Golf - The Masters. Augusta has been severely modified in recent years and it is a different challenge to what it was even three years ago. It is longer and is much more testing off the tees. After the course was Tiger proofed (lengthened) the organisers realised that they were simply making it easier for him and the big bombers off the tee. To combat this, tress were added and tees moved to make it a much sterner test of driving rather than just second shots and putting. The result has not been universally acclaimed as great success and this not the Augusta of old. It is now a severe test and if they just grew in the rough it would pass as a US Open course. Course form is still important, it is a big event and some players thrive on the atmosphere and experience of were to place the ball on the course and into the greens, but the more recent form is more important. Maybe we should call it ‘event form’ as this is always the first Major of the season and the only one played at the same venue every time. Some players just love and thrive on the Augusta experience, while it can be overwhelming for some young rookies. The importance of course form can be seen in the numbers of multiple winners such as Woods, Mickelson, Olazabal, Faldo, Langer, Ballesteros to name a few. Woods has to be a massive favourite with four Masters wins and now playing better than ever. He did not really like the changes to the course last year as it put pressure on his driving accuracy and it may do again but the rest of his game is more than able to make up for it. Certainly his odds of 5/4 are hardly attractive even if this is the weakest major of the year with only 97 players. Of those there are three amateurs, some old timers who have a life time exemption (such as Gary Player, Sandy Lyle and Fuzzy Zoeller), invited players form Asia and twenty rookies, many of whom struggle to cope with the big occasion. This is the ‘easiest’ Major to win, but possibly the most prestigious. 2 points Vijay Singh to win at 20/1 Boylesports, Betfred, Extrabet. 5 points Vijay Singh @ 6/5 to finish in the top 10 with Boylesports, Paddy Power, Stan James. lost 7 points...nice 4 putt VJ! Great course form, great current form, past winner. Must go close. Has finished in the top 10 in six of his last eight Masters. 6 points Tim Clark to beat Trevor Immelman @ 1.83 with Pinnacle Lost 6 points......How wrong can I be? I was considering Clarke for an outright bet as his recent course form is very good, 2nd in 2006 and 13th last year. However he is not a great ‘winner’ (last win was in 2005) and with a lot of runner up spots, his bottle is in question. That said he should be good enough to get the better of an out of form Immelman, whose record at Augusta is not good (56/mc/5/mc/56). Clark has easily beaten Immelman on the ‘new Augusta’ in the last two years and a recent 12th in the CA Championships suggest a return to form. Ignore last weeks 70th as he has gone into the last two Masters with a poor warm up result. 5 points Vijay Singh to beat Ernie Els @ 1.81 with Unibet won 4.81 points Ernie Els finally won a proper tournament last month at the Honda Classic. He followed that up with two very poor efforts (MC, 73) and then had to withdraw from last weeks event with Flu (why do sportsmen always get Flu when mortals just get a cold?). His recent Masters form is not great (mc, 27, 47) and not surprisingly past winner Singh finished ahead of him each time. The Fijian is in fine current form (17, 3, 2) and is a course expert (1, 18, 7, 6, 6, 5, 8, 13). Despite his age, many consider him a possible winner this week. Els remains overrated in my opinion and there is a certain Mr. T. Woods in the field this week, and Ernie doesn’t like Tigers. 4 points Luke Donald to beat Sergio Garcia @ 1.90 with Ladbrokes lost 4 points I am not a great fan of Donald but his course form is hard to ignore. He is short off the tee but has coped well with the new Augusta layout with form figures of 3/42/10 and his current form is good. Garcia is becoming one of golf’s forgotten men. His putting woes refuse to go away and losing last years Open in a play off seems to have knocked his confidence. He has a few reasonable finishes recently while never really looking in contention. His recent Augusta form is poor (mc/46/mc) and it must be depressing going to play on these lightening fast greens knowing that short putts on average greens are causing you grief. |
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