PGA Championship

This event may be the least respected of the Majors, but it has produced the most entertaining finales over the past two years: Sergio and Tiger in 1999 and Bob May and Tiger last year. With Tiger not dominating the game in the same way that he did last year, the prospects for another great shootout are good.

The revamped Highlands course at the Atlanta Athletic Club hosts this event for the first time since 1981 when Larry Nelson's precise ball-striking was the key to securing victory. In total, just 143 yards have been added to this course since 1981 and despite the controversy over the 490-yard, par-4, 18th hole and Sutton's tired grumblings about the length of the course, this is a very small change compared to the revolution in modern technology within the game in the last twenty years. The closing five holes are brutal - and so they should for a major - but with hard, fast fairways, it will again be accuracy of ball-striking rather than power golf that will shape this week's winner.

Woods heads the market by some distance and while the Cassandras highlight his lack of top-10 finishes in his last four events, it should also be remembered that he entered last year's event without finishing in the top-10 of his previous two PGA Tour events. The odds are still too short to justify selection. Others with particular local knowledge include David Duval and Stewart Cink as the Georgia Tech golf team used to play their home collegiate events here. But winning back-to-back majors is extremely tough and without tempting odds, Duval is passed over, while Cink has played poorly since his last-green failings at the US Open. Southern Hills may still be haunting him. Instead, of the three selections this week, two have excellent records in this event and one is in the form of his life: Vijay Singh, Nick Price and Scott Hoch.

Of this week's players having competed in at least five PGA Championships, only Jack Nicklaus has a higher top-5/starts ratio than Singh and Price. Jack has secured 14 top-5 finishes (12 of them were top-3!) from 37 starts. Vijay ranks 2nd with 3 top-5 finishes (one win) from 9 starts and Price is 3rd with 5 top-5 finishes (two wins) from 17 starts. The PGA Championship completes the set of majors that test all aspects of the player's game. From the links golf of the British Open, to the over-dependence on power at the Masters, to the over-dependence on accuracy at the US Open, the PGA Championship is biggest test of all-round ball-striking. And Singh and Price are at the elite of that category.

Price has played well at times this year and with a very light schedule, he could be focused enough to achieve his third top-5 finish in four years. Singh, on the other hand, is a more realistic challenger for the title. However, he hasn't won on the PGA Tour since the Masters last year and his inability to win the International is a concern, but given the quality of his golf, at worst he should secure a top-5 place and at odds that would mean the other two selections would be free plays.

This has not been the most productive of events for Hoch: just four top-10s and one top-3 finish in his 20 starts. Nevertheless, ignoring the British Open, which he would have done had it not been for his sponsors' insistence, he has finished no worse than 16th in his last ten events, including the US Open, and won twice. He shares with Singh and Price a liking for hot conditions and in this form, looks a decent long-shot for a place finish.

Outright plays:

Vijay Singh to win 20/1 e.w. @ Surrey and others

Nick Price to win 80/1 e.w. @ Ladbrokes  [5 places option]

Scott Hoch to win 80/1 e.w. @ Ladbrokes  [5 places option]

Prop plays:

My favorite part about major weeks ... cut props. There may be 25 Club Professionals in this 150-man field, but it also boasts the highest number (97) of players in the top-100 of the World Rankings for quite some time. Making the top-70 and the weekend could be quite a challenge in this company.

Players to miss the cut:

John Daly +105 @ BetInternet [3 units]
Robert Damron -133 @ Centrebet [3 units]
Joe Durant +135 @ BetInternet [2 units]
Pierre Fulke -154 @ Centrebet
David Gossett +115 @ BetInternet [3 units]
John Huston +100 @ BetInternet [2 units]
Lee Janzen -125 @ Centrebet
Nick O'Hern -118 @ Centrebet
Jose Maria Olazabal +125 @ BetInternet [2 units]
Mark O'Meara -154 @ Centrebet
Ian Poulter -143 @ Centrebet [2 units]
Brett Quigley -125 @ Centrebet [2 units]
Rory Sabbatini -125 @ Centrebet [2 units]

72-hole plays:

Charles Howell to beat David Gossett -110 @ Surrey [2 units] [-130 @ Camelot]
Gossett has made the headlines with his victory at the John Deere Classic, but he has played virtually the whole season on the Buy.com Tour with success only in the last two months. Howell has been played exclusively on the PGA Tour has finished in the top-15 on 7 of 14 starts. Much more consistent at this level

