Mastering Augusta - Days 1 and 2

I may be writing this with noise-cancelling headphones reducing jet engine din to merely a faint whir, but I can still hear the spine-tingling roars from the 18^thgreen.  We didn’t get to see Tiger Woods’s final bogey putt, for the throng of people gathered there in anticipation blocked our immediate view, but we did get a glimpse into his soul.  As we stood in a golfing guard of honour, surrounded by men, women and children from all over the sport-watching world, who had descended on Augusta National this humid, intense Sunday morning, Tiger bounded up towards us, accompanied by his children, his destination The Butler Cabin, exuding pure joy.  His victorious face displayed relief, self-belief and a genuine smile of gleaming teeth.  

He had done it, we were there to witness it, and, having held it together over the weekend, he let it all out for the first time.  Fist bumping fans and high-fiving the outstretched hands in a display of raw emotion, his hand touched mine.  I felt the fingers of the 2019 Masters champion.

Spot the really happy, bald guy in this photo.  No, not the one holding the trophy wearing the Rolex, the one in the background wearing Masters merchandise with the yellow Garmin.

Everyone knows what happened, and how it happened. This is my take on making it happen, how we mastered Augusta, managed the course from a spectating perspective, and lost our green jacket V-plates.

Rewind a year or so.  My two younger brothers and I begin preparatory and preliminary talks to plan a boys' weekend for my youngest brother, Luke's, 30th birthday.  Vegas was proposed and soon dismissed.  It had been done before for stag parties and work jollies, and while it's a hedonistic and iconic destination to be chalked off any self-destructive bon viveur's bucket-list, we decided we wanted a more memorable moment to treasure rather than a reenactment of previous recreational retreats.  

It was decided: we would head to Augusta, Georgia, for the first major golf event of the 2019 calendar, the Masters Tournament.  From a betting point of view, I love this event. The small field, course form and generous terms on offer make it a punters' paradise and I waded in with the following wagers:

We booked our entire trip with Pete Warsop at Tailormade Golf Travel, and from the early emails all the way through to the hospitality and hosting, we were very well looked after by him and his team.  Tournament tickets, rounds of golf at two superb local courses, accommodation and transportation were taken care of, meaning we could ease into life as Augusta National Golf Club patrons for an unforgettable weekend up there with the best of my life.   

After landing in Atlanta on the Wednesday of the par-3 tournament, picking up an Escalade, and driving a couple of hours east to a very pleasant holiday home situated just a few minutes' drive from Magnolia Lane, we spent the Thursday morning playing The Reserve Club at Woodside.  This is a stunning residential plantation in the beautifully quaint town of Aiken, South Carolina, where we were met by a friendly "Hey y'all" as we dropped our golf bags with the buggy attendants before being served with a delicious all-American breakfast prior to our 9.06am tee time.

Five hours and not many more Stableford points later, having been treated to regular refreshments by friendly young ladies traversing the cart-paths in refrigerated vehicles, we were back on the clubhouse terrace tucking into an enormous lunch catching up on the day's action from the other first round of golf happening 40 minutes down the road that day.  Assessing the leaderboard later that evening,  Matsuyama had started badly, Rahm fairly strongly.  Woods had a solid 70 and Rory was slow out of the stalls on +1.

We got an early night ahead of our first day trackside at the Augusta National. The blue skies were being threatened: there was a storm on the way...

Nice of Andrew "Beef" Johnston to pose with us on a wonderful day at Woodside

On Friday, the weather (and weather warnings) added to the drama.  A gloomy gown of grey adorned the dawn sky.  Deluges of warm rain at the start of the day, and near the end, punctuated an otherwise hot and occasionally beautifully sunny occasion, so Augusta’s flora was lush, the fairways lively and the footpaths slippery in places, with enormous slopes, famous undulations that are perceptible on television but only fully appreciated in the flesh.  The course was packed with characters.

