FINAL RESULT: 1-2; -2.77pts

Garcia wd
Donald 5th
Appleby 18th

Hoped to get at least one player in the top-5 with Donald and Appleby starting the final round in 7th place, but only managed one of them and that was with a four-way tie for 5th place thanks to his double-bogey on the 12th hole. So many near misses this week ...

Outright plays (total stake per play: 1.5pts)

Sergio Garcia to win 28/1 e.w. @ BetInternet
It's impossible to ignore the U.S. Open this week with many players competing in the 36-hole qualifiers on Monday and many of those already eligible being susceptible to treating this event as an exercise in sharpening up their games for next week rather than focussing on winning this week. So it should be reassuring to know that Garcia has won the PGA Tour event one week before the U.S. Open in each of the last two years and in the only two other years that he has played the week before the U.S. Open (2000 and 2002), he has finished 3rd and 12th. Add in the fact that he is a multiple winner of this event (2001 and 2004) with four top-5 finishes in the last five years here and that he showed some very good form around Muirfield Village in the first and fourth rounds last week and he really should prosper again around the very small greens at Westchester.

Luke Donald to win 33/1 e.w. available generally
Donald made his debut in last year's U.S. Open and in the previous week's Booz Allen Classic he did hold the lead on the front nine in the final round before falling back on a congested leaderboard. In terms of his current form, he is playing well. He has one win and five top-10 finishes from ten starts in the U.S. this year and in his last outing, he held the first-round lead in the BMW Championship before falling back on a course that doesn't suit his game. This week's course will be much more to his liking as he showed when in being in contention throughout in his last visit in 2004. On that occasion he was in poor form at the time, so he certainly should be looking to improve on that 7th place finish.

Stuart Appleby to win 50/1 e.w. @ SkyBet, William Hill and Coral
Appleby was also strongly in contention for the Booz Allen Classic last year, starting the final round in 2nd place alongside Luke Donald, and the previous year he finished 23rd in this event, the week before the U.S. Open, so there is some encouragement there. His form around this course is erratic with some good finishes and missed cuts, but he is largely a play on the back of his form this season. It may seem a long time since he finished 7th in last year's Tour Championship, followed that with three top-10 finishes in Australia, won the Mercedes Championship this year and finished 7th in the Sony Open, but he has certainly returned to that form since the Masters in April. He followed a top-20 finish in that event with a wire-to-wire victory in the Houston Open, a 4th place finish in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans and even though he has not finished as highly in his two subsequent events, he had at least been in contention in both before the bad weather intervened, being 4th after two rounds of the Wachovia Championship and 3rd after the opening round of last week's Memorial Tournament. In the Wachovia Championship, 3rd round tee-times were brought forward five hours in order to try and finish on time given the expected rain delays and last week, not until the final day was a round completed on schedule. So long as the forecasted showers for the first two rounds do not turn into the weather disruptions that have wrecked Appleby's last two events, his form should certainly be enough to earn him a personal best on this course this week.