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While Rory McIlroy was kicking himself for losing from two up with three to play in his Match Play semi-final and the rest of the Europeans slunk off tails between legs after being wiped out early, Matt Wallace was 2000 miles away throwing his cap in the ring for a Ryder Cup place by winning for the first time on the PGA Tour.

Up until last year the WGC-Dell Match Play Championship had been a thorn in my side and a pain in my pocket ever since it launched in 1999 with boringly straight Jeff Maggert, seeded 24, outlasting Andrew Magee, seeded 50, in the most tedious final imaginable at the 38th hole.

We’re in the Arizona desert for LIV Tucson, the second leg of the rebel group’s 14-tournament series - the 54-hole shotgun start tees off today - and two European favourites will be feeling right at home there.

There’s something going on at Cheltenham this week but intrepid golf punters will be paying scant attention with three competitive tournaments to get their teeth into.

If the Players Championship, regarded by some as the fifth Major, is as enthralling as last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, won by big outsider Kurt Kitayama in a tournament that seven, including megastars Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler, had a realistic chance of winning right up to the 71st hole, nobody will be complaining.

At the risk of being certified insane for opposing the hottest golfer on the planet, the man who is 93 under par for his 20 rounds and the winner of three of five starts, let’s go for a European whose name isn’t Jon Rahm for the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

The expanded 14-tournament LIV Golf circuit with Saudi prize-money hoisted to an outrageous $405m hits Mexico for the first time on Friday and it could be a great weekend for the Latinos In Mayakoba.

Rahm was relentless in peeling off his third victory since the turn of the year and fifth from his last nine starts but it was the way he did it, coming back with crucial birdies after being headed by the persistent Homa that marked the big Spaniard as a true champion, now just a 7/1 chance with Fitzdares to win his first Masters in April.

Apologies to new world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler for leaving him out of our headline but we have an embarrassment of riches this wild, wild week: Tiger’s back for a first full-scale attempt at walking 72 holes in a non-Major since October 2020, dethroned Rory’s impatient to regain the top spot, Rahmbo’s kicking himself for a wasted opportunity and desperate to make quick amends.

PHOENIX OPEN Best bets 2pts each-way Hideki Matsuyama @ 28/1 2pts each-way Rory McIlroy @ 15/2 1.5pts each-way Xander Schauffele @ 14/1 1pt each-way Tom Kim @ 28/1 0.5pt each-way Cameron Young @ 28/1 view odds Place FIVE pre-tournament bets and get an in-play matched FREE BET! T&Cs apply.  Two sporting worlds collide in Arizona...

AT&T PEBBLE BEACH PRO-AM Best bets 2pts each-way Jordan Spieth @ 9/1 1.5pts each-way Tom Hoge @ 16/1 1pt each-way Justin Rose @ 25/1 0.5pt each-way Jimmy Walker @ 150/1 0.5pt each-way Joel Dahmen @ 33/1 0.5pt each-way Garrett Higgo @ 80/1 view odds Place FIVE pre-tournament bets and get an in-play matched FREE BET!...

Hottest golfer on the planet Jon Rahm heads for a unique January treble in his favourite tournament at Torrey Pines this week after edging home in an American Express thriller on Sunday to move ever closer to regaining his world No. 1 spot.

With Rory McIlroy waiting for next week’s Dubai Desert Classic before commencing his 2023 campaign and Jon Rahm committed to fourballs with amateurs and five-hour rounds in the AmEx in the Californian desert, there’s still a very fruity ingredient in the shape of a batch of LIV golf rebels taking part, their 14-tournament series not teeing off until the end of next month at Mayakoba.

Let me give an example by telling you how I botched the biggest golf payout of my chequered betting career and why I may be a good judge but a rotten punter.

It may only be a 75-mile hop from Kapalua to Honolulu but there could hardly be two more different tests of golf than the Plantation course, where Jon Rahm has started our tipping year with an astonishing from-nine-behind triumph even he could never have expected, to Waialae, the home of the Hawaiian Open since its inception in 1965.

Every right-thinking European would luv it, absolutely luv it if the mighty Americans rolled up in Rome for the Ryder Cup with their tails between their legs, not having won one 2023 Major between them. And it might just happen…

Welcome to Golf 2023 and straight away we’re off to Maui, the second largest island after Hawaii itself in America’s 50th State, for the PGA Tour’s traditional Tournament of Champions pipe-opener at Kapalua.

We got the nationality right about last week’s Leopard Creek winner but that’s about all. With obvious choices Charl Schwartzel, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Louis Oosthuizen and Branden Grace failing to deliver for South Africa, it was left to 150/1 journeyman Ockie Strydom to ease home and therein lies a clue to this week’s top Mauritius Open pick.

We’re in South Africa for the third week in a row for the Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek, that  country’s most colourful course with the Kruger National Park’s fascinating wildlife as its spectacular backdrop.

It’s the last big golfing week of 2022 but it should have been even bigger. Tiger Woods, due to be back for the first time since The Open to compete in the Hero World Challenge, has pulled out with a foot problem, but we still have a sizzler of a tournament in the Bahamas plus two national Opens in Australia and South Africa.

