Paul Williams

Paul Williams' Betfred British Masters Tips 2025

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The Belfry and Sir Nick Faldo host the British Masters once again this week and England’s Matt Fitzpatrick and Aaron Rai have both made a rare visit home for a regulation DP World Tour event to bolster this week’s field with both men virtually inseparable at the top of the market at around 12/1.

Alex Noren, Matt Wallace, the Hojgaard twins, Jordan Smith, Rasmus Neergaard Petersen and last week’s winner Marco Penge follow in the betting in what, like last week, is another top-heavy betting market with some juicy each-way prices a little further down the list.

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Course Overview. The Brabazon Course at The Belfry is no stranger to the circuit with a number of events having been hosted here since the turn of the century, however prior to the 2020 ISPS Handa UK Championship won by Rasmus Hojgaard, 2008 was the last time that we saw the Peter Alliss and Dave Thomas design in competitive action at this level. 4 Ryder Cups have also been played around these parts, the most recent of which was team Europe’s win in 2002.

Parkland in style with water in play on half of the holes, the track measures 7,356 yards for its par of 72. 12 par-4s instead of the more typical 10 means that there are just 3 each of the par-3s and par-5s, however scoring on those longer holes at 538, 566 and 564 yards for the 3rd, 15th and 17th respectively is an important part of compiling a competitive score here.

Historically the fairways here have been narrow and the rough lush, however the Bent/Poa greens are of excellent quality giving a little respite to those who are less adept on and around the putting surfaces.

british masters tips

Tournament Stats. We’ve published some key statistics for this week’s event that will help to shape a view on players who might go well this week.

Course stats include the various events that have been played here at The Belfry since 2000: Current Form | Course Form | First Round Leader Stats | Combined Stats.

Predictor Model. Our published Predictor Model is available here. As always you can build your own model using the variables available.

British Masters – Event Winners & Prices. 2024: Niklas Norgaard, 50/1; 2023: Daniel Hillier, 90/1; 2022: Thorbjorn Olesen, 75/1; 2021: Richard Bland, 150/1; 2020: Renato Paratore, 50/1; 2019: Marcus Kinhult, 175/1; 2018: Eddie Pepperell, 30/1; 2017: Paul Dunne, 66/1; 2016: Alex Noren, 18/1; 2015: Matt Fitzpatrick, 33/1.

Course Winners. 2024: Niklas Norgaard, -16; 2023: Daniel Hillier, -10; 2022: Thorbjorn Olesen, -10; 2021: Richard Bland, -13; 2020: Rasmus Hojgaard, -14; 2008: Gonzalo Fdez-Castano, -12; 2007: Lee Westwood, -15; 2006: Johan Edfors, -11; 2003: Paul Casey, -11; 2002: Angel Cabrera, -10; 2001, Henrik Stenson, -13; 2000: Jose Maria Olazabal, -13.

Weather Forecast. The latest weather forecast for the area is here.

This part of England has been fairly warm and dry for the recent past, and save for an unexpected deluge prior to this week’s event I’d expect the course to play reasonably firm and fast. Sunny spells interspersed with the odd shower is the summary for the tournament days with light winds and temperatures in the low 20s Centigrade, low 70s Fahrenheit.

Tournament Trends & Key Factors.

Analysing the final stats of the five winners here at The Belfry in recent years gives us a little more insight into the skill-sets required:

  • 2024, Niklas Norgaard (-16). 329 yards (1st), 48.3% fairways (4th), 76.4% greens in regulation (4th), 58.8% scrambling (25th), 1.75 putts per GIR (25th).
  • 2023, Daniel Hillier (-10). 315 yards (4th), 51.7% fairways (20th), 69.4% greens in regulation (20th), 72.7% scrambling (5th), 1.76 putts per GIR (31st).
  • 2022, Thorbjorn Olesen (-10). 293 yards (17th), 38.3% fairways (67th), 57.0% greens in regulation (60th), 74.2% scrambling (4th), 1.67 putts per GIR (7th).
  • 2021, Richard Bland (-13). 272 yards (52nd), 78.3% fairways (1st), 82.0% greens in regulation (2nd), 92.3% scrambling (1st), 1.78 putts per GIR (48th).
  • 2020, Rasmus Hojgaard (-14). 304 yards (9th), 48.3% fairways (40th), 75% greens in regulation (6th), 55.6% scrambling (36th), 1.65 putts per GIR (1st).

