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Steve may not get much sleep this week but will he find any winners? Read his thoughts on the Barclays Singapore Open and the Australian Open, where our man's hoping for a successful title defence from Geoff Ogilvy...


To sleep, or not to sleep, that is the question.

Here we go again with two through-the-night events. There's the Australian Open, which kicks off on Wednesday evening at 8.00pm UK time, and the Barclays Singapore Open, which starts some three and a half hours later. I'll start down under.

If Tiger Woods is drawing a line under the whole Steve Williams race row then I guess I should too. But then what else could Tiger do? He wasn't really in a position to condemn Williams after so many had defended him and the game's governing bodies had decided not to take any action. It would have sent the whole sport into turmoil, and you have to admire his dignity.

I'm a bit sick of hearing the likes of Greg Norman defending Williams. What does a blonde-haired Australian golfer know about racial persecution? The poor lamb is apparently upset by the whole affair and he had this to say about it.

"It was like any of us sitting around a bar with 10 or 15 of your mates. You might say a few things that you only say to your friends. Steve was under the belief that he was in a controlled environment but unfortunately that's not the case in this world nowadays."

So basically, the sort of rhetoric Williams chose to use is fine in private then is it Greg?

Anyway, time to get off the soapbox and look at the tournament...

Adam Scott heads the market but I just can't have him at all. The distraction of this row has to have an effect on him and his game and he's readily dismissed.

Next in the betting is Woods and he's a little harder to reject. He could be inspired by the whole episode but he's not quite big enough to chance and of those towards the head of the market, I much prefer defending champ Geoff Ogilvy.

Ogilvy had a fairly ordinary record at The Lakes until last year when he blew the competition away, winning by four with a 19 under-par total. He's shown an upturn in form of late and I thought 18.0 was a cracking price.

Bubba Watson received some understandable stick after his comments in France this summer. You'd have thought he'd never left the States before, so first instincts might be to dismiss his chances of success in Australia, but those instincts could well be misplaced.

Several weeks after the French debacle, Bubba went to Sweden and contended strongly and he's been to Australia before anyway. He played four times here in 2005 and in his final appearance he lost a play-off to Robert Allenby at the Australian Masters. He's often too big and at 42.0 he is again here.

My final pick is Andre Stoltz, who's enjoying a very good season. Only last week he was runner-up at the New South Wales PGA Championship and he's had a number of top-tens in Asia this year, including a win at the Thailand Open. He was fourth at The Lakes in 2002, at the ANZ Championship, and he's a lively outsider.

Selections:

Geoff Ogilvy @ 18.0
Bubba Watson @ 42.0
Andre Stoltz @ 80.0


This is the seventh staging in a row of the Barclays Singapore Open at the Sentosa resort. For five years the event, which is now co-sanctioned with the Asian Tour, was played solely on the Serapong Course but this year, as they did last, the players will also play one round around the easier Tanjong Course.

Phil Mickelson heads the market but he makes no appeal at all. I wrote in last year's De-Brief about how poorly Lefty coped with the greens here and he's only really playing because Barclays are the sponsors.

I also wrote about how well course form stands up here and a number of players repeatedly play well. Adam Scott won the title for the third time 12 months ago and all the winners since 2005 have been top-class.

My first selection is Graeme McDowell, who really should have won here already. He threw the event away two years ago; handing the tournament to Ian Poulter after leading on the back nine and he finished tied third here last year. A fine third place finish at last week's HSBC Champions shows he's in form and I felt he had to be included.

Louis Oosthuizen's making his tournament debut but he looks to have exactly the right game for the venue. It's all about hitting greens in regulation and luckily for Oosty, putting isn't the be all and end all here. I backed him last week and he played impeccably from tee-to-green but his putting was painful to watch. These tricky grainy greens are a great leveller and having grown up with grain in South Africa, Oosty may fare better here with the flat-stick that he did last week.

Last of my serious selections is Simon Dyson, also strongly fancied by Mike Norman. Fortunately, I started looking at this event on Sunday and I managed to snaffle up some decent prices about Dyce. He has a wealth of experience of playing in Asia and he's in tip-top form right now and I can see him improving on his 10th placed finish here three years ago. He led at halfway on that occasion before slipping back on the weekend but he's a far more accomplished in-contention player nowadays and if he's in the mix at that stage this time around he might just stay there.

I've also backed a few rags for a bit of fun. Both Kyung-Nam Kang and Rikard Karlberg contended last year and young Thai Kiradech Aphibarnrat could be a huge price if he could find the sort of form he showed a year ago.

Selections:

Graeme McDowell @ 19.0
Louis Oosthuizen @ 29.0
Simon Dyson @ an average of 36.0
Kyung-Nam Kang @ 280.0
Rikard Karlberg @ 300.0
Kiradech Aphibarnrat @ 500.0


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