Is it too early to worry about Tiger or Phil?
Golf Betting Lines
01/30/2012 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Using a 'huge' sample size of three combined events, what can we make of the starts by Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson?
Woods teed it up on the European Tour this week instead of playing the Farmers Insurance Open, an event he has won six times. Meanwhile, Mickelson did play the Farmers, but was only around for two rounds.
Woods entered the final round tied for the lead with England's Robert Rock but managed just an even-par 72 to share third place behind Rock.
The former world No. 1 gears his season's around the four majors, so you can't be overly alarmed that he lost to some guy most golf fans hardly even know.
At the Abu Dhabi Championship, Woods hit 50-percent of fairways, just over 72- percent of greens in regulation and averaged 29.25 putts per round.
In his final round however, Woods hit just two fairways and six greens in regulation. The precision Woods needs to win just wasn't there on the final day, yet he remained upbeat despite the loss.
"I felt just a touch off," Woods said afterwards. "Since Australia, my stroke- play events, I've been doing pretty good. I just need to keep getting more consistent. Today, I putted beautifully, but didn't give myself enough looks."
Woods was right there in his second straight official event (Australian Open and Abu Dhabi Championship), but ended in third place both times. Some say he's back, I'll agree to that when he wins again, and knowing Tiger, he likely wouldn't agree with that assessment until he wins a major.
And then there was Phil the thrill.
Mickelson has shot in the 60s in four of his six rounds, but didn't contend in either of the two events he has played.
In the main statistical categories, Mickelson ranks in the top-50 in just one - birdie average. He is 69th in driving accuracy and 79th in greens in regulation.
What strikes me about his share of 49th at the Humana Challenge and his missed cut at the Farmers Insurance Open was his poor opening rounds
At the Humana, which is one of the biggest birdie-fests on tour, Mickelson stumbled to a two-over 74. Then on the more difficult South Course at Torrey Pines, Mickelson had seven bogeys en route to a five-over 77.
Some commentators on the Golf Channel stated that Phil is playing his way into shape. I'll respectfully disagree.
In the 13 of the 18 years he has won on tour, Mickelson won an early-season event in either California or Arizona. Of his 39 careers victories, 16 have come in early season West Coast tournaments.
Since he joined the tour in 1992, Mickelson never went more than two straight years without a West Coast win at the start of the season until 2009. That year he won the Northern Trust Open, but he hasn't won out west since.
He has four titles since that win at the Northern Trust, and the only one that came after April was the 2009 Tour Championship.
Mickelson could be battling to find the right medication for his arthritis, but more likely he's just off to a slow start.
The eye-ball test between Mickelson and Woods shows that Woods is closer to winning, but that could change in an instant.
Mickelson will play one of his favorite events this week in Phoenix. If he plays poorly there, then there will be cause for concern. If he contends, the first two events were just a mirage.
One thing is certain, the sooner these two get back to winning, the sooner fans will realize the golf season is underway. Let's hope that realization comes before the tour heads to Augusta National the first week of April.
THE COMEBACK KID
Brandt Snedeker is both lucky and good. He earned his third PGA Tour title on Sunday and pushed his PGA Tour playoff record to 2-0.
Snedeker hasn't just won three times, he has rallied for all three of those wins. He has erased deficits of four, six and eight strokes.
The math may show he was seven behind Kyle Stanley to start Sunday's final round, but Snedeker was eight back after he birdied the third, while Stanley birdies Nos. 1 and 2.
In his three wins, Snedeker has closed with rounds of 63, 64 and 65. He needed some help on Sunday as Stanley faltered to a triple-bogey on the final hole of regulation to force the playoff.
Once Stanley opened the door, Snedeker gladly stepped through and picked up the victory.
Some might argue that Snedeker didn't knock off any big names in his three wins, but that wouldn't be correct. His playoff win last year at The Heritage was over then world No. 1 Luke Donald. The Englishman lost that title briefly after falling in this playoff, but he has had a stranglehold on the top spot for 35 straight weeks now.
Snedeker had seven top-10s last year and is off to a fast start this year with top-eight finishes in his two starts despite coming off hip surgery in the offseason.
What will this quick start lead to? A major title, a spot on the USA Ryder Cup team? Only time and his health will tell.
MINI-TIDBITS
- Woods hasn't strung together four sub-pars rounds since the 2010 Masters, a span of 25 stroke-play tournaments.
- Lydia Ko became the youngest winner of a professional golf event on Sunday when she won a women's event in Australia. The 14-year-old Ko beat Becky Morgan by four strokes. Ryo Ishikawa, then 15, and Amy Yang, then 16, held the previous records for youngest winners in male and female events.
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Matt Kenseth And Kevin Harvick Favorites To Take NASCAR Nextel Cup Championship
(September 15)—The NASCAR season has hit the homestretch with the opening event on this year’s Chase for the Cup taking place this weekend at the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway. With 10 races remaining to determine the Cup Series champion, leading online sportsbook MySportsbook.com today announced odds on all 10 Chase qualifying drivers capturing the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship.
One of the largest sportsbook sites on the Internet, MySportsbook.com currently lists the top two drivers in the point standings as the early favorites to win the Nextel Cup. Entering the Chase for the Cup with a slim five-point lead in the point standings, 2003 NASCAR champ Matt Kenseth has been made a slight favorite to win his second Cup at 7/2 betting odds. 2001 Cup Rookie of the Year Kevin Harvick has betting odds listed at 5/2 and four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon is listed at 6/1 to capture the Nextel Cup this year.
Hoping to follow in the footsteps of his legendary father who won six NASCAR titles, Dale Earnhardt Jr. stands at 8/1 to breakthrough with his first Cup victory. Staying with the family theme, MySportsbook.com lists 2005 Rookie of the Year Kyle Busch at 14/1 to succeed big brother Kurt’s 2004 NASCAR title. While Kasey Kahne was the final driver to qualify for the Chase with a third place finish last week, the oddsmakers give him a fighting chance at 10/1 mainly due to several mile-and-a-half tracks remaining on the schedule. Despite going winless on the NASCAR circuit this season, Jeff Burton enters the Chase at 5/1 to capture the Cup title. Meanwhile, rookie Denny Hamlin is 4/1 to win the championship, while veteran driver Mark Martin enters the Chase for the Cup as a 15/1 long shot to win his first NASCAR title in his 24th and final season.
MySportsbook.com will offer comprehensive Nascar betting lines on every race remaining on the Nextel Cup series including driver match-ups, props and odds to win each race. For a complete list of NASCAR odds, please visit www.MySportsbook.com.
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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.
Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"
A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."
Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.
In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.
"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."
Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.
But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"
Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.
This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.
Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.
In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.
No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.
And that's all any bettor can ask for.
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