Final update: 3-2 and +1.25 units for the day; 10-9-1 and +0.50 units for week.

Wow! A whole half unit profit for the week

Needed Davis Love to arrest his disinterest and birdie the last to make it the first profitable day of four with the 18-hole matchups. Mickelson collapsed as predicted and that provided us with nice +150 and +100 winners. Huston disappointed and Mediate lost out by one in the others.

Tough week on the daily matchups for everyone, just as well the 72-hole matchups came through 5-1. Love and Mickelson were easy winners in both of their matches, while Garcia lost by five to Hoch.

Will continue to keep unrestricted access to 'Member services' on website for another week and what a week, the TPC. All the stats will be updated for the TPC field tomorrow night. Let's see if the Tour-Tips ratings can correctly predict the 1-2 again

3rd round update:

Horrible day   1-4 in round three matchups. Ames lost by two; Mickelson by three; Kaye by one and Waldorf by three. The only success was a Toms victory by one shot. On the 72-hole front, Garcia fell three behind Hoch, but Mickelson still leads Appleby by eight and Sutton by three, while Love leads Lehman now by nine and Singh by twelve.

For the 4th round we now need some decent picks or the 18-hole ones will have ruined an otherwise profitable week! A number of plays, again concentrating on ratings and tables for leaderboard position and leaderboard change in members section. 

They are, briefly, first Rocco Mediate to beat Dudley Hart. Both players fell down the leaderboard yesterday, Mediate much more than Hart, but of the two Mediate has a very strong 'bounce back' record: from nine similar 3rd round falls since the start of 1998 he is averaging 69.4 and +9 places in the 4th round. Hart has, on average, continued to fall down the Sunday leaderboard from a similar position.

Another with a very poor record of such falls on Saturday is Phil Mickelson. He fell seven places yesterday; since the start of 1998 [6 similar occasions] he has averaged 73.5 in the 4th round. He is being opposed by Scott Hoch who had a very large jump up the leaderboard to 12th yesterday, but in the past he has continued this improvement into Sunday and by David Toms who has no record of falling away from his current position of 12th on the last day.

The last two are John Huston to beat Dennis Paulson - two players who went in opposite directions, but if history is anything to go by, have very strong 'bounce back' tendencies on Sundays - and Davis Love to beat Tom Lehman. Love will be in prime pace to challenge for the lead being alongside Tiger in the final pairing; he may have shot 63 in the 3rd round, but he does have a history of repeating it again. Lehman similarly moved up the leaderboard significantly yesterday, but in 24th place he is out of the tournament and he is not one to over-tax himself in these situations and will be unlikely to do so with the TPC next week.

Staking plan:

Rocco Mediate to beat Dudley Hart @ +125 with Sportingbet

Scott Hoch to beat Phil Mickelson @ +100 with the starnet books

David Toms to beat Phil Mickelson @ +150 with William Hill

John Huston to beat Dennis Paulson @ -125 with Sportingbet

Davis Love to beat Ton Lehman @ -130 with the starnet books

2nd round update:

Daily matchups disappoint again, this time split the plays with Singh losing by one and Janzen winning by one. But much better news on the 72-hole matchups: Mickelson and Love lead each of their two plays by comfortable margins, while Garcia has drawn level with Hoch. The Daly matchup was won when Nicklaus missed the cut

A veritable smorgasbord of matchups today. So going to be very brief and refer to the Ratings, Leaderboard Position and Leaderboard Change tables. If one player has a lead over the other in all three tables, or at least very strong in two, then it's a pick for the day. Won't add any more than that for now, let's see how this system works when in public.   So go and check that stuff out!

