KLM a tight contest despite weakened field
BY Bruce Young | European PGA Tour | 2005 KLM Open | Preview | 09 Jun 2005
The European Tour moves from Ireland to the Netherlands this week and to Hilversum in centre of that country for the KLM Open at the Hilversumsche Golf Club.
The course is one of several high quality golfing facilities in Holland although most of them are on the western seaboard. An original Harry Colt and H Burrows design, the course measures only 6600 yards but has enough of the original designers’ intrigue and guile to make it still a fine test.
The event has been established since 1912 but was known for many years as the Dutch Open. It was first played on this course in 1923 when Burrows himself won the event for the third and final time. The tournament first became a European Tour event in 1972 when Jack Newton won his first event in Europe.
This year’s event has a somewhat depleted field in terms of world ranking strength given that it comes a little earlier in the season than previously has been the case and that it is being staged the week prior to the US Open.
The leading favourites are all outside the top 100 in the world although that is hardly likely to make the event less of a contest with the absence of the leading European players providing a window of opportunity for those here.
The favourite is likely to be David Lynn who, although currently ranked 137th in the world, is the defending champion and did play well last week in Wales when 8th. He has played reasonably well in recent weeks, apart from that effort, to suggest he could handle this field again.
The Dane, Anders Hansen, has played well in patches this season including a third place at the recent Italian Open. He finished well back here last year although he put together a couple of really good rounds to go with two bad efforts and may well show up here.
Maarten Lafeber won this event two years ago becoming the first Dutchman to do so since Joop Rhul, 56 years earlier. As the local favourite he will be expected to do well again. He has been consistent if not brilliant this season and is good enough to win against this field.
Bradley Dredge is in solid form of late and may defy his lowly world ranking here. His recent second placed finish in Italy and his top ten at Wentworth is better than most here and he can be expected to do well despite only limited success here.
The rest are a little hard to get excited about in terms of expectation.
The Australasians here are Marcus Fraser, Peter Fowler, Peter Senior, Wade Ormsby, Terry Price, Stephen Scahill, Jarrod Moseley and Adam Groom.
The tournament is worth a very healthy (for the quality of the field) €1.5 million.