Characters – pros on the practice range and the putting green, experienced supporters in the specators’ stands, where we stopped for a few minutes before heading towards the course proper.  We took an immediate shine to Neil, from Liverpool, who has lived in Melbourne for the past 10 years but clearly hadn't forgotten his time living in the drizzly UK.   We stood under his Masters-merch umbrella and bantered with him for about half hour as Aphibarnrat, Vijay Singh and Matt Fitzpatrick effortlessly pinged some shots around. This guy Neil, plays off scratch, was in the USA for two weeks. He played a couple of courses around the south east states, watched days 1 and 2 of the Masters, and was then jetting off to Vegas for the weekend to play the Tiger v Phil course, Shadow Creek, as well as Wolf Creek before heading home. He had the good sense to bring his wife and two childen with him at the beginning of his holiday, and parted company with them only after a credit-earning family fun time witnessing the wonderful world of Walt Disney.  He was the first of many affable aficionados with whom we had the delight of discussing the action unfolding before us.  

Now, we had some first day decisions to make – do we sit down on a Masters branded deckchair, given to us by the tour company, just one of many items of memorabilia and merchandise that has made its way home with us, or wander around the track trying to keep up with events.  We went with wandering.  You can, however, just plonk yourself on other people’s pre-positioned deckchairs, so long as they’re free, and until their owners come back to politely kick you out (in a friendly, respectful, Augusta National kinda way).

We watched a load of groups tee off on 1, then followed the European trio of Molinari, Rafael Cabrera-Bello and Tyrrell Hatton round for a bit, until the fairway of 3, where we waited halfway towards the hole, at the side by the pines, and saw tee shots and approaches from the next few groups

Phil Mickelson went into the rough here. We were less than a club's length away from him as he played out. I was trembling! Leaning all over my brother to get a better view but desperately trying to avoid placing my entire body weight upon him, for fear that we might fall across the flimsy rope that separates patrons from players.  This proved to be a delicate balance over the course of the day, and even more so on the Sunday as one tries to trade off a perfect view of a shot with the compromise of being accused of groping ones fellow golfing ganderer.  No phones are allowed inside the grounds, so there are no selfies or photo opportunities and I must say the whole experience is better for it.  You soak it all up so much more fully without any technology to tempt you into tapping away at a screen. 

Then we headed to the 240 yard par-3 fourth and cheered on a few pin-peppering shots from there.  The tee is high above the green, so you get an incredible view from up there.

It was around 11am, so we grabbed a cheap but charming pimento cheese sandwich – the prices of food and drink at Augusta are ridiculously good value, seemingly unchanged at around $2 for everything since the days of Jack Nicklaus (who, I forgot to mention earlier, is the course designer of the Reserve Club at Woodside). The concessions hall is run with the precision as a laser range-finder but with as much variety as Ian Poulter's dressing room, so you can be in and out within minutes but yet keep yourself satisfied for hours.

From 5, we jumped to Azalea (13), to hit a grandstand, where you can see tee boxes, greens and fairways all from one elevated position. You can look down and see the Hogan bridge from there so this was our first glimpse of Amen Corner.  This is where we saw the aforementioned and sartorially-elegant Poulter take the outright lead after his 2^ndshot got plugged against the steep greenside bank of Rae’s Creek.  He was pumped. Not Ryder Cup-pumped but certainly buoyed by his early place at the head of the leaderboard, so we followed him down 14, cheering him on with other Brits (although a lot of yanks were surprisingly rooting for him too), before positioning ourselves in the roaring sunshine next to the devilishly tough pin on the par 3 16^th.  We sat in (someone else’s ) deckchairs there for about an hour, watching all the superstars come through. By this point, it was only about 1430, so we knew the likes of Woods, McIlroy, Rahm, Fleetwood etc had only just commenced their rounds back on the first tee.  

So we went over to 7 to await their anticipated arrival,  standing in awe as golfing giants appeared before us as mortal competitors, focused on one of the most highly coveted prizes in sport, emotion already etched on their face.  The guard comes down at Augusta and you see what these guys are made of.

