The inaugural running of the Dubai Championship (then the ‘Golf In Dubai Championship) provided no real issues for the field as the easier of the two Jumeirah Estate courses offered little resistance to a birdie barrage. Indeed, by the end of 72 holes the top five had racked up 128 birdies and six eagles amongst them, with eventual winner Antoine Rozner posting a score of 25-under for a two-shot victory.

• Related: 2021 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open Betting Tips & Selections

Nothing much has changed since, and with calm conditions again forecast, this will be a matter of players getting as far down the open fairways and dialling in their irons. As befits a low-scoring contest, the flat stick needs to be on fire and, with a couple of sub-plots going into the week, perhaps it will be nerve rather than any desert wind that creates any real tension. 

• Related: 2021 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open prop bets

The top-60 on the Race to Dubai rankings after Sunday’s final round will qualify for the big money and points on offer at the Earth course next week whilst those on or around the bubble at 120-ish will be sweating on their card, though once again, there are offers of some status to most players again this season.

To the event itself and last season’s leaderboard points very much to form in the desert as well as on links tracks and, as such, can certainly take in last week’s event in Portugal, also often used in correlation to Qatar and close relatives.

• Related: 2021 HPE Houston Open: Best DFS plays from each price range

This year’s schedule has taken a progressive profile over the last three weeks with courses becoming progressively more scorable and current form with irons looks the most valuable asset. As ever, it’s tougher to change your swing in between events than it is to catch a feel with the flat stick. 

Here are some of this week’s best bets 

Sam Horsfield Win/Top-10 +3500/+340 (DraftKings)

Anglo-American Sam Horsfield loves a low scoring competition and when his putter works there is little doubt he is one of the best on the regular European Tour.

Top-25 for the season in driving distance, the wide fairways will not deter him from having a go at the pins and therefore teeing up the standard of iron play that sees him lead the tour in strokes-gained-approach. 10th in tee-to-green and 21st in greens-in-regulation, he hasn’t let any of that approach play slip, ranking top-10 in irons in half of his last ten completed starts including in Portugal last week when returning after a mini-slump to be 13th off the tee, eighth in approach and third in tee-to-green. 

Okay, we are now relying on his putter, which has gone cold since leading the flat-stick rankings at both the Forest of Arden and Celtic Manor (won both in 18-under), but with this course asking for players to have at least 12 birdie chances a round, sinking just half of the legitimate sub-20 footers will do a decent job.

With eight top-10 finishes from 17 European Tour starts this season, the 25-year-old can make it nine top-10s and secure his place in next week’s equally suitable big one.

Lucas Bjerregaard Win/Top-10 +6000/+450 (DraftKings)

With last week’s Portugal Masters winner, Thomas Pieters, withdrawing from an entirely winnable contest we are left with two of the three joint runners-up to carry the form over a week later.

Unlike Horsfield, who has been in form for much of this year, the Dane has recovered from injury and loss of form but has slowly been showing signs, all leading to his best finish for three years last week in Portugal when by his own admission, he wanted to find more fairways. That in turn may well have stopped the couple of vital errors he suffered over the weekend, but his profile is progressive and, prior to this week’s efforts, Bjerregaard had been showing signs of a return to form, leading at halfway at Fairmont before being top-10 at the same point in Kent a week later. A consistent tournament in Madrid preceded a couple of eye-catching rounds of 67 in Mallorca. None of that is stunning stuff, but certainly enough to believe that the once world number 45 was on his way back.  

2017 inner at Dom Pedro in 20-under and at the Alfred Dunhill Links a year later (beating Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton) his form in Oman and in Sicily all reads perfectly well for the current run of events, the latter leaderboard involving Joakim Lagergren, Mike Lorenzo-Vera, Andy Sullivan and Francesco Laporta, every one an exponent of links and desert play. 

He was incredibly emotional after last week’s tied-second, where he looked to secure his full playing rights, and that can take him either way. However, I’m happy to think it’s a weight off his shoulders and he can play with a tad more freedom this week. A repeat of last week’s 13th off the tee, 8th in approach and 3rd (gaining over 10 shots) in tee-to-green ought to do just fine. 

Matthieu Pavon Win/Top-10 +8000/+650 (DraftKings)

Pavon joint-led last week’s Portugal event going into Sunday and took a couple of shots lead as they entered the back-nine before a calamitous treble-bogey eight looked as if it would start a freefall down the field. However, a superb attacking tee-shot on the following hole, the par-three 13th, led to a simple birdie from two feet and was an indication that the 29-year-old Frenchman was very much in tune with his irons once again, and he is fancied to continue an upward trajectory in form on a course that should suit.

