Ben Coley's golf betting tips: FedEx Open de France preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: Open de France

2pts e.w. Thomas Pieters at 40/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1.5pts e.w. Thomas Detry at 40/1 (Sky Bet, Paddy Power 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

1pt e.w. Andy Sullivan at 45/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Joost Luiten at 70/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

1pt e.w. Adrian Otaegui at 125/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

0.5pt e.w. Michael Mjaaseth at 600/1 (bet365, Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

Sky Bet odds | Paddy Power | Betfair Sportsbook | Free bets

The FedEx Open de France returns to Le Golf National and while it would be naive in the extreme to suggest that this is the primary reason for a strong field, it's nevertheless welcome to see four members of the last European Ryder Cup side and a clutch of other high-class golfers taking part in continental Europe's oldest national open.

In this particular case, doubts surrounding the viability of the season-ending events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are directly influencing the strength of a tournament in France, because Matt Fitzpatrick all but ruled himself out of travelling to the Middle East when speaking to the media at Wentworth. That is perfectly understandable. Whether he ought to be required to play elsewhere to meet membership criteria given that he holds legitimate security concerns is seemingly moot. Not everything can be planned for.

Ludvig Aberg, Viktor Hovland and Tommy Fleetwood are the other Ryder Cup players along with Fitzpatrick, the four having last played this golf course in the Olympic Games two years ago. They're joined by the defending champion Michael Kim, fellow US raiders Bud Cauley and Ryan Gerard, plus another batch of LIV Golf travellers which this time includes Cameron Smith and Thomas Pieters. It is the deepest Open de France since 2018, when Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas took part.

That of course was the year Europe thumped the USA in the Ryder Cup here and the performance of Francesco Molinari, and his partner Fleetwood, says so much about the challenge of Le Golf National, which reopened in September after extensive work to the Paris Metro system forced its closure. That work also resulted in the redesign of holes four, five and six, new bentgrass turf throughout, new tee boxes and some further tweaks, but the demands of the course aren't expected to change.

This is golf of position and precision, often with clear consequences for poor shots: hit it here, do not hit it there. Holes one, two, 11, 13, 15, 16 and 18 all involve hitting an approach over water and several of the tee-shots are similarly demanding. In the Ryder Cup, the American side struggled with this sense of having to play with shackles; Europe leaned into it and found an unbeatable partnership of patience and accuracy.

Six years after Molinari went 5-0-0, Scottie Scheffler led home Fleetwood and Hideki Matsuyama in the Olympics, a clear message were it still needed. A couple of months after that, the Open de France went to Dan Bradbury, one of the premiere fairways-and-greens players on this circuit. In 2023, two accurate drivers who ranked third and first in iron play finished first and second; in 2022, Guido Migliozzi's tournament-winning approach to the last exemplified his performance as the leader in strokes-gained approach.

Nicolas Colsaerts put on a ball-striking clinic in 2019 (there were no tournaments in 2020 and 2021) and so had a string of more accurate winners before him: Alex Noren, Tommy Fleetwood, Thongchai Jaidee, Bernd Wiesberger, Graeme McDowell twice, Marcel Siem, Thomas Level, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Martin Kaymer. Not since Pablo Larrazabal won as a driverless qualifier in 2008 has the outcome of this tournament been hard to compute; Bradbury might've been 150/1, but he fit the profile of this golf course down to the ground.

Fitzpatrick ought to enjoy it on paper but his record at Le Golf National is poor and while most of it came from 2014-2018, he went 73-64-81 in the Olympics to miss the cut. Given that he's here through necessity rather than desire, it's possible to argue that he won't be particularly engaged in the outcome either and yet for all these concerns, that round of 64 plus his last three rounds at Wentworth entitle him to favouritism.

Fleetwood's performance there was poor and his long-game remains out of sync, as does that of Hovland, who has putted well enough to contend a couple of times since winning in June but hasn't been hitting the ball as he'd like. That leaves Aberg as the best alternative to Fitzpatrick among the favourites: his iron play was good last week, he was 18th in the Olympics, and he'd previously gained valuable experience of the course when twice breaking 70 in the 2022 Eisenhower Trophy.

Forced to predict the outcome of the tournament I'd narrowly opt for Fitzpatrick over Aberg but that's not the mission and I much prefer to chance two massive talents from Belgium, THOMAS DETRY and THOMAS PIETERS.