Players that meet these criteria are:

Stephen Ames to beat Neal Lancaster @ -125 with William Hill

Phil Mickelson to beat Stewart Cink @ -105 with the starnet books

Jonathon Kaye to beat Skip Kendall @ +105 with Bowmans

Duffy Waldorf to beat Steve Lowery @ +100 [-106 after 3% 'service charge'] with Stan James

David Toms to beat Rocco Mediate @ -115 with GoTo, Moneyplays or PlayersBet

1st round update:

Disappointing 0-1-1 day on the 18-hole matchups and things pretty evenly balanced on the 72-holers. Just about golfing pundits on the internet was opposing Singh this week and he's having the last laugh, for now at least! He shot 68 to be joint leader of the tournament and nobody expected that. He easily beat Davis Love by four shots, while Mickelson and Appleby both tied on 70 apiece. And we were pretty glad for that! Mickelson had five bogeys on his outward nine, but completed his last seven in five-under-par

In the other 72-hole matchups, Mickelson leads Sutton by one, Love and Lehman are tied, Garcia trails Hoch by three while Daly leads Nicklaus by three. So very evenly balanced, yet again, and it's down to some 18-hole plays to grind out this week's profits.

There are two plays for the 2nd round. The first is Vijay Singh to beat Duffy Waldorf. Let's see if he can give us back that lost unit. Both are tied for the lead of the tournament and for Vijay that isn't something rare, just unexpected this week. But he was also leading the Doral-Ryder Open after the 1st round two weeks ago and shot 67 which we'd happily take tomorrow. Waldorf has been leader after 18 holes before, but most recently in the NCR Classic 1998 he shot 78 in the 2nd round. Simply, Singh is a potential wire-to-wire winner, Duffy isn't.

The second is Lee Janzen to beat Corey Pavin. This is definitely not a matchup about the pressures of leading the tournament; they both lie in 38th position at level par. But that should be no surprise, Janzen has had a disappointing season so far, but at least he has made the cut in all four of his tournaments and finished in the top-20 of two of them. Pavin, on the other hand, has made only one cut all season. It may only be March but the pressure can build real early. If we also consider how well each player performs in such a mid-table position after round one, there is a huge difference and Janzen is particularly impressive. Janzen has been in the range 26th-50th after round one 11 times since the start of the 1998 season; from that position he has an average score of 69 in the 2nd round. The last time was a month ago at the Nissan Open. He was 41st after the 1st round, but came back into the tournament with a 67 to jump to 13th.

Staking plan:

Vijay Singh to beat Duffy Waldorf @ -125 with GoTo or Moneyplays

Lee Janzen to beat Corey Pavin @ -110 with GoTo

The Bay Hill Invitational

None other than Arnold Palmer issues the invitations for this event and when he issues an invitation, no-one refuses! This is a strong field, with only Parnevik and Duval missing from the game's elite, and there is a strong European challenge. This is more than just preparation for next week's TPC. The course is held in high regard by the pros and is never out of the "100 greatest courses" listings.

The course is long at 7,200 yards and tight, having been lengthened in recent years; the course record of 62 dates back to Andy Bean in 1981 and Greg Norman in 1984. It has kept with the advances in golf technology. The favored shot for this course is a draw, particularly for the front-nine, but players who has done well in this tournament have had good all-round games. Els and Mickelson won this tournament two and three years ago and to highlight the importance of good putting on the large, undulating Bermuda greens, the winners immediately before them were Loren Roberts twice and Ben Crenshaw. Quite where Tim Herron fits into this is not clear, but it as blustery last year - Lumpy is a good 'bad weather' player - and he had to defeat Tom Lehman in a playoff with Davis Love only one shot back. Apart from looking for a 'complete' player, other factors to take note of are that Tiger, among others, lives close by, Steve Lowery and Dicky Pride are members of the club and Robert Damron is personal friend of Arnie and grew up on the course.