Then behind the green on 10, where from an almost vertigo-inducing height, you can fully appreciate the huge hill down which they have to drive on this hole. The highest peak to the lowest divot of 10 is 116ft, roughly the same height as the Statue of Liberty, and the tournament torch was really beginning to flame.  From here, you are also right next to the tee box on 15, so you can just stand still, turn your head and see Freddie Couples teeing off there, while Xander Schauffele was finishing off his putt on the 10^th green.      This was a great spot highlighted by our official Augusta yardage book (one of many bits of merch picked up for a mere $8). 

Eddie Pepperell stood on 15 with driver and ball, but no caddy.  This bemused us at the time, but made more sense when we bumped into said caddy in a bar on Sunday night.  In the subsequent grouping, Henrik Stenson interacted with the crowd, cool as a chilled Kronleins Crocodile, partnered by legendary caddie Fannie Sunesson, who we would also bump into later in the trip, but more of that later.

Literature lifeline in the absence of phonelines.  This document, helpfully distributed around Augusta National, and with a course map on reverse, was vital to charting events as they developed

Finally on Friday, and as the humidity hugged us closer, we went to Amen Corner.  This was as iconic and visually impressive in real ife as you would imagine. The patrons are not permitted to go down onto the 12^thgreen so this is the only bit of the track where the public leave the players to finish their iron shots in relative isolation.  Tiger birdied 11 and the place went berserk.  Then he chipped to within a few feet on 12 and the noise was as though a billion balloons burst, as the dial on the barometer nudged ever closer to thunderclaps.  As his partner, Haotong Li approached his ball to tee off, a breath away from his backswing, the weather warning klaxon rang around the course.  

It was 5.10pm and we were told that was it for the day.

Everyone was reasonably perturbed and confused by the siren, but people started to evacuate.  Looking up at the sky, whilst overcast and with air pressure reflecting the sporting action, our initial (perhaps optimistically British) thoughts were: "it looks fine, please crack on", so we just hung around with other concerned characters, while Tiger, a solitary figure, proceeded with purpose down across the bridge to mark his ball and get an advance read on his putt. He stayed on the green for a good few minutes and we watched him until he slipped away through some flowery bushes into what musy be some kind of secret exit.  It was all rather surreal and there wasn't yet a drop of rain, let alone local evidence of thunder or lightning.  The marshals informed us that any stormy conditions within a radius of 10 miles is sufficient cause to suspend play.

Loads of people left at this point, but many stayed.  We had been told that it is fairly normal for people to leave the course mid-afternoon, retreating to the comfort of their homes or hostelries and take advantage of the more complete coverage afforded by television broadcast.  We stuck it out.

Then we had all the drama of play being suspended, then recommenced; on or off… and then on. This was a real rush!  I still can’t quite believe Tiger came back out and missed not only this birdie putt, but so many more birdie opportunities on the back 9 on Friday. He may have simply had too much time to mull this particular putt over whie there was a break in play, and then perhaps the momentum was lost somewhat.  The atmosphere, however, was absolutely palpable and inescapable for those of us who remained in situ throughout this meteorologically-induced interval.

Tiger obviously did claw back another two shots from there on day two, and we saw his birdie on 15 as we moved back round there from Amen, staying sluighly ahead of his group, cheering on him and Rahmbo.

Despite understandable and justifiable concerns that watching golf live from the course is less comprehensive than TV coverage,  you could totally tell what was going on the whole time. The scoreboards were brilliant and the staff, fellow patrons and even occasionally competitors helped you understand what was going on.  Most of the time, Tiger was as tunnel-vision, job-first focused as Robocop, striding towards targets with single-minded steadfastness.  But by now, he was really smiling. It was amazing to see! This first glimpse behind the competitive mask suggested more than just being pleased to be being competitive, if that makes sense. He was glad to be there, but he seemed to be allowing himself to occasionally check-in and appreciate that he was also in with a real shout of major glory for the first time in over a decade.

We certainly felt we played the action-witnessing strategy almost perfectly, without missing out on the more subtle experiences of just “being in the moment” and drinking it all in, and it meant we had a good template mapped out ahead of our return here on the Sunday, where it was to get even more dramatic as two incredible ball strikers, Ryder Cup rivals and most importantly remaining key players on my betting slip would go hammer and tongs at the head of the leaderboard.  Things were just coming to the boil!

