Tiger Woods eyes fifth PGA Championship
Tiger Woods eyes fifth PGA Championship
The final major of the season gets underway on Thursday when the 2009 PGA Championship comes to Hazeltine National in Minnesota. Not surprisingly, Tiger Woods is the favorite at 3-2 to win his third straight tournament since he missed the cut at the British Open last month. Hoping to stop Woods' quest for a fifth PGA title and 15th victory in a major are Phil Mickelson and defending champ Padraig Harrington.
Those slumps just don’t last long for Tiger Woods, do they?
Woods failed to make the cut at the British Open. Then he shot a poor (for him) first-round 71 at the Buick Open and threatened to miss the cut again. But Tiger followed up with a second-round 63 and has yet to take his foot off the gas, winning said Buick Open and the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational back-to-back. Slump over.
There’s really only one good argument you can make against betting on Woods (3-2) to claim this week’s PGA Championship at Hazeltine National, nestled just outside Minneapolis-St. Paul. It’s based on the fact that he didn’t win any of golf’s other three major tournaments. And yet Woods is carrying the same betting odds he’s been getting on the PGA Tour against lesser competition, including the Buick Open and WGC-Bridgestone.
If we take that fact out of the equation, it’s a unanimous slam-dunk for Woods. He’s a four-time winner at the PGA Championship, his last two coming back-to-back in 2006 and 2007. Woods has taken first place in three of his last four events and five of 12 this season, as well as 13 of the last 23 dating back exactly two years ago. That’s a mountain of money even at 3-2. You could still have made a profit by shopping for value father down the odds list, if you happened to gamble on the likes of Nick Watney (Buick Invitational) and Jerry Kelly (Zurich Classic of New Orleans). But Woods makes it very hard to use that strategy because he keeps winning.
The separation between Woods and the rest of the market does give us the opportunity to get some big-name golfers at reasonable prices. For example, we have Phil Mickelson at 22-1. Mickelson won the 2005 PGA Championship at Baltusrol, and he has two PGA Tour victories this year: the Northern Trust Open in February and the WGC-CA Championship in March.
There are some minor defects, of course. Like Woods, Mickelson hasn’t won a major yet in 2009 – although he did outperform Woods at both The Masters and the British Open before leaving the Tour to take care of his family. Mickelson’s return engagement was last week at the WGC-Bridgestone; his 70-69-75-73 left Lefty tied for 58th place at 7-over. Woods went 12-under for the victory, four strokes better than Robert Allenby (66-1 this week) and Padraig Harrington (22-1), who won the PGA Championship in 2008 at Oakland Hills.
Harrington has a puncher’s chance to repeat at Hazeltine, if his brain isn’t too scrambled. The reigning PGA and European Tour Player of the Year folded like a tent in 2009, missing the cut at six events (including the U.S. Open) and failing to crack the Top 10 even once. Harrington worked on his mechanics with swing coach Bob Torrance and was in a position to win the WGC-Bridgestone, but he put up a snowman on the par-5 16th hole of Sunday’s final round.
This one triple-bogey is drawing a lot of attention because it also involves Tiger Woods. He and Harrington were in the final pairing, with Harrington up a stroke going into No. 16. After an earlier warning about slow play, veteran Tour official John Paramor put the twosome “on the clock” at the 16th tee, meaning they had time restrictions on how long they could take before advancing the ball. Woods was relatively unfazed by the distraction and birdied the hole – but he also supported Harrington afterward.
“[Paramor’s ruling] certainly influenced us in how we played and influenced the outcome of the tournament,” Woods told reporters at Hazeltine on Tuesday. “That’s not how you want to have the tournament come to an end.”
So Mickelson and Harrington both have some question marks going into Hazeltine. But what about the three men who actually won majors this year? Angel Cabrera (40-1), Lucas Glover (80-1) and Stewart Cink (40-1) can all be had for a song; however, none of them has ever won the PGA Championship.
There’s a first time for everything. Lack of experience didn’t prevent Shaun Micheel (2003) and Rich Beem (2002 at Hazeltine) from pulling off dramatic upsets at this event. Alas, Beem hasn’t come close to glory since then and is 250-1 to win this week. Micheel (300-1) hasn’t fared much better, although he did place second to Woods at the 2006 PGA Championship. Maybe he’s got a Three-Year Itch.
