British Open Gambling

Pretty short post here because The Saw wrote a pretty thorough preview. I’ll just put up my picks and fantasy shit with a bit of commentary.

ESPN Best Ball Squad:
Tiger, Allenby, Stricker, Marino – This team should be illegal it’s so good.

Yahoo Fantasy Team:
A: Tiger; Mickelson
B: Furyk, Westwood; Villegas, Harrington
C: Casey; Poulter

Was going to put Stricker on the bench, but he’s more popular than Phil and I need to distinguish my picks as much as possible. Westwood is just too good not to start even though he’s popular. The other’s are pretty basic best available.

Marino Mania:
Matt Kuchar, because I don’t have many elite golfers left (Furyk and Tiger pretty much) and am saving them for the FedEx Cup Playoffs.

Gambling Shit:

Outrights
Steve Stricker to win +4000 (1x)
Justin Rose to miss the cut +325 (1x)
An American golfer to win +190 (5x)
Hunter Mahan top 10 +1000 (1x)
Steve Marino top 10 +1200 (1x)
Kevin Na top 10 +2200 (1x)
Camilo Villegas top 10 +770 (1x)
Kenny Perry top 10 +1000 (1x)

I’m glad Kevin Na not only missed the cut at THE Masters and US Open, but missed in so completely that the offshore books have put him in the “dogshit bad” category this weekend. Na is, conservatively, 10-1 to finish top ten and 80-1 to win; the books have him at 22-1 and 775-1 respectively. Thanks Kev.

The Saw has gone over how undervalued the Americans are by the books repeatedly. 5Dimes’s own odds had an American winning at +140 this afternoon when the prop was up at +190. Nice work guys. Villegas, Mahan, Perry, and Mahan have all done fuck-all for the past few months, but remain really good golfers. I considered outrights on each, but held off. I’ll be going balls deep on them to win if they play well tomorrow (Steve’s first out!).

Justin Rose is supremely overrated right now. The Saw has looked at the effect of playing well in previous weeks on the next week’s results and found a very small effect. To make Rose as good as he’s being valued at you’d have to be almost a stroke better a round during a “hot streak”. That is a massive change in talent level and isn’t backed up really by any real life factor but confidence. I’m fine betting against it.

And then there’s Steve Stricker. He has, in case you missed it, won twice on Tour already and is having the best non-Westwood season of anyone on Tour, right after his fucking amazing 2009. In short, he’s the 2nd best golfer on the planet. There’s no reason he should be +4000 this week, not coming off a win. Will he win? Only ~6% of the time, but he’ll certainly do it a hell of a lot more than Els, McIlroy, Padraig, and Rose combined.

Match-ups (all 1x)
Sim/Havret -105 (1st)
Clark & Glover/McIlroy -120 (1st)
Mahan/Bjorn -120 (1st)
Furyk/McDowell +105 (1st)
T.Woods/Rose -140 (1st)

Tiger/Rose is obvious. Furyk “getting points” at McDowell is absurd. McDowell might be from Ireland and have just won the US Open, but Furyk is a top five in the world. Sim may be overrated due to playing on the Nationwide Tour, but Havret is pretty much an average Nationwide Tour pro who happened to luck into a berth in the US Open and luck into a final round pairing with Tiger, nine holes worth of shots on TV, and a 2nd place finish. He still sucks though. Mahan/Bjorn is marginal, but Mahan has done literally nothing lately unlike Bjorn who won last month. And then the 3-ball match-up. Clark and Glover are solid top 30 players in the world. There’s no way they fail to beat McIlroy 55% of the time. McIlroy would have to be the 2nd best in the world by a lot for that to be a fair line. I call bullshit on that.

Donald/Rose +110 for the tournament (2x)
T.Woods/McIlroy -148 for the tournament (4x)
Sergio/Scott +115 for the tournament (2x)
T.Woods/Rose -171 for the tournament (4x)

Just a routine fade of Rose/McIlroy at +EV prices and the standard bet on Sergio. I’m -9x when betting on Sergio, but most of those were outrights that were crazy +EV. I remember the ticky-tacky 1x losses on him, but quickly forget the 7x he made me by beating up on Ben Crane at Pebble Beach. Still, fuck him and turn it the hell around and start winning sometime.

That’s pretty much it. I’m churning through the sportsbetting.com NFL prospective lines right now and finding a truck load of them to bet on so there’ll likely be a post on that soon.