World Golf Championship Betting Blog –Thursday

If you just flipped on the Golf Channel for a few minutes or a few hours, it was nice to something in the world not crumbling around us, as Tiger Woods is back. He made spectacular shots, knocked in a few long putts and used a few choice words as he is wont to do when he doesn’t hit the shots he wanted. One of the more interesting aspects of Tiger’s match with Brendan Jones was Jones demeanor. After losing 3 and 2, he was much more euphoric about playing with the living legend than actually trying to defeat him.

I got beat up pretty good with 1-5 record, and was particularly surprised Rory Sabbatini lost, since I had him playing Tiger down the line. I thought Retief Goosen would defeat Tim Clark, who is a very solid player and though there is no way ever to know, you have to wonder if Goosen wanted to avoid El Tigre, since he was the one who questioned if Mr. Woods was really hurt at the U.S. Open and might have been playing martyr to the crowd. Clark will instead get the assignment of facing Tiger as the day’s biggest underdog at Bookmaker.com at +230.

The biggest upsets of the day went completely unnoticed, as top seeded Sergio Garcia and Padraig Harrington both lost in first round matches 1up. Second seeded-Phil Mickelson had to go 19 holes to hold off Angel Cabrera. Camilo (Spiderman) Villegas gave the most dominate performance, winning 7 and 6.

I have my eye on six more plays today. Pat Perez who earlier won the Bob Hope Classic, came in as 16th seed and took down Harrington. I’m going with the oddsmakers who actually have him as -120 favorite today.

Hunter Mahan is a big strong guy and I like his game to take out Rory Mcllory as -105 underdog.

Though I picked against Steve Stricker yesterday, he convinced me he hot, nearly winning the L.A. Open last week and had five birdies and an eagle yesterday. Ernie Els doesn’t much care for these events anyways; I’ll take Stricker at -110.

Lee Westwood and Luke Donald are veteran match play competitors and both should advance as favorites. Though Ian Poulter is anything but a household name unless you are a big golf fan, he is way more well-known then 16th seed Charl Schwartzel. Poulter has six birdies in 15 holes yesterday, thus I’ll lay the -160 on him.

See you tomorrow.