Steve Palmer's DP World Tour Championship second-round preview, best bets

When to watch

Sky Sports Main Event and Golf, 5am Friday

Best bets

Gavin Green to win 7.20am twoball (7-10) and Tommy Fleetwood to win 8.05am twoball (5-11)
2pts double bet365

Preview

English duo Tyrrell Hatton and Matt Fitzpatrick led after the first round of the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, each carding a seven-under-par 65 at the Earth Course.

Hatton, 18-1 ante-post, and Fitzpatrick, third in the pre-tournament betting at 9-1, will comprise the 8.45am (UK and Ireland time) second-round twoball, with the players going out in leaderboard order from this point onwards.

Fitzpatrick has assumed favouritism at a best-price 23-10, with Hatton a general 9-2 chance. Race to Dubai leader Rory McIlroy is available at 15-2, having opened with a 71, taking a six-shot deficit into the final 54 holes.

Fitzpatrick, a two-time Earth Course champion who won the US Open in June, deserves to be a much shorter price than Hatton, who has endured a humdrum campaign, but there is obviously much scope for them both to be overtaken in the rounds to come.

Tommy Fleetwood (68) and Jon Rahm (70) laid a solid foundation for the week, while world number one McIlroy, who suffered some hooked drives and missed a putt from two feet and nine inches on the 16th hole, will expect to significantly improve on Friday.

Second-round twoball punters are pointed towards Gavin Green and Tommy Fleetwood, who possess the form and ball-striking confidence to boss their matches on a course which is set up slightly tougher than for previous years, with slightly narrowed fairways and penal rough.

Green has gone four months without missing a cut and in his last three tournaments he has finished 11th in the Mallorca Open, runner-up in the Portugal Masters and seventh in the Nedbank Challenge. Oliver Wilson has gone off the boil in the last month and Green can be fancied to outgun the often erratic Englishman at this long, punishing layout.

Fleetwood, triumphant in the Nedbank on Sunday, is a two-time Abu Dhabi Championship victor who likes the Middle East desert so much he moved to Dubai earlier this year. Slowly but surely his game has returned to the level which made him a Ryder Cup star and German plodder Max Kieffer will do well to stay close to Fleetwood in round two.

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