Looking at the list of players who’ve succeeded around the Brabazon course here at The Belfry historically, it’s fair to say that generally better Total Driving and Ball-Striking has been the key to success. Niklas Norgaard was another case in point last year, leading the field for Total Driving courtesy of some relatively accurate bombing.

The greens here are generally easy to read and favour those players who might otherwise struggle on the putting surfaces, and again that’s reinforced when you see a list of names including Lee Westwood, Paul Casey and Henrik Stenson all having won here, however finding and holding greens isn’t always easy when conditions are firm.

Strokes Gained: Our winners here have excelled in different Strokes Gained categories over the past 5 years to suggest that there are various ways to succeed around these parts:

  • 2023: Niklas Norgaard: T: 1st; A: 27th; T2G: 2nd; ATG: 21st; P: 7th
  • 2023: Daniel Hillier: T: 25th; A: 11th; T2G: 16st; ATG: 58th; P: 2nd
  • 2022: Thorbjorn Olesen: T: 64th; A: 9th; T2G: 31st; ATG: 31st; P: 2nd
  • 2021: Richard Bland: T: 18th; A: 2nd; T2G: 1st; ATG: 37th; P: 55th
  • 2020: Rasmus Hojgaard: T: 11th; A: 4th; T2G: 2nd; ATG: 38th; P: 20th

Key: T: SG Off the Tee; A; SG Approach; T2G: SG Tee to Green; ATG: SG Around the Green; P: SG Putting.

Incoming Form: Since the British Masters was re-established in 2015, the four winners prior to Marcus Kinhult – Eddie Pepperell, Paul Dunne, Alex Noren and Matt Fitzpatrick – had each shown some decent enough form in the weeks prior to their victory. Marcus Kinhult was far more difficult to find as he’d missed each of his previous 4 cuts, shooting 80 on his previous competitive round before opening with a 65 at Hillside and hardly looking back.

Eddie Pepperell had recorded 5 top-10 finishes in his previous 8 starts, 2 of which were runner-up finishes at the Scottish Open and Portugal Masters. Paul Dunne had produced two top-15 finishes in his previous three strokeplay events and after a shaky 74 to start on his most recent start in Holland, nobody in the field bettered his final 3-round total. For Noren this was the third of four 2016 victories and he was clearly in exceptional form overall, whereas for Fitzpatrick his win at Woburn marked his maiden success on the European Tour, however with four top-3 finishes in his previous 11 events he was clearly knocking very loudly on the door.

2020 winner Renato Paratore secured his second European Tour title at Close House off the back of a 15th place finish in Austria a fortnight before, which was his only start since lockdown had eased. The Italian sat 2nd at the halfway point at Diamond Country Club and had also been prominent in Saudi and Abu Dhabi in strong fields earlier in the year.

Richard Bland’s fairytale win in 2021, on the 478th time of asking as a professional, wasn’t completely out of the blue either as he’d finished runner-up at Leopard Creek the previous November and had recorded a top-10 finish in Gran Canaria as recently as 3 weeks prior.

2022 winner Thorbjorn Olesen broke a 4-year drought when he fended off Sebastian Soderberg courtesy of some late putting heroics, however there had been signs that he was finding his game once again, recording a top 10 finish in Dubai in the late autumn before finishing 12th in Qatar where only a 3rd round 76 stopped him from seriously contending.

Daniel Hillier had undoubtedly been trending ahead of his maiden DP World Tour victory in 2023. 5th at the KLM Open and 3rd the week before at the BMW International Open was form for everyone to see, and he duly stepped up to the plate here with a closing round of 66.

And finally, Niklas Norgaard secured his maiden DP World Tour title here 12 months ago having shown significant promise at the start of the summer with 2nd at the Soudal Open and 4th at the European Open. The Dane was trending heading into this having finished 53rd and 27th on his previous two outings:

  • 2024, Niklas Norgaard: 31/MC/35/2/4/MC/67/33/MC/15/53/27
  • 2023, Daniel Hillier: 42/MC/51/MC/12/23/MC/MC/MC/5/MC/3
  • 2022, Thorbjorn Olesen: MC/MC/20/41/8/42/35/MC/MC/12/23/33
  • 2021, Richard Bland: 16/7/2/40/35/MC/52/MC/MC/8/MC/27
  • 2020, Renato Paratore: 48/40/21/36/19/2/21/MC/27/74/47/15
  • 2019, Marcus Kinhult: 22/30/71/22/20/MC/MC/18/MC/MC/MC/MC
  • 2018, Eddie Pepperell: 43/51/DQ/MC/2/6/59/9/56/6/2/44
  • 2017, Paul Dunne: 33/30/MC/MC/13/54/26/MC/9/14/70/14
  • 2016, Alex Noren: MC/43/12/MC/8/1/46/49/2/1/34/11
  • 2015, Matt Fitzpatrick: MC/3/MC/MC/77/2/17/44/3/30/3/MC

As an additional angle, we can also look at Rasmus Hojgaard’s win here at The Belfry at the 2020 UK Championship:

  • 2020, Rasmus Hojgaard: 13/49/1/MC/MC/MC/MC/6/MC/2/6/3

The young Dane was a fairly obvious winner with incoming form of 2/6/3 over his past 3 starts and justified his 14/1 quotes in the end via a play-off.

Course Form:

Aside from Angel Cabrera, our course winners here had patchy history at best at The Belfry prior to lifting their respective trophies:

  • 2024: Niklas Norgaard: 43/7
  • 2023: Daniel Hillier: Debut
  • 2022: Thorbjorn Olesen: 17/57
  • 2021: Richard Bland: 46/31/MC/MC/19
  • 2020: Rasmus Hojgaard: Debut
  • 2008: Gonzalo Fdez Castano: 14/57
  • 2007: Lee Westwood: 54/57/MC/27/MC
  • 2006: Johan Edfors: Debut
  • 2003: Paul Casey: 12/MC
  • 2002: Angel Cabrera: 9/2
  • 2001, Henrik Stenson: Debut
  • 2000: Jose Maria Olazabal: Debut

For me, the Belfry is a good test of golf and scoring isn’t likely to get out of control, despite a pleasant enough weather forecast. Historically straightforward greens of excellent quality will encourage birdies though to those who can keep the ball in play, and overall I’d favour those who can gain most of their strokes from their long game, as opposed to on the putting surfaces themselves.

My final Betfred British Masters tips are as follows:

Kristoffer Reitan 3pts EW 22/1 (10EW, 1/5) with Betfred

With speculation over Ryder Cup wildcard picks likely to dominate the narrative this week at The Belfry, the real dilemma for me was what to do with Matt Fitzpatrick.

At 12th in the standings to compatriot Matt Wallace’s 11th, if we assume that the rest of the team will be the current top 10 plus Rahm then that only leaves space for one of the Matts, and the popular thinking is that it will be Fitzpatrick over Wallace. Does that mean that Fitz can rest on his laurels? Probably not, however last week’s effort from Wallace likely help Fitzpatrick’s cause, and after a full-on FedEx Cup Playoffs campaign I’ll leave him out of this week’s team, albeit with more than a little trepidation.

With that decision made, my biggest fancy for the week is roughly twice the price of Fitzpatrick and I’m happy to build my team around Kristoffer Reitan here at The Belfry.

Much like last week. there’s a log jam of players in the 12-20/1 bracket who could all win if they find their form, with Rasmus Hojgaard and Marco Penge emerging as the pair from the top of the market last week who fought it out for the title. Reitan was 7 strokes back of Penge’s winning total in a tie for 6th spot in the end, a position hardly helped by an opening round of 74 which was 10 shots worse than the leading score after 18 holes. From there, 201 shots for his final 54 holes was 2 clear than the best of the rest and that must fill him with confidence coming into this week.

4th, 9th, 8th and 2nd for SG Off the Tee in his four outings prior to last week’s trip to Denmark is the kind of performance I’m looking for in a potential winner here, and although that level dropped off last week due partially to his poor opening round, he more than made up for it on the greens where he ranked 4th for SG Putting.

Penge’s success last week meant that he leapfrogged the Norwegian on the Race to Dubai to move back into pole position for one of the ten PGA Tour cards next year, and it’s testament to the season that both have had that I suspect both needn’t worry about their performances from here on in as they should have already done enough. However Penge proved last week that he’s still hungry for more success and I suspect Reitan with his win at the Soudal Open and three top-6 finishes in his last six starts is equally likely to push for more.

This will be the 27 year-old’s competitive debut here at the Belfry, however with two of the last five winners here also debutants that’s of little concern to me – instead I’m happy to take on the rest of the fancied players with Reitan this week.