Tom Kite to beat Curtis Strange -125 @ Camelot [2 units]
Very surprised to see this as a matchup. Kite remains very competitive on the Senior PGA Tour where he has secured a top-10 finish in all but one of his last seven events and was 5th at the US Open. Strange may have been 5th in his last PGA Tour event, the St Jude Classic, but he has missed seven of his nine cuts this year and is a full-time broadcaster not a competitive pro

Hidemichi Tanaka to beat Grant Waite -125 @ Camelot
Waite is a pale shadow of the player that secured back-to-back runners-up spots in Canada last year. Since the TPC he has made the cut just 3 times from 14 starts with a best of 30th! His record in majors is no better, just two cuts made from 10 starts. Tanaka may not make it to the weekend either, but he already made a name for himself at the WGC-Amex Championship last year at Valderrama and has won once and finished in the top-5 in three of his last four Japan Tour events

Will have more this evening

Adding 72-hole plays:

Tim Thelen to beat Mark Brown -125 @ Camelot [3 units]
Thelen has had four horrible rounds in this tournament, but he has become a much better player since those scores. The 1999 event was his first start in a Tour event. Last year he played on the Buy.com Tour securing one top-10 from eight starts and this year he has played four time on the main PGA Tour, making the cut twice and finishing 12th at the BC Open. Brown is a veteran of the Canadian and Australasian Tours and has struggled on both. He has made just four cuts from ten events on the Canadian Tour this season and this is much too big a step up in class this week

Shingo Katayama to beat Joe Ozaki -135 @ Camelot
Katayama won three straight events on the Japan Tour at the end of last year and while he has only won once this year, he has shown that he can play to a decent standard on the PGA Tour with two cuts made from four starts, including 40th at the Masters. Ozaki is a PGA Tour veteran, but has really struggled this year, making just one of his last six PGA Tour cuts. Can't see him making the cut this week

Bob Sowards to beat Jerry Pate -115 @ Camelot
Pate is no more than a celebrity player this week - he won the 1976 US Open on this course, but has played only four touraments in the last four years (three of them were pro-ams) and missed the cut in every one. Sowards hasn't been a full-time member of a Tour since the 1998 Buy.com (NIKE) Tour, but this is more a play against Pate

Adding prop:

Tiger Woods to beat David Duval - 72-hole score & greens in regulation +261 @ UKBetting [3 units]
Incredible offering from UKBetting. Minimum doubles from head-to-head in five categories: driving distance, driving accuracy, greens in regulation, number of putts and 72-hole score, all @ -111. Would be tempted to make it a treble with driving distance, but the most correlated stat with scoring is greens in regulation, so it makes sense to make that the combination in a very correlated parlay!

Mid-point update:

All six matchup plays are determined at the cut, leaving just one prop and the outrights alive until the weekend. The matchup plays finish 4-2-0 with the following scores: Howell/Gossett 5 up; Kite/Strange 8 up; Tanaka/Waite 15 down; Thelen/Brown 3 up; Katayama/Ozaki 20 up; Sowards/Pate 7 down. A decent return with just two one-unit plays losing.

The cut props finish 8-5-0 for a profit of 4.07 units, but it could have been in excess of 15 units had the cut line stayed at even par. It fluctuating between even par and one-over all evening, but wasn't to be. Damron and Olazabal make the cut on the mark at one-over, while Durant, Huston and O'Meara were the other losses.

The remaining prop, Woods to beat Duval in GIR and scoring remains alive though only just. The gutsy fightback from Woods to make the cut could yet inspire a close match. Finally, all three outright plays make the cut, but with Hoch and Price 2-under-par and Singh one-over, they will need a spectacular weekend to sustain any interest in them.

Final update: 12-8-0 and +6.67 units

With all the matchup plays decided at the same time as the cut props, there only remained the Woods-Duval stats prop. It lost, but I am rather disappointed that I looked the gift horse in the mouth and got greedy! As stated above, greens in regulation is very highly correlated with scoring, so the sensible play would have been the "scalp": Woods' score & GIR stats and Duval's score & GIR stats. The "scalp" odds would have been -124, but it was virtually guaranteed to win. Of course, Duval beat Woods at both the scoring and greens in regulation stats!

Update on outright plays: 0-3 and -3.00

Nothing to show from the outright selections this week. Singh was very disappointing and finished 51st, while Price and Hoch did at least make charges, only to have started too far back to catch the top-4. Price finished 29th and Hoch, with the help of a hole-in-one, finished 7th.