Two boyish faces of joy, and a jolly Grizzly Adams, mulling over the events of Friday at Augusta National

An Unwelcome Week of Woe - Cheers Bubba!

The blog below is available on www.golf-monthly.co.uk as an edited article.  I have been blogging for GM over the past 10 weeks now and am thoroughly enjoying the opportunity given to me by the country's best golf mag.  Thanks TC ; )

 

 

You’re welcome.  That’s what Bubba Watson says on many a YouTube video like that one, joshing around and playing the fool like someone who doesn’t take life too seriously, albeit while hitting some pretty impressive and entertaining shots, occasionally of blancmange rather than a little white ball.  

Bubba actually wrongly displays the text “your welcome”, after the above clip, his incorrect grammar and complete disrespect for apostrophes perhaps betraying his lack of education through total dedication to his sport.  Or maybe he’s just thick.  Or “dumb”, as he admits in this PGA interview.

    

The phrase ‘you’re welcome’ is usually preceded by someone thanking you for a kind gesture.  Well, this past week I have certainly not been offering any gratitude in the direction of Mr Watson. 

His caddy probably wasn’t too impressed either, after Bubba’s collapse on the par-three 16^th saw him turn a two-shot lead at the head of the scoreboard into a one-shot deficit, ultimately relinquishing the title, he took his dissatisfaction out on his assistant.  

This blog http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/06/bubba-watson-blew-up-on-his-caddie-in-the-nicest-way-possible/ makes the salient point that Bubba was just doing at the Travelers Championship (one L, no apostrophes? Weird...) what most amateurs do on courses around the world every day – blame someone else for their mistakes – well, in that case, I am blaming the 2012 Masters Champion for my losses last weekend.

 

 

Me and Bubba (or rather, Bubba and I) have previous, as his playoff win against Louis Oosthuizen cost me Augusta profit last year.  Having sided with the South African for the coveted Green Jacket, it was agonising to see that big hook land where it did, denying me a four-figure payout.   Last weekend brought all those miserable memories flooding forlornly back into my bitter, sorrowful soul.

To compound the discontent, I layed my entire book against Ken Duke winning, meaning that any of Chris Stroud, Graham DeLaet, heck – even Bubba Watson himself, emerged victorious, I wouldn’t lose anything.  Duke had never been crowned victorious in his journeyman career, hit 999/1 on Betfair at one point as the chart below painfully portrays, and so I thought the £215 lay at 1.41 was a reasonable course of action.  He went on to win, I went to bed a loser for the second week running.





For this week’s AT&T National and Irish Open I went hard (well, £15.12 each way) on a Seung-Yul Noh/Graeme McDowell double.  Noh was fourth in the US event last year and was priced up a 150/1 outsider, while G Mac, despite missing the cut at the US Open and at this course twice, where he has also never managed to record a score under-par, appealed at 18/1 (for some reason) with SportingBet offering six place each way terms.

That would have given you a 46.5 bag return, had McDowell not missed the cut and Noh not been +5 when I last looked:  You’re welcome!



 

 

***

 

Feedback from your friends can come in many guises: "your hair looks shit", "you were an absolute liability last week", "your missus is gonna leave you when she makes her first million in business" are just a few examples of the more publishable words of wisdom given to me by my mates over the years. 

 

This week, I was informed that Palphabet was becoming little more than a copy & paste exercise for Golf Monthly, that I hadn't written anything about racing for two months (that's a lie, by the way), and that therefore, no one would bother reading it.

 

Well, if you've got this far, I thought I'd reluctantly listen to the lads and go back to my roots. 

 

Various expired bank cards have meant that my multitude of accounts with online bookmakers required some spring-cleaning.  Since Bet365, a favourite of mine throughout late 2012 and into early 2013, have decided to severely restrict (/ban) me from trading with them, I've had some decisions to make.