The matchup picks for this event largely center around two players: Phil Mickelson and Davis Love. Mickelson has the course form [5th last year and a winner in 1997] and the current form [averaging less than 69 in his last six tournaments] to do very well this week. His usual lefty fade is also ideal for this course. Love is another with great course form [9th in '97, 17th in '98 and 3rd in '99] and decent current form [last five events in top-20, averaging 69.1]. He had some rather erratic rounds last week; have not heard of any trouble with his back, though he has been making some changes to his swing. But these two really fit the bill of the player to look for this week. And with the TPC next week and the Masters next month, it sure is a time for peaking your game.

The opponents they have been pitted against are Stuart Appleby, Tom Lehman, Vijay Singh and Hal Sutton. Appleby could have won last week's tournament and in terms of current form he is not too far behind Mickelson, but when on this course he is a very erratic player. He has played here in the last four years, even shooting the lowest round of the 1990s on this course in 1997 with a 2nd round 63. He closed with a 69 in the final round to finish 2nd. But he has had no other round under 70 on this course and in every other year he has missed the cut. For Lehman it is not so distinctive; he was 2nd last year and has finished in the top-10 in this event three times from eight attempts, his natural draw is favored here. But when his current season stats list him as 89th in driving distance [Love is 8th] and 74th in putting average [Love is 25th], it is hard to see him playing as well again on this course. He has been shooting low scores, but not on this type of course.

Love is also tipped to beat Vijay Singh who has rather flattered to deceive this season. Apart from a 2nd place finish at the AT&T, his season-best has been 18th, which is nowhere near the standard of golf he was playing at twelve months ago. Significantly, in the two events on the Florida Swing so far he has finished 36th and 50th. Decent course for does mitigate this, but his game is currently falling backwards not gearing up for the important events ahead. Finally in this group, Hal Sutton is not expected to perform this week either. That may seem surprising for someone who has finished in the top-10 in four of their last six tournaments, but his 16th place finish last year was his best performance on this course for twelve years! When the weak links in his game are driving distance and putting, then he should be better suited to other courses.

Two other 72-hole plays. The first is Sergio Garcia to beat Scott Hoch. This may seem questionable given Sergio's failings on Tour last month and last of course experience, but I think a lot of that can be put down to too many commitments on too many continents in the off-season. His form was starting to falter well before February and the rest he should have had in November-December has now finally been taken with just the World Matchplay taxing his game in the last six weeks. He will be better for the rest and should beat Hoch whose 5th place last year was rather unexpected. He had not finished in the top-25 in this event since 1991. It is a similar case with his current form: he was a quarter-finalist in the World Matchplay, but otherwise his top finish all year has been 25th with a Sunday stroke average of 74.25 so far this year!

The last one is John Daly to bear Gary Nicklaus. John Daly to win a wager ... hmmm ... that doesn't sound right! This is his first time back at Bay Hill since his shot 85 in the final round two years ago - there were 36 holes being played on the Sunday - and he was reprimanded by the PGA Tour for lack of effort. But he has only missed the cut once in seven attempts and he was a creditable 16th last week. Nicklaus has yet register an attempt at Bay Hill and he also had an encouraging week last week, finishing 28th. But on a course that requires length off the tee and good touch on the greens, he has neither. He currently stands at 55th in this year's driving distance stats [Daly is 1st, of course, and 30 yards ahead of Nicklaus] and 121st in the putting average stats [Daly is 47th].

Staking plan:

Phil Mickelson to beat Stuart Appleby @ -125 available with Megasports, Intertops, SIA and Easybets

Phil Mickelson to beat Hal Sutton @ -105 with GoTo or Moneyplays

Davis Love to beat Tom Lehman @ -143 with Centrebet

Davis Love to beat Vijay Singh @ -120 with Moneyplays

Sergio Garcia to beat Scott Hoch @ -130 with VIP, Gamblers Palace, Casablanca and Fair Deal

John Daly to beat Gary Nicklaus @ -111 with Sportingbet

Phil Mickelson to beat Stuart Appleby [1st round] @ -125 with GoTo or Moneyplays

Davis Love to beat Vijay Singh [1st round] @ -115 with GoTo or Moneyplays