The win in Australia earlier this year came at the windy, seaside 13th Beach, but the real standout is her triumph in the Women’s Open at Royal Liverpool in 2012 when she withstood appalling conditions to win by nine. There’s another persuasive argument: her price. There is some 70/1 out there but we’ll tip the more widely available 55/1 which is more than acceptable.
It would be a terrific story but dafter things have happened and she is still only 35 years of age.
Shin is not alone in making the journey across the Pacific from the JLPGA. The 20-year-old Iwai twin sisters Akie and Chisato are both in good form. Akie was a winner in April and arrives fresh from a trio of top three finishes on the bounce. Chisato was a winner in both May and June.
But it’s their 21-year-old compatriot MIYUU YAMASHITA who gets the second pick. She’s won 10 times in the last two and a bit years (four of them this year). In her last eight starts she’s never once finished outside the top 10 and six of the results were top three (including three wins).
Her experience outside Japan is very limited but in her only major start she was 13th at Muirfield in last summer’s Women’s Open (when three back at halfway). She’s shorter in price than the Iwai sisters but deserves to be. The books are not unaware of her threat but she remains a lively option.
There’s a theme emerging here because next up is YUKA SASO, of the Philippines, who was a two-time winner in Japan ahead of winning this championship at the Olympic Club in San Francisco two years ago. She remained consistent for six months after that but then experienced some form problems.
In recent weeks she appears to have turned a corner. She was seventh in the Mizuho Americas Open at the start of last month and second in the KPMG PGA Championship at the end of it. She admitted afterwards that she was still grinding and still had plenty of work to do, but added: “I take it very seriously, I’m trying to enjoy every moment and just keep what I’m doing.” The 50/1 has value.
We’ll end with Sweden’s LINN GRANT who enjoyed playing in this championship as an amateur and for whom this will be a first professional start.
On her debut at Shoal Creek in 2018 she was fourth after 18 and 36 holes. It was a first start in any pro event and she slipped back to T57 at the weekend. Two years later at the Champions Club she was sitting fifth after the first round and second at halfway. Again she went backwards but this time to finish T23.
Grant turned pro in August 2021 and enjoyed a blistering start in Europe. In 23 starts from there until the end of 2022 she recorded 17 top-10s. A ridiculous 11 of them were top three, four of those wins. The highlight of that run was her sensational defeat of a joint LET/DP World Tour field in the Scandinavian Mixed last June.
This season has been more of a struggle but she was a winner on the LET in May, reached the semi-final stage of the LPGA Bank of Hope Matchplay later that month and was 20th in the KPMG PGA Championship last time out.
I was somewhat hopeful of something of a first-round coup since Mexico’s Maria Fassi has twice carded 66 in the pre-weekend rounds of the annual Pebble Beach Invitational. Alas, further investigation confirmed that neither score was actually recorded on Pebble Beach itself, so we'll stick to the outright market and four each-way players.
Posted at 1300 BST on 04/07/23
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