 

The P&L for May, across all of my accounts looked like this:

 

 

 

Since then, due mostly to debit card admin rather than any particular problems with online betting shops,  I've only been playing around with Betfair (and their new Sportsbook), SportingBet, Coral and my new favourite, Stan James.  Stan's golf prices are often the best around, even better than the Betfair exchange prices available (with no commission taken on winners), and I like the fact that their spokesman @roryjiwani regularly retweets links to my blogs!

 

One of the most satisfying events of recent weeks has been renewing my piece of Barclays plastic and having it emblazoned with the two greatest steeplechasers of my short love affair with horseracing.

 

 

 

The fact that I have chosen those two equine characters, rather than Frankel and Sea the Stars perhaps explains why my writing on the sport has been fairly limited since the Aintree Festival.  No matter how hard I try, and I do enjoy it, I just can't find enough inspiration in flat racing to put pen to paper with the same passion as I do over the colder and darker months of the year. 

 

Seeing champion of jumps Nicky Henderson get a 12/1 winner at Royal Ascot gave me more pleasure this "summer" than any winner I've had over a seven furlongs, and it speaks volumes that the main mention on these pages with regards to The Sport of Kings has been a genuine and heartfelt tribute to Sir Henry Cecil.

 

So, with only a passing interest in the Confederations Cup, a mild understanding of the betting markets surrounding Rugby Union and my small but long standing bets on the next Manchester United manager to follow SAF successfully settled, my current bets and conversational focus has been limited thus:

 

 

 

Sports Personality of the Year 2013 (for which I assume the Racing Post is still suffering a gagging order), antepost golf betting and the winner of Wimbledon Men's tournament dominates the screen above and are likely only to be given company by a few stabs on Le Tour, as I attempt to improve my knowledge of a sport that appears to offer entertainment and value in abundance, but about which I have very little knowledge, and of course, The Ashes.

 

So there we are - Palphabet has become rather more focused on golf, granted, but there's still plenty to discuss away from the fairways and greens.... that is until the proper beasts start galloping their way towards fences at least four feet and six inches tall and I can get stuck in with pen and pound once again.

 



***

UPDATE: Sunday Morning, 10am.....

 

These were the results of yesterday's picks at Newcastle, Newmarket and Curragh.  It's almost as though the lords of the flat were listening to me slagging off their noble sport, and decided to woo me with a fine fillip:

 

 

Let Us Open the Wallets and Get Merry on the US Open at Merion

An abridged version of this piece can be found on www.golf-monthly.com where I am fortunate enough to be a weekly blog contributor - the past eight weeks have all yielded profit and perhaps the added focus on the little white ball is bearing fruit http://www.golf-monthly.co.uk/tours-and-news/opinion/tour-talk/531437/golf-betting-blog-dave-plane.html 

It’s not been a week for the weak: an emotional rollercoaster that has asked questions of this passionate punter and self-styled bon viveur. 

I spent Friday night in amongst the [largely] peaceful protesters in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, where European tension could be felt in such abundance you might have been forgiven for thinking you were back around the 17^th green at Medinah (if the Ryder Cup venue had been frequented by masked graffiti artists jubilantly jumping around atop burnt out public vehicles).

 

 

 

I hadn’t really been able to gamble in Turkey.  I mean, I was able to get a raft of bets on with Stan James on my mobile, but Betfair’s app repeatedly flashed up the error message: “User Restricted Location”. 

There I was, stressed out trying to get the best possible prices at 2am Turkish time, making an international call to one of the exchange’s helpful customer service representatives, all to get my ultimately unsuccessful £150 down on Bernd Wiesberger for the Lyoness Open. 

 



I added Tom Lewis to the portfolio at 135/1, who started flawlessly but failed to capitalise, and followed the Racing Post’s in-form golf tipster Steve Palmer in on Joost Luiten (20/1) and Romain Wattel (55/1), my confidence in the first of those picks later bolstered when I discovered that the William Hill podcast boys opted for the same player.

The pod was banned from the Turkish airwaves by the regime against which my comrades were demonstrating... they must have all been keen to have a hefty wager too?  And rightly so: Luiten won, Wattel placed – tear gas and water cannons would not have been required if I hadn’t been able to get on.

