Yang ready to defend at Honda
BY Bruce Young | US PGA Tour | 2010 The Honda Classic | Preview | 03 Mar 2010
With the west coast swing now completed for 2010, the PGA Tour has moved east this week to the Honda Classic at West Palm Beach in Southern Florida.
The tournament is played over the PGA National’s Champion Course an original Tom and George Fazio designed reworked on two occasions by Jack Nicklaus.
Y.E. Yang, who played so well last week in Scottsdale when finishing 3rd at the Phoenix Open, is the defending champion. Twelve months ago he held on after a late stumble to beat John Rollins by just one shot and since his PGA Championship win in August he has continued to make cuts, in fact 12 of them, wherever he has played. He stands a very good chance of successfully defending.
Like Yang, Robert Allenby threatened at stages last week and enjoys a very good record in this event which is played close to his US home. Allenby has finished inside the top five in his last three attempts in this event and despite the fact that he has not won in eight long years on the PGA Tour he has a good opportunity to do so this week.
Ben Crane won the Farmers insurance event at Torrey Pines a few weeks ago, made the round of 16 at the Accenture and last week did well enough at the event in Scottsdale. Crane seems to be near his best and did finish third in the event last year. He will be a good chance at longer odds.
Camilo Villegas will have pressure on his time this week as he was in Colombia early in the week to help promote the new Nationwide Tour event in Bogota. If Villegas can recover from that, then his current form and that he finished runner up in this event three years ago augurs well for him.
Allenby is the standout as far as the Australasian challenge is concerned but twelve Australians are in the field and all Allenby and Goggin are in the sort of form to be considered as genuine chances to win.
Matt Jones, Marc Leishman, John Senden, Nathan Green, Jason Day, Nick O’Hern, Stuart Appleby, Greg Chalmers, James Nitties and David Lutterus along with new Zealander Tim Wilkinson make up the challenge from down under.