Both these two could be labelled underachievers, or at least players who haven't delivered on the promise they've shown even if they did pair up to win the World Cup in 2018. Somewhat curiously, the more prolific Pieters never did win on the PGA Tour, where Detry defied years of meek finishes to win the Phoenix Open by six shots.

We'll start with Detry and that victory in Phoenix could hold some relevance. Scottsdale is a stadium-style course which demands quality ball-striking above all else and one of its past champions, Kevin Stadler, came over here and should've won the Open de France. Brendan Steele often played well there and bagged three top-10s from three in Paris, while Scheffler and Matsuyama are both two-time winners in Phoenix.

There are definitely some parallels and we've seen Detry play really well at times here, particularly when ninth in the Olympics despite a slow start. A couple of months after that he was the halfway leader in the Open de France and in seven starts at the course he's made six cuts, bagged two top-10s, contended on another occasion, and generally looked right at home.

In some ways this is surprising, as Detry's main weapons down the years have been his power and his putting, but his approach play here has been excellent. Prior to his last visit he averaged almost a full stroke gained per round with his irons, that over 16 measured rounds, and while those figures took a hit over a messy weekend two years ago, the overall balance of form he's shown is very strong.

He comes back with that aspect of his game firing, too, and this is where I draw real encouragement. Detry's iron play has been the big positive in an otherwise underwhelming run of 30-MC-MC since he returned to the DP World Tour, plus these two missed cuts were each by a single shot having putted poorly. Both came courtesy of a closing bogey, which will have stung, hopefully enough to spark a reaction here.

There is a question mark as to the extent to which course form stacks up following the changes to LGN but my expectation is that it will, and his is very good. With calm conditions a positive and precious Race to Dubai points to play for, I rate him one of the biggest threats to the big four plus Ryan Gerard, who will be seeking to bounce back from a difficult weekend at Wentworth.

Detry's quest for DP World Tour status is clear in the sense that he needs to climb 21 places in the standings by season's end and so is his desire to do it: this will be his fourth start in a row and he's entered in next week's Dunhill Links, too. Expect to see him in Korea and perhaps before that in either Spain, India, or both.

What to make of PIETERS, on the other hand, I don't know. He only has past champion status as things stand and as this will be his first DP World Tour start of 2026, he currently has zero Race to Dubai points; he's not playing in the Dunhill Links and with just three more potential opportunities after that, each dependent on an invitation, he might well need to win this if he's to have a card for 2027.

With LIV Golf's future appearing bleaker by the day, Pieters may be forced to head to Qualifying School and when he spoke to Ben Parsons of Today's Golfer recently, his determination to earn the right to play caught me a little by surprise.

"I’m going to try and get invites, but I don’t want to get a freebie or something," he said. "I want to earn my way back because I don’t want anybody on the DP World Tour to say, ‘Oh, he’s getting his status back.’ I want to do it the proper way if I go back. There’s still golf in me. I still think I can compete with the best, but I’ve got to prove a lot of things before I can do that, before I get back into majors.

"You know what? That pressure, maybe it’s going to suit me well."

This is an enormous talent whose best golf has often come under the most extreme pressure, particularly in the 2016 Ryder Cup, but also when earning selection for Hazeltine by winning the last tournament before Darren Clarke named his side. Not everyone would agree, but I've always thought a lot of Pieters and his ability to step up under the gun, providing his putter behaves.

That club is the concern as it's undermined some top-class ball-striking over the final few events of the LIV Golf season, particularly when sixth in New York and 17th in Indianapolis. In both these tournaments, Pieters struck it well enough to be right in the mix and this is some of the best, most sustained iron play he's produced since he won twice in quick succession at the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022.

As for his record here, Pieters ranked fifth in strokes-gained tee-to-green in each of his latest two visits and in the six he's completed (disqualified in 2014), he's finished between third and 31st. Twice, he's entered the final round bang in the mix so if Pieters is to secure status for 2027 in the most spectacular style, it may be that he does so here in Paris.

That his best performance of the year came at the tight, tree-lined Fanling and that his closest calls on the DP World Tour lately have come at Eichenried and Rinkven confirms that Pieters is well capable of handling a more technical test, and he should be well-prepared for something close to a home game, his family perhaps here to support him having had to follow his LIV Golf success on television.