Arriving back into London on Saturday, I headed to Finsbury Park to worship The Stone Roses, whose reunion has made grown men cry and whose masterful set-list resembled something close to perfection.  I've not stopped listening to the eponymous album since the weekend and memories of Made in Stone and This is The One have got me dangerously too close to welling up for a man in his early thirties.

 

And then, on Tuesday, heart-strings continued to be plucked like an eerie John Squire melody with the extremely sad news of the death of legendary racing trainer Sir Henry Cecil.   I have not been into racing for long enough to fully appreciate the majesty of Sir Henry, and am not the expert equine historian that many of my readers are, so reading the sincere and celebratory tributes to the great man this week has given added poignancy to the little I do know about Cecil. 

I was privileged enough to be in his presence on three or four occasions while following Frankel around Ascot, at Champions Day 2011 and '12, and what struck me was this tall, authoritative man's gentle nature, his mischevous sense of fun and humour and his absolute devotion to his craft.  I have a couple of pictures I snapped while standing only a few feet away from him, which I am particularly proud of: 

 

Last October, he was signing autographs outside the main stand around the parade ring and I was so tempted to go and get a few moments with him, but whilst he was greeting fans with genuine pleasure and humility, he looked frail, was with his family and I decided to let him get off and in position to see Frankel fly to what would be his last race.  In some ways I regret not telling him what, in a short period of time, he has done for my love of horse racing; but in another way, I felt like just walking amongst people with whom he clearly felt a natural affinity - he knew.

I hope you don’t mind me punctuating this light-hearted piece with a genuine mention for the great man: rest in peace, Sir Henry.

***

Moving onto this weekend’s Major, my headline picks are Manassero, McDowell and Woods.  I was excited by Mickelson at the weekend, who I backed for the FedEx St Jude before the final round, whilst laying Stefani and Stallings at short prices, partly covering pre-tournament wagers, but I'm yet to add him to an already bulging US Open Portfolio. 

In addition to the main bets - healthy stake on Tiger and mouth-watering prices about MM and G-Mac, I've got the following players on-side, with my own picks denoted by the asterisk and the players I'm following on the advice of others (namely Palmer and Mike Grenham from Billy Hills) listed below. 

 

Plenty of tipsters seem to like the chances of McDowell, so the fact I am on at 43/1 is especially pleasing.  The short, par 70 course has been made into more of a target track due to the inclement weather conditions that everyone has been banging on about, and I think that will help Matteo.  The young, articulate Italian isn't particularly long off the tee but is deadly accurate out of the gates with the driver and he can make that attribute count on the tight fairways with the irons.

I've mentioned Lefty, but I'm concerned that Big Phil the Thrill is slightly too wayward with his driving accuracy (ranked 160th on tour hitting only 330 out of a possible 613 fairways).  The rough here will be punishing, as will pin positions, as the tournament organisers seek to make the contest as tough as possibly in response to the rain, and while many have been saying that Mickelson will "love the course" and go well here, I'm not so sure.  The player that worries me more is Rickie Fowler.  I'm not going to back him, but I have done so for The Open before.  I've seen and heard him tipped up on GolfMonthly.com and by Jamie Spence on the WH pod, and think his price and chance are pretty good.  I will be keeping an eye on the flamboyant young man, who has memorable Merion experience from his 2009 Walker Cup triumph, and will be motivated by the opportunity to secure another winner's medal this weekend.

So here we go: US Open podcasts downloaded, official PGA app installed, bookmakers’ offers scrutinised, RP iPad edition purchased and Golf Monthly microsite adorning my desktop.  I’ve even started following another tipster on Twitter, who seems to know his onions: @NicsPicks 

A weekend of high-octane golf gambling awaits... if my emotions can take it!

The US Open iPad App is a must-download for the weekend ahead

It's Wentworth Shopping Around for the Best Prices

For the past couple of weeks, I've had the honour of writing a review blog for the website of quality magazine Golf Monthly. This piece appears on there via this link, and my first two blogs can be found here and here...