Top-40 for the season off the tee, his irons have been very progressive over the year culminating in a recent run of 18/19/28 with his approach play and top-25 in tee-to-green in all four of his most recent starts. Finding over seven shots for putting at St.Andrews and associated tracks and leading the putting last week with what looked like a very confident display, it is hard to believe that Pavon hasn’t won since the 2015 Alps Tour.

Perhaps inspired by compatriot Rozner’s win here last year there is a similarity in styles, whilst finishes of 13th and 11th in Dubai show he can play these types of courses well in good company. I’m not sure he has yet been fully covered by the oddsmakers.

Sebastian Soderberg Win/Top-10 +8000/+650 (DraftKings)

Had Sebastian Soderberg not played last week, I doubt he would be available at this sort of price.

Quite honestly, the Swede’s iron play at both Valderrama and Mallorca was simply some of the best seen on the European Tour this year, on both occasions finding over six shots on the field and leading to ranking third and 17th for tee-to-green (finding over 11 and six shots respectively). In reality, only the odd hole coming home at each event cost him the chance of victory, an error on the par-five 17th in Sotogrande being the one that sticks in the mind, allowing Matt Fitzpatrick to waltz past as Soderberg simply thought about things a little too much.

There was no disgrace, of course, in losing to the world number 27 and winner of the DP World last season, and it’s not as if the 31-year-old has any problem getting the job done. A two time-winner on the Challenge Tour, Soderberg’s European Tour win at Crans reads well, especially given it came via a five man play-off that included Rory McIlroy.

I’m taking the view that last week’s poor missed cut was a reaction to having let a couple of chances go over the last couple of weeks and if he is back to the sort of form that saw him go back-to-back runner-up finishes he can improve past his 19th place here last year when he ranked top-10 for approaches. Currently lying just outside the qualifying number for next week (64th), he’ll want a good week. Let’s hope he has one. 

Francesco Laporta Win/Top-10 +6500/+650 (DraftKings)

There may be something in the biorhythm theory with the 31-year-old Italian.

Winner of the Hainan Open and Challenge Tour Final in October and November 2019, he also boasts a past fourth place finish in South Africa in October, and last week gave huge notice that he might repeat last season’s excellent runner-up around the Fire course.

Third off the tee and fifth tee-to-green at the inaugural running of this event, Laporta has been displaying signs that he is ready to strike again, his fourth at the attack-led Italian Open followed by another top-10 in higher class at Wentworth, on both occasions ranking in single figures for his ball striking. I can always forgive a poor show at Valderrama given that it ranks the toughest course on the schedule, and returning to a more open contest last week provided him with the chance to open up off the tee but also enabled him to put up his best putting figures since Ireland in July.

Laporta impresses in the way he closes at the end of tournaments – 13th to second here last year, 17th to fourth in Ireland,11th to fourth in Italy and 31st to seventh last week – so he should always be in your mind for an in-running bet, but there is enough there for this particular event, to make me think this is the time to catch him.

Oliver Wilson Win/Top-10/Top-20 +20000/+1200/+550 (DraftKings)

There’s always one that catches the eye in the depths of the betting, and it’s the turn of the 41-year-old to try and win the jackpot, or at least boost those fantasy entries.

Beaten in four play-offs between 2005 and 2008 must have hurt, but Wilson is known as a hard worker, and it took another six years before he won his only event, the Alfred Dunhill Links, from both Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood.

Injury and loss of form has ravaged the man from Nottingham, but he squeezed in two victories on the Challenge Tour in 2018 to prove he wasn’t done with yet before going missing again, turning up sporadically in South Africa (13th) and then at the Swedish Mixed (18th) some eight months apart. However, he now looks as if he is playing without discomfort with his latest results being 11th in Mallorca before last weekend’s 12th place, a finish that he himself described as ‘disappointing not to have made more of it’.

Calling a penalty on himself during day three was indicative of his professionalism despite the obvious adversity but as far as his game is concerned, these last two weeks were the first time he has recorded back-to-back plus figures for tee-to-green since 2019.

Yes, it’s speculative, but 200-1 shots are. There is something there though and let’s just hope he does what he did the last time he had those figures for two weeks in a row – have a third.