Open de France 2026 Betting Preview: 4 Picks

The FedEx Open de France runs from 24 to 27 September at Le Golf National outside Paris, a 3,750,000 dollar event on the DP World Tour and a 144-player field. This is the Albatros course that hosted the 2018 Ryder Cup, and it remains one of the most demanding driving tests in European golf.

Our model projects a winning score of -13 with the cut at -1. Five strokeplay editions sit in our database, and they carry an unusually strong signal: the same names keep coming back.

What it takes to win at Le Golf National

A par 71 of 7,247 yards, the Albatros asks for driving control above all else. The fairways are narrow, water is in play on a third of the holes, and the closing stretch from the 15th is among the most penal on tour. Length is close to irrelevant; putting the ball in play is not.

The course history backs that up. Jeff Winther has played it four times and finished T8, T2 and T2 in the last three. Yannik Paul has three top 10s from three visits. Thomas Detry, Guido Migliozzi and Thomas Pieters all have a top 3 here. It is not a venue where a first-timer typically arrives and works it out, which is why our course fit guide weights a proven record at places like this more heavily than at a generic resort course.

One note on our own data. The 2018 Ryder Cup was played here, and because it matches on venue it was briefly being counted as a prior edition, handing twelve players a phantom win at the course. It is now excluded: a team matchplay result is not strokeplay course form, and the five editions above are the real sample.

Victor Perez, 33/1

5th of 140 in this field for strokes gained total over his last 16 rounds, and 9th around the green, with a T2 inside his last five starts. He plays this week at home in France.

The reservation is the venue itself, and it is a real one at a course this history-driven: five visits, no top 10, a best of T16 in 2019.

Ewen Ferguson, 33/1

1st of 140 in this field off the tee over his last 16 rounds at +0.88 per round. On the Albatros that is the single most useful thing a player can be.

He is 8th of 140 overall for strokes gained total, and on the test we apply to every pick, removing each player's single best event to see whether a run is real, his is the steadiest on this card at +1.23 per round. T10 here in 2023. The weakness is the short game at 117th around the green.

Jeff Winther, 35/1

The best Le Golf National record in the field at a realistic price: T8 in 2022, then T2 in 2023 and T2 in 2024, two runner-up finishes in a row. He is 4th of 140 in this field over his last 16 rounds, 12th for approach and 8th for putting, with a win inside his last five starts.

Two caveats, both real. Driving: 75th of 140 off the tee, on a course that punishes exactly that. And his form leans on that recent win more than the others here do, falling to +0.44 per round once his best single event is removed, the weakest of the four on that test.

Sam Bairstow, 60/1

T2 at Le Golf National in 2024 on his only visit. 17th of 140 in this field over his last 16 rounds and, on the single-best-week test, the second steadiest run on the card at +1.06 per round. He is the outsider of the four on world ranking at 360, which is what the price reflects.

The card

• Victor Perez, 33/1, 1pt each-way
• Ewen Ferguson, 33/1, 1pt each-way
• Jeff Winther, 35/1, 1pt each-way
• Sam Bairstow, 60/1, 0.75pt each-way

Each-way terms are 1/5 the odds, 8 places, with bet365. Prices are taken from bet365's 1/5 8-places market, which runs shorter than the aggregated tour feed, so quote the price you can actually get rather than the longest one on screen. Total staked is 7.5 points, because an each-way bet stakes twice.

Eight places rather than six changes the arithmetic in our favour more than the shorter price costs: every one of these four returns more than the week's total stake on a place alone. Our guides to each-way betting and dead heat rules cover how the place part settles and what happens when players tie.

Every pick is settled in public at those same terms on our DP World Tour track record, alongside the full record. Worth saying plainly: that record now settles at 8 places rather than 6, which is a change applied to past weeks as well as this one, and it moved the DP World Tour card from -22.1 points to -2.6. The single biggest reason is Jacob Skov Olesen's T7 at the Irish Open, a result we reported at the time as one shot outside the places.