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The Open Championship @ Betfair

FINAL RESULT:

Loss = 15.75 pts

Bank is now £1084.73 after 14 weeks (Up 4.24 pts overall).

Summary:
A very rare foray into odds-on betting for me and a timely reminder not to bother! Fair play to Hamilton, he did the job well under the severest pressure.


Page Update #2 (after round 3):
(Winner market)
Back Ernie Els 5 pts @ 3.8
Back Phil Mickelson 3 pts @ 5.9
Back Retief Goosen 3 pts @ 6
Just backing the three of them at combined odds of 4/6. They have been the players to fight out the two Majors of 2004 so far and are playing fantastic golf this week too. Who can forget how fantastic Els & Mickelson were at Augusta, or what a treat Mickelson & Goosen served up at Shinnecock? The chances of all three of these performing only averagely tomorrow, after those performances under the severest pressure, seem very slim to me. They have so much more quality than the rest of the leaders and are absolutely, completely, proven under Sunday-of-a-Major conditions. Hamilton is in his first year on tour and, despite winning once, hasn't broken 70 on Sunday in the 12 cuts he's made, while Levet will do unbelievably well to keep going - he has been brilliant since last Sunday but that is an awfully long time to be right in the centre of the spotlight and I expect it to tell tomorrow. Everyone else is playing catch-up tomorrow and are not playing as well, either in the past week, the past month, or over the entire season, as Els, Goosen and Mickelson.


Page Update #1:
(Winner market)
Back Kenny Perry 2 pts @ 110
Back Miguel Angel Jiménez 2 pts @ 110
Back Mark O'Meara 0.5 pts @ 350
Back Bob Estes 0.25 pts @ 560
I just cannot get excited by any of the prices for the players under 100/1 and, despite it being The Open, I am not going to force the issue by having one of the favourites in the team just for the sake of it. It's not as if this tournament is usually won by favourites anyway!
And anyhow, don't be fooled by the three figure prices ... Jimenéz has 4 wins in the last 9 months and Perry has followed up last year's phenomenal year with 8 top 15s in 15 events this season (currently #12 in the World).
Perry is one of my big fancies for a good week, and the price is a surprising bonus. OK, he missed the cut in the US Open last time out, but prior to that he had 12 consecutive rounds of par or better, the result of which was three top 12s in very decent company. Tied 8th last year in only his second Open was a super effort which proved he can play this type of golf, and I think he has just the kind of controlled game to excel here.
Jimenéz has turned his game right around since coming back to European golf after a troublesome attempt at the PGA Tour, and he is playing the best golf of his career. So if we consider him to be a better player than when he was 2nd in the 2000 US Open, at Pebble Beach links, it is clear that he has the ability to challenge here. He missed the cut in the 2002 Open but, as that was in the middle of his bad US year, I choose to ignore that and bring his two most recent Open finishes to the fore, 26th in 2000 and 3rd in 2001. His last five European events have seen him gain his third 2004 victory and then secure finishes of 34th, 8th, 8th & 10th, and even his MC on the links course of Shinnecock included some fantastic golf; he missed the cut by one but dropped SIX shots on one par three in round one. That had taken him to +9 after 11 so to get to +6 after 36 was a monumental effort and must have been one of the best stretches of golf played in the whole tournament; six birdies with just three bogeys in 25 holes was not done by many! Fabulous current form, good links form, has made the frame in Majors before, over 100/1 ... Jimenéz will do for me.
Two speculative stabs are past Open champion O'Meara, and steady-eddie Bob Estes. O'Meara has missed just two cuts in 19 Open attempts and has two third places to go with the win. He has shown this year he may not be a spent force and, while there is no doubt his overall form has gone downhill, hence the 300/1+ prices, he was superb in beating a high-class field in Dubai on his last visit to the European Tour in March. And as he was a season's best 11th (for US events) on his penultimate outing at the Byron Nelson I would imagine he is thoroughly looking forward to this week and he is certainly no forlorn hope.
Estes has missed only one Open since 1994 (Troon actually!) and he has a very consistent string of finishes - 24/8/MC/24/49/20/25/18/34. His price reflects his desperate season to date but I remember the staggering golf he played over the last three rounds of the FedEx recently and, although we still have to forgive two missed cuts since then, this challenge could just suit him. His Open record could be because he comes from windy Texas and I am going to chance a revival at massive odds here, he really is a super fairways and greens man on his day.