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Eugenio Chacarra 1pt EW 60/1 (10EW, 1/5) with Betfred

Whilst on the subject of the ten PGA Tour cards, Eugenio Chacarra is currently on the outside looking in when it comes to achieving one of his stated objectives following his departure from LIV a year ago, and after a relatively fallow period I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the Spaniard push on once again over the business end of this season.

Winner of LIV Bangkok on what was just his fifth start on that circuit back in 2022, the 25 year-old followed that up with success on the Asian Tour’s St Andrew Bay Championship the following August (take note biorhythms fans), before his time on LIV came to an end and he looked to the DP World Tour for his pathway to bigger and better things.

Success at this year’s Indian Open as a sponsor’s invite made his scheduling for the rest of 2025 a whole lot easier, and it wasn’t until after his 7th place finish at the Italian Open back in June – where he led the field for Total Driving – that his form eventually dropped off.

Missed cuts at the BMW International Open and Scottish Open followed, but his trademark combination of power and accuracy has been increasingly evident once again over the past fortnight as he’s finished 52nd at the Nexo Championship and then 16th last week in Denmark whilst ranking 12th and 7th for Total Driving, which ties in nicely with winners here as per my preamble above.

As with Reitan, this will be Chacarra’s debut here this week, however that didn’t stop him winning on that quirky, challenging track in India back in March and once again I’m happy to overlook his lack of experience here.

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Calum Hill 1pt EW 70/1 (10EW, 1/5) with Betfred

In stark contrast to my first two selections who are showing some form coming into this but are making their first visit to the Belfry, I’m also backing Calum Hill who has pretty much the complete opposite.

9th here at The Belfry at the 2020 UK Championship, the Scot followed that effort up with 8th at the following year’s British Masters held here (he led to halfway), then bettered that with a 4th place finish the year after. 53rd last year is less impressive, however his overall record on this course is more than enough to get him onto the shortlist.

With that kind of course form and with a win to his name already this season, the reason we’re getting such a healthy each-way price on the 30 year-old is that his form coming into this week reads MC/MC/MC/DQ, so there’s going to need to be a leap of faith this week that his form will improve.

Maybe, though, it’s not all that bad. Hill’s win at the Joburg Open in March came off the back of three straight missed cuts, and within his most recent barren spell he opened with a 65 at Renaissance in top-level company to sit 5th after day 1 before the wheels fell off.

Disqualification at the Nexo Championship came after he failed to hole out on his penultimate hole of round 2 having already missed the cut for all intents and purposes, however perhaps he can take inspiration from compatriot Grant Forrest’s win later that week and seriously contend here.

Aside from this year’s Joburg Open victory, Hill’s other DP World Tour success came on English soil at the Cazoo Classic in 2021 at the London Club in Kent, and the Fife man is clearly comfortable this side of the border.

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Lucas Bjerregaard 1pt EW 275/1 (10EW, 1/5) with Betfred

Finally, I’ll take a chance on one of my favourite players from yesteryear, Lucas Bjerregaard, who’s showing the signs of form of late following his regaining of Tour status through last year’s Road to Mallorca standings on the second tier.

Winner of the 2017 Portugal Masters and the Alfred Dunhill Links the following year, the big Dane made a name for himself on a more global scale when he beat Tiger Woods in the WGC Dell Matchplay before going on to finish 4th overall in 2019. It’s hardly been plain sailing since, however 2nd at last year’s Danish Golf Championship was the highlight of a year that saw him regain his Tour status, and at the age of 34 you’d imagine there’s enough time for him to have another spell in the limelight.

Traditionally a strong player in terms of his long game, 17th at the Austrian Open showed promise as he ranked 6th for SG Off the Tee and 2nd for GIR, and although his results have been up and down since, 14th last week in his homeland saw him rank 8th for SG Tee to Green and 5th for SG Around the Green on the week.

25th here at The Belfry last year is Bjerregaard’s best finish around these parts, although it did see him top the field for SG Putting which is an eye-catching statistic for a player who’s strongest suit isn’t with the flat stick. With the generous each-way terms available from the sponsor’s this week, I’m happy to take a chance on Lucas this week.

✅ New UK customers: Bet £10 Get £50 in free bets for new customers using code BETFRED50 and this qualifying link
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Odds and bookmaker offers correct at 16:25BST 18.8.25 but are naturally subject to fluctuation.