Of the two, I'd be stronger on him and will weight stakes accordingly, but Detry has had a really good year and can bring his LIV game back home at last. These two have a lot to offer in the coming years if they really want to.

Joost the job

It's worth saying at this point that Scheffler won this while losing strokes on the greens, small encouragement if you are siding with those whose putting is a worry. That applies to Pieters, it somewhat applies to Detry, and it definitely applies to JOOST LUITEN.

Second to McIlroy in strokes-gained tee-to-green last week, Luiten's long-game is right back to its best now. Ignoring a tough week on the links in the Irish Open, he's averaging about 1.3 strokes-gained per round with his irons over the last 16 he's played since the DP World Tour came back from a break. Compare this to the 0.2 he averaged over the first seven months of the season, and the uptick is significant.

I'm sure many would share my nagging doubt as to whether he's up to winning a title like this again, but if he is then Le Golf National could be perfect. He was poor here on his only recent visit, but he'd made seven of eight cuts before that, missing by one when he did fail to make the weekend. In 2019, he ranked eighth in the tee-to-green stats but holed little, and to be frank I'm amazed he's not been back more often since.

Hopefully he can make up for lost time after a roaring finish at Wentworth, where he made just five bogeys all week but finally found the required birdies in an 11-under weekend to climb from just inside the cut-line to a share of sixth alongside Fitzpatrick.

"It's nice to see that after a couple hours on the putting green, you fix something and I hole a couple of putts," he said on Sunday. "It's nice to see the form progressing and that you do it in the right week. We'll see what it will be at the end of the day, but I'm happy with the way I played and I can build on that."

There's extra motivation for Luiten as he'd have played the Olympic Games here but for the Dutch Olympic Committee's harsh decision to set an arbitrary qualification bar he just failed to clear, so this would be a lovely place to win for the first time since 2018, all of his previous victories having been telegraphed by performances in the week before.

In general I'd rather side with youth than experience and the likes of Gregorio de Leo, Daniel Rodrigues and Kazuma Kobori all made some appeal. De Leo was fifth last time and has been hitting his irons well for months, Rodrigues has course experience as an amateur and has been sixth, ninth and 11th when he's putted well lately, while Kobori's approach play remains excellent and he too played here in the World Amateur Team Championship.

But winning your first DP World Tour title at a course with such a fearsome closing stretch is a massive ask and while Ryo Hisatsune did it three years ago, he was a multiple Japan Tour winner and has since proven himself to be PGA Tour-calibre. Indeed, he's playing in the Presidents Cup this week and was simply a very good player for the grade. I'm less sure of how high this trio can climb, though I do rate Rodrigues.

With this in mind, ANDY SULLIVAN is next.

Like Luiten, he flew home at Wentworth on Sunday, his 64 enough for 10th place, his second top-10 finish in four and fifth for the season. One of the others, third place in India, is a particularly good form guide for this but second place in the high-class Dubai Desert Classic behind Patrick Reed also correlates nicely.

All told, Sullivan has seven top-30s in 10 starts at Le Golf National so it's a course he likes and in four of these 10 visits, he's ranked inside the top 10 for greens hit. We wouldn't often cite a statistic which has almost been rendered obsolete, but this is one golf course where it still tells a tale. Indeed, you'd have done just fine looking to the season-long greens-in-regulation stats for clues in this event.

Sullivan is actually a good way down them this time but his approach play has really started to fire lately, evidenced by the fact his putter hasn't needed to for these recent high finishes in Scotland and England.

No wonder he's feeling good about the overall state of his game, telling reporters at Wentworth: "Yeah, I'm happy with it. I've been playing well all year, been playing really nicely. Hopefully press on and try and get this W somewhere along the line at the end."

Two top-sixes here demonstrate that it's a good course for Sullivan and I have to prefer him to fellow Englishman Sam Bairstow, who has been regularly catching the eye, was runner-up here two years ago and played in the WATC too, but hasn't hit the frame anywhere for almost 18 months. Sullivan has done so nine times in the same period and his upside is more significant.

Pirate can find the treasure

Bradbury remains a quality ball-striker who merits respect and it was sorely tempting to side with him again. Note that he won at Houghton for the second time in his career back in the spring and did so having putted poorly in a missed cut on his previous start. Might history repeat in Paris? It's possible, but even by his standards the putter has been abysmal lately.