The final major of the season gets underway on Thursday when the 2009 PGA Championship comes to Hazeltine National in Minnesota. Not surprisingly, Tiger Woods is the favorite at 3-2 to win his third straight tournament since he missed the cut at the British Open last month. Hoping to stop Woods' quest for a fifth PGA title and 15th victory in a major are Phil Mickelson and defending champ Padraig Harrington.
Those slumps just don’t last long for Tiger Woods, do they?
Woods failed to make the cut at the British Open. Then he shot a poor (for him) first-round 71 at the Buick Open and threatened to miss the cut again. But Tiger followed up with a second-round 63 and has yet to take his foot off the gas, winning said Buick Open and the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational back-to-back. Slump over.
There’s really only one good argument you can make against betting on Woods (3-2) to claim this week’s PGA Championship at Hazeltine National, nestled just outside Minneapolis-St. Paul. It’s based on the fact that he didn’t win any of golf’s other three major tournaments. And yet Woods is carrying the same betting odds he’s been getting on the PGA Tour against lesser competition, including the Buick Open and WGC-Bridgestone.
If we take that fact out of the equation, it’s a unanimous slam-dunk for Woods. He’s a four-time winner at the PGA Championship, his last two coming back-to-back in 2006 and 2007. Woods has taken first place in three of his last four events and five of 12 this season, as well as 13 of the last 23 dating back exactly two years ago. That’s a mountain of money even at 3-2. You could still have made a profit by shopping for value father down the odds list, if you happened to gamble on the likes of Nick Watney (Buick Invitational) and Jerry Kelly (Zurich Classic of New Orleans). But Woods makes it very hard to use that strategy because he keeps winning.
The separation between Woods and the rest of the market does give us the opportunity to get some big-name golfers at reasonable prices. For example, we have Phil Mickelson at 22-1. Mickelson won the 2005 PGA Championship at Baltusrol, and he has two PGA Tour victories this year: the Northern Trust Open in February and the WGC-CA Championship in March.
There are some minor defects, of course. Like Woods, Mickelson hasn’t won a major yet in 2009 – although he did outperform Woods at both The Masters and the British Open before leaving the Tour to take care of his family. Mickelson’s return engagement was last week at the WGC-Bridgestone; his 70-69-75-73 left Lefty tied for 58th place at 7-over. Woods went 12-under for the victory, four strokes better than Robert Allenby (66-1 this week) and Padraig Harrington (22-1), who won the PGA Championship in 2008 at Oakland Hills.
Harrington has a puncher’s chance to repeat at Hazeltine, if his brain isn’t too scrambled. The reigning PGA and European Tour Player of the Year folded like a tent in 2009, missing the cut at six events (including the U.S. Open) and failing to crack the Top 10 even once. Harrington worked on his mechanics with swing coach Bob Torrance and was in a position to win the WGC-Bridgestone, but he put up a snowman on the par-5 16th hole of Sunday’s final round.
This one triple-bogey is drawing a lot of attention because it also involves Tiger Woods. He and Harrington were in the final pairing, with Harrington up a stroke going into No. 16. After an earlier warning about slow play, veteran Tour official John Paramor put the twosome “on the clock” at the 16th tee, meaning they had time restrictions on how long they could take before advancing the ball. Woods was relatively unfazed by the distraction and birdied the hole – but he also supported Harrington afterward.
“[Paramor’s ruling] certainly influenced us in how we played and influenced the outcome of the tournament,” Woods told reporters at Hazeltine on Tuesday. “That’s not how you want to have the tournament come to an end.”
So Mickelson and Harrington both have some question marks going into Hazeltine. But what about the three men who actually won majors this year? Angel Cabrera (40-1), Lucas Glover (80-1) and Stewart Cink (40-1) can all be had for a song; however, none of them has ever won the PGA Championship.
There’s a first time for everything. Lack of experience didn’t prevent Shaun Micheel (2003) and Rich Beem (2002 at Hazeltine) from pulling off dramatic upsets at this event. Alas, Beem hasn’t come close to glory since then and is 250-1 to win this week. Micheel (300-1) hasn’t fared much better, although he did place second to Woods at the 2006 PGA Championship. Maybe he’s got a Three-Year Itch.
