PARIS – He was outside the top-20 just once on the European Tour between the end of November and the beginning of February, so Dylan Frittelli will be keen to rediscover that kind of form as he tees off in this week’s HNA Open de France.
He is in the field after missing the cut in the US Open with a best recent performance of a share of 30th in the PGA Championship at Wentworth at the end of May, and a solid performance in Paris would go a long way to getting back inside the world’s top 50.
Good form would also be encouraging for Frittelli ahead of The Open Championship which is now less than three weeks away after a pair of missed cuts in both majors so far this year.
That he missed the cut in last year’s version of the tournament at Le Golf National in Paris won’t be a source of encouragement, but he has become a much more accomplished player since then.
However, on the course that will be hosting the Ryder Cup in September, which is a curiously links-like layout, he’s going to have to be a lot more accurate off the tee than he has been so for this year on the European Tour. After recording a driving accuracy mark of 65.93 percent last season, he’s down to 58.84 this year.
His figures for hitting greens in regulation are good, as he’s landed the ball on the putting surface in the appropriate number of strokes 70.7 percent of the time. So a little bit of an improvement in his putts per greens in regulation from 1.78 would go a long way to helping him be competitive.
Last year’s champion Tommy Fleetwood was first in the greens in regulation stats throughout all four of his rounds and third in accuracy off the tee.
Frittelli has shown himself to be a thoroughly analytical golfer, so he will digest those statistics and attempt to improve his performance to a level where he can reproduce the hot form from early in the season.