Paul Waring is another flusher of some interest but I'm more keen on ADRIAN OTAEGUI at the prices.

One of the archetypal fairways-and-greens golfers in this field, my hope is that the addition of a hundred or so yards to this course isn't an issue for the Spaniard who now plays under the flag of the UAE.

If The Pirate can compete off the tee as he's been able to in the past, Otaegui looks a potentially exciting outsider who I've had an eye on for a while, even if he did blow a golden opportunity when selected on these pages for the China Open back in the spring.

Second place there to former Le Golf National champion Bernd Wiesberger is a relevant line of form, though, as is third place in Hainan where accurate drivers dominated, and he was sixth behind Bradbury at Houghton for good measure.

Otaegui has cooled since but there were signs when 33rd in Denmark and 16th in Scotland that he was close, and while he disappointed in the Irish Open when selected at huge odds, he was back on track last week before a quiet final round. Otaegui was in fact 12th at halfway and 21st through 54 holes, but struggled to keep pace on a low-scoring Sunday.

This test of patience ought to be much more suitable and having started to putt with genuine consistency, gaining strokes 13 times in 18 starts dating back to March, he looks like a bit of a sleeping giant to my eye. This is a five-time DP World Tour winner who is only 33, and whose last win came at the expense of another former Le Golf National champion by the way.

His own record here shows six cuts made in his last seven since a couple of narrow misses when very young, and three times in his last six he's entered the final round inside the top 10. As you might expect, this has been the product of quality tee-to-green play, ranking fifth, 11th and 20th for his best recent efforts, and he led the field in ball-striking in 2022.

Putting better now than he was then and buoyed by seeing reward for his improved approach play last week, he'd be the one I'm most excited by at the prices.

Austria champion Kota Kaneko also ended a run of missed cuts last week with some more quality iron play, he's accurate off the tee, and there was no better short-game on the DP World Tour at the beginning of the year. That's quite a handy formula and if you look at all seven of his top-25s from March to May, each came when the emphasis was on control.

Matteo Manassero wasn't far off placing for us at 275/1 two starts ago and is now a bigger price than he was for Wentworth this time last week, but his putting crisis shows no signs of abating and I've had just about enough of following him for the time being. He was in my staking plan along with Bradbury two years ago, though, and is four-times the price as he returns for another crack at this golf course.

Amateur form leads to longshot

Of the French contingent, neither Victor Perez nor Antoine Rozner appealed at the prices whereas Tom Vaillant did somewhat. Seven of his eight professional rounds at Le Golf National have been par or better, he's very high up in the season-long greens-in-regulation charts, and it was only the putter that misbehaved last week. Perhaps he and Julien Sale can give the home fans something to cheer about, both having played in the World Amateur Team Championship here.

For the final pick however I'm going to take a small chance on MICHAEL MJAASETH, who is dangled at very big prices across the board.

That's because his Tour-level form so far amounts to nothing, but he turned pro as one of the more highly-touted amateurs this summer, a collective from which Americans like Jackson Koivun, Tommy Morrison and Ben James have already made plenty of noise.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that Mjaaseth boasts similar potential but there are a few reasons to chance him here. First is that he too was involved in the WATC in 2022, finishing ninth in the individual standings. These things don't always work out but Bairstow has already gone from that to runner-up in the Open de France, so we can cling to hope.

Secondly, Mjaaseth was the medallist at a recent First Stage Q-School event in Huddersfield, the same one in which the promising Jose Ballester finished eighth, with Luis Masaveu 14th and Chase Koepka further back. That surely will have boosted his confidence and could serve as a springboard, whether at Second Stage or wherever else he can get a game.

This is a completely different kettle of fish but I'm willing to chance him given that he'll remember Le Golf National and may benefit from returning to a course he knows, or did before the changes were made. Mjaaseth also made the cut on the HotelPlanner Tour last week and whereas most of those from the 2022 amateur event here have been found in the betting, he's been completely dismissed.

Perhaps that's right, but to minimum stakes I don't mind finding out given that, like former Open de France champions Colsaerts and Migliozzi, he's a past champion in the French Boys' Amateur. Vibes. Vibes is what we're now left with. Adieu.

Posted at 21:00 BST on 21/09/26

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