The betting bus bowled into Bulgaria last weekend to break-in a virgin course already being dubbed “Europe’s Pebble Beach” and so it was apt that Graeme McDowell should walk away with the World Matchplay Title, having been crowned US Open Champion at THE Pebble three years ago.   I’ve backed him to regain the US Open title this summer, so was especially pleased to see him come home at 8/1 from Thongchai Jaidee.

McDowell was tipped up by GM’s Nick Bonfield last week, and on the offical European Tour Podcast by Richard Boxall, who successfully selected Tiger Woods the week before.  It’s a broadcast well worth listening to as part of your weekly punting preparations: http://www.europeantour.com/videoaudio/audio/index.html

En route to the title, G Mac beat defending champion Nicolas Colsaerts, who got bogged down and had to take a dump – sorry, drop – in the toilets.  Although flushed, the Belgian didn’t let it wipe him away, halving the hole before eventually plunging to a 2&1 defeat.

Elsewhere in Europe, 2010 U.S. Amateur champion Peter Uihlein caught the eye, earning not only his maiden victory at the Madeira Open, but receiving a tour exemption until the end of the 2014 season in the process.  Many top players hold the U.S. Amateur title amongst their myriad accomplishments, including Matt Kuchar, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods.  So Pistol Pete, (whose father Wally is the CEO of Titleist and Footjoy) is in good company, and will surely always be able to blag top stash from his old man to ensure he has the right tools for the job. 

He was a 25/1 shot before the tournament, carded a second round 64 that included an eagle and two bogeys, was 15/8 going into the final round, and won by two shots from Denmark’s Morten Ørum Madsen (what’s that “Ø” all about?)  I only had small stakes on this event and won nothing.

 

In America, I was delighted with Martin Kaymer’s performance, having backed him at 70 for the win and 6.2 for a top 10 finish.  When I doubled him up each-way with Madsen’s compatriot Thorbjørn Olesen, I thought it would be the German former world number one who would let me down.  Thorbjørn, however, crashed out of the World Matchplay at the group stage and ended my chance of a four-figure profit before the weekend began.  It must be something about those strange letter Øs:  Bøøøøø! 

 

 

This weekend, it's the flagship event on the European Tour, the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.  Since I've started really shopping around for my bets I'm keeping a note of them on my phone so I don't forget where I've backed winners, top 10s, top 5s, each-ways, doubles, exchange bets, fixed odds, decimals, fractions.. it all gets a bit much to remember, especially when you pick 10 (TEN) players for the weekend's entertainment!  It's definitely worth it, though, and I'm sure it's making me think more about what I am doing, even if it's not a guaranteed gateway to golf gambling gains.

My headlines for the European Tour are Martin Kaymer (£50 e-w 33/1 with Paddy Power paying 6 places) and Branden Grace (£25 win at 50/1 with Betway, £25 top 10 at 6 on Betfair).  I fancy one of these to break the recent English stronghold over the tournament so I'm sticking with the improving Kaymer, who has finished 31st and 15th here in the past two outings, and Grace, who was 5th last year and finished 3rd last week in the World Matchplay. 

Whilst Garcia crossed my mind, he is in a right state following this highly public ding-dong with his equally quarrelsome but superiorly talented sparring partner Mr Tiger Woods, and I wouldn't be surprised if he missed the cut.  A real shame it's descended into this as both have been playing some spectacular stuff of late.

I also like Kevin Streelman in the US PGA event at Colonial, who went extremely close to winning me five grand at Augusta the other week, and is the selection of Steve Palmer from the Racing Post and Dave Kelner from the William Hill Golf Betting Podcast.  I'll back him outright, but have doubled him up with Kaymer in the hope of winning 20 bags by Sunday night.

 

 

Class is Permanent, but Form can bring home the Fillips

For the past couple of weeks, I've had the honour of writing a review blog for the website of quality magazine Golf Monthly.  This piece appears on there via this link, and my first two blogs can be found here and here...

The old sporting adage often tells us thus: “form is temporary, class is permanent”.  You only have to look at events at the Crucible Theatre these past couple of weeks to know that is a fair assessment of the powers truly classy individuals hold over their rivals in the quest for silverware and cash in their particular field.   

