IT’S been another peculiar year for professional golf, a game that seems determined to eat itself up in a frenzied fashion somewhat akin to a pond of piranha fish thrashing around, eating their own tails and gnashing away until there is nothing left but a few vague memories and the odd bit of skin and bone.

Let’s look on the bright side, however, and take a look back at some of the key moments. We’ll kick off with the man of the year, Scottie Scheffler. Back in early May, his brilliance had been rubber-stamped by a second victory in the Masters but when he rumbled up to the year’s second major many were muttering that his Everyman qualities defined him as a less than satisfying superstar. Whereupon, in scenes that remain bewilderingly hard to believe, he was arrested and everybody started to find him interesting. The incident that prompted the arrest was tragic (a volunteer was killed), Scheffler’s involvement was largely the consequence of muddled policing, and the change in perspective was entirely in keeping with society’s creepy relationship with fame.

At the start of that same week at Valhalla GC in Kentucky, conventional wisdom was also slotting Xander Schauffele into a box, one marked “doesn’t win enough”. He’d had both the Players Championship and the previous week’s Wells Fargo Championship in the palm of his hands during the final round and fluffed both. A major championship top 10 machine, it was said, but he lacked the ruthless touch. Cue another flip: he won the PGA Championship and two months later he also won the Open.

Whilst it was outside impressions of Scheffler and Schauffele that were shuffled, the men themselves remained pretty much the same as always before and after their various travails. But others were inflicting reverses on themselves in 2024. Over last year’s holiday period, Jon Rahm transformed himself from legacy to LIV golfer, and seemed to take most of the year trying to come to terms with the move. At the same time, Viktor Hovland changed coach and then, when results didn’t work out, went back to the first one. By year’s end he still a shadow of the golfer he was 12 months ago.

In stark contrast to the Scheffler-Schauffele softly-softly model, Bryson DeChambeau has gone full on and, while many will struggle with his brash nature, his efforts have been a tremendous success. Alongside fiercely popular social media pursuits, he’s transformed his low scoring on LIV in 2023 into major championship triumph in 2024, and generally cut a much happier figure than he was in 2021/22.

The most heartening story of the year came on the DP World Tour with the renaissance of Matteo Manassero. His return to form was first confirmed when the still-only-31-year-old won on the Challenge Tour last May, 10 years to the week that he had landed the 2013 BMW PGA Championship. In March, four years to the week since Italian lockdown started (a period of introspection he credits with his recovery) he won a fifth DP World Tour title. In September, four years after descending to his lowest world ranking of 1,805, he returned to Wentworth and led after 54 holes. By season’s end he had recorded 12 top 20 finishes, earned a PGA Tour card and, for the first time in 10 years, had qualified to play in the DP World Tour Championship at Jumeirah.

So there we have it. Another year of heroes and villains, reversals and returns, glory and despair, prats and pratfalls. Meanwhile, this week’s Hero World Challenge, the final get-together of the world’s best golfers, will lack the host Tiger Woods and the back-to-back champion in 2021/22 Hovland, but the Albany GC in the Bahamas should yet again produce a decent scrap for the title.

Each Way – Akshay Bhatia at 28/1

A first-time winner on the PGA Tour last summer, Akshay Bhatia added to that tally with an impressive victory in the Texas Open the week before the Masters in April. Since then he has come close to making it three wins at the top level with second place in this summer’s Rocket Mortgage Classic and the same result last time out in the ZOZO Championship.

In addition to this good form, he is no stranger to the Bahamas, winning the Korn Ferry Tour’s Great Exuma Classic at Emerald Bay in early 2022 – and a year later he was fourth on the same course before landing seventh at the nearby Abaco Club. Other results indicate that he likes playing on blustery courses by the ocean. He was second at Grand Reserve in the 2023 Puerto Rico Open, then fourth at Vidanta Vallarta and tenth at El Cardonal in Mexico. Confident, in fine form, in a spot he likes, on a course he should take to, there’s every chance of a bold bid this week.

First Round Leader Each Way – Akshay Bhatia at 20/1

We’ll also add the 22-year-old Californian in the first round market. He’s been sitting in the top four after 18 holes in three of his four visits to the Bahamas, was second after round one when the runner-up in Puerto Rico, led after the opening lap in the Texas win and also at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, and was second at that stage last time out in Japan.

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