JOBURG OPEN 2pts each-way Thriston Lawrence @ 14/1 1.5pts each-way Christiaan Bezuidenhout @ 13/2 1pt each-way Hennie Du Plessis @ 18/1 0.5pt each-way Oliver Bekker @ 20/1 view odds Place FIVE pre-tournament bets and get an in-play matched FREE BET! T&Cs apply.  Out with the old, in with the new. A fabulous Tour Championship finale...

Will it be a Rory McIlroy-Jon Rahm shootout for the $10m DP World Tour Championship on the Earth Course at Jumeirah Estates this weekend … or will someone jump out of the pack to poop the party?

Just when we were wondering when the real Scottie Scheffler was going to stand up, a nine-under-par 62 in Mexico on Sunday reminded us what a class act he is and why he’s the most likely winner of this week’s Houston Open.

We have to go to Mexico for the only top-class golf action of the week with European Ryder Cup star Viktor Hovland bidding for a Mayakoba hat-trick, a feat not achieved since Steve Stricker’s three-in-a-row at the John Deere Classic in 2009-10-11.

With Rory McIlroy deservedly returning to the world No. 1 spot with his hard-earned retention of the CJ Cup in South Carolina, the stage is set for another Irish triumph when the PGA Tour rolls on to a very wet Bermuda this week.

In what could be seen as a mini Ryder Cup rehearsal, Europe’s top six, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Matt Fitzpatrick, Viktor Hovland, Shane Lowry and Tyrrell Hatton, line up against America’s  finest at the CJ Cup in South Carolina in what should be a belter of a tournament.

What a weekend it was for golf’s youngbloods with 20-year-old Korean sensation Tom Kim winning for the second time on the PGA Tour and 22-year-old Spanish hunk Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra nabbing a nifty $4m from Saudi’s ever-open coffers in the LIV tournament in Bangkok where the market leaders all flopped.

The LIV circus moves on to Bangkok on Friday for the sixth leg of its eight-tournament opening series - there’ll be 14 next year - and we’re off to a spanking new course an hour’s drive north of the city, the Stonehill Golf Club, the lavish pet project of Thailand’s second-richest man.

ALFRED DUNHILL LINKS 2pts each-way Tyrrell Hatton @ 14/1 1.5pts each-way Louis Oosthuizen @ 28/1 1pt each-way Oliver Wilson @ 150/1 1pt each-way Shane Lowry @ 10/1 1pt each-way Victor Perez @ 28/1 0.5pt each-way Joakim Lagergren @ 80/1 view odds It’s a horses-for-courses week up on Scotland’s East Course where the Alfred Dunhill Links...

The DP World Tour will be saying a little prayer this weekend hoping that LIV rebel and pre-tournament favourite Patrick Reed doesn’t win the French Open - or to give it the correct title, the Cazoo Open de France - at Le Golf National.

The Italian Open at next year’s Ryder Cup venue, the Marco Simone course ten miles outside Rome in the village of Guidony, has a hard act to follow after the soggy thrills of a BMW PGA Championship cut short to 54 holes because of unrelenting midweek rain.

After starting the Tour Championship with a triple bogey and making up a ten-shot deficit on world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler in the last 70 holes, Rory McIlroy must be thinking he can walk on water and he may have to if the forecast deluge turns the BMW PGA Championship into a slog this weekend.

The Saudi-backed LIV have excitedly announced a tranche of new recruits - six in total headed by the key signing of reigning Open champion Cameron Smith - and perfectly timed for this week’s LIV Invitational at The International club at Boston, Massachusetts.

A $75m bonus pool and an $18m jackpot for the winner is no laughing matter but someone should tell the PGA Tour that the big FedEx Cup showdown in Atlanta this week is not far short of a joke.

The PGA Tour has bowled punters a googly by taking the BMW Championship, the second leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, not only to a course that’s never been on the circuit before but to a state, Delaware, that’s making its tour debut too.

The PGA Tour’s Regular Season is done and dusted with newcomer Joohyung Kim’s spectacular breakthrough victory in the Wyndham Championship - the 20-year-old started with a quadruple-bogey EIGHT but still dotted up by five - so now it’s on to the FedEx Cup.

Doing my research for this week’s Wyndham Championship In North Carolina, one name stood out - the 2017 winner Henrik Stenson. The same Henrik Stenson who has just given up the opportunity to captain Europe in the next Ryder Cup and has instead thrown in his lot with the new Saudi-backed LIV marauders.

The drip-drip-drip of marketable PGA Tour golfers to grab a share of the Saudi-backed LIV millions is starting to show and with sponsors understandably restless about not getting full-strength fields for their money, there is clearly a heap of trouble ahead.

Two weak tournaments this week as we get our breath back after a scintillating Open Championship - a better result for bookmakers than punters - and a big chance at the 3M Open for two with star potential to break through after regularly knocking on the door in their rookie season.

It’s here, it’s finally here. The Open. Not the British Open. THE Open. In the auld grey toon of St. Andrews. The Special One. Even more special as it’s the 150th anniversary Open. Beyond special that Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, both dual winners of the Claret Jug, both legends, are in town too.