The nearest Ronnie O’Sullivan has come to pink balls in the last twelve months has been whilst working on a pig farm, and yet he rocks up in the biggest snooker tournament on earth and makes porkmeat of opposition who, in their own right, are amongst the pantheon of potting, the best on the baize.

In golf betting, FiTCiP, if you’ll permit me the acronymisation, is regularly borne out too, with the victory of a huge outsider like Derek “who?!” Ernst at Quail Hollow this weekend extremely unlikely to be repeated when the runners and riders line up at TPC Sawgrass for the Players Championship on Thursday.   Ernst was available at around 300/1 with the bookies pre-event and was rated an eye-watering 999/1 shot by the layers on the Betfair exchange, according to this excellent debrief of last week’s action from Steve Rawlings.   Putting it another way (and that’s putting, not PUTTing): the percentage chance Derek Ernst had of winning the Wells Fargo Championship was somewhere between 0.33 and 0.10 percent.  Needless to say he wasn’t in my portfolio:

Laying Lefty was the sole shrewd weekend move

Many think, quite rightly, that golf is a difficult sport to predict, and therefore to make money betting on, but the other two tournaments last weekend (in China and Indonesia) provided big glimmers of hope, and lead me to question the very fabric of the FiTCiP concept.  Obviously class is permanent, and it’s no surprise that golf has been dominated in various modern eras by class: Nicklaus, Palmer, Player, Watson, Woods, to name a few.  

But let’s not be so harsh on Father Form here.  Look at those names closely and form, specifically course/region form, is perhaps more ubiquitous than the Class Camp would have us believe.  Jack Nicklaus dominated at Augusta (six Masters titles); Watson prevailed on UK soil at the Open (five Claret Jugs); Woods appears four times in the top five of this list of golfers who “own” certain PGA Tour Events – nobody else has won more than one event as many times as Tiger (bagged six tour titles more than five times each; 15 titles in his native state of Florida). 

Aussie Greg Rumford took the Volvo China Open, making him a back-to-back winner on far east tracks having won the Ballatine’s in South Korea the week before.   Meanwhile Victor Dubuisson, top-10 in India’s Avantha Masters, top-five in Malaysia and identified in BetSWOT’s excellent China Open analysis went one better than last year’s fourth-place finish at Binhai Lake Golf Club, finishing third with two bogey-free closing rounds and returned some top 10 money.   

The Racing Post’s golf betting oracle, Steve Palmer, called Bernd Wiesberger, who I backed with £50 e/w at 10/1 “the bet of the week”.  Bernd bullied the field at the 2012 Ballantine’s, winning by five strokes, and took the Indonesian Masters in a Royale Jakarta Golf Club playoff against Ernie Els to gain his second Asian title.

Bernd baby, Bernd

Form may be temporary, but therefore it can be preciously profitable.  Consider that this weekend at Sawgrass, a ball-strikers’ paradise where past winners have built up considerable course knowledge before capturing the unofficial fifth major.  GM's Fergus Bisset highlighted as much in last year’s preview.  I like the look of Masters Champ Adam Scott at 18/1 with Paddy Power paying 6 places e/w (Stan James 16/1, 7 places e/w).  Anyone who can stand on the 17th tee, looking across at ET's head, and keep his head having been there before, needs to be respected and could well bring back the booty.

 

Booty: Phone Home

 

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Since I started shopping around a bit more for the best prices, which aren't always  found on the Betfair exchange, my Palphabet portfolios have become so varied I've felt the need to keep notes on my iPhone.  I've mentioned before that using http://www.oddschecker.com is vital to building a balanced book for the weekend's betting enjoyment, and with the bookmakers all competing for your custom, there are some tempting offers out there that have to be considered.  This week, however, all of my wagers have been placed on the exchange, with the exception of the Adam Scott bet.  What you lose on the outright part of the stake (Betfair layers have him at 21/1 compared to Power's 18/1) you make back on the fact they're giving you an extra place at a quarter the odds, i.e. 9/2... the same price you can get on Betfair for a top 5 finish.