This Week in Golf - September 9th through September 12th

Golf Betting Lines

09/06/2010 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - PGA TOUR - BMW CHAMPIONSHIP, Cog Hill Golf & Country Club, Lemont, Illinois - The BMW Championship marks the third round of the PGA Tour playoffs, reserved for the top 70 players in the FedExCup standings.

Following the fourth round at Cog Hill, only the top 30 players on the points list will make the field for the playoff finale at the Tour Championship, which begins after a one-week break in the schedule.

Tiger Woods won last year's BMW Championship by eight shots after posting four consecutive rounds of 68 or better, collecting his fifth career victory at the tournament.

The win catapulted Woods to his second FedExCup title in three years.

Fighting for his playoff life -- and his No. 1 ranking -- Woods birdied three of his last four holes at the Deutsche Bank Championship on Monday to earn the right to defend his title.

He closed with a three-under 68 to share 11th place at 10-under-par 274. That was good enough to hold off Phil Mickelson and retain his No. 1 ranking. Mickelson needed a top-four finish to pass Woods and was there for a while.

However, Mickelson had a birdie, two bogeys, a double-bogey and a triple-bogey on the back nine en route to a closing 76. That dropped him 14 spots behind Woods on the leaderboard as the left-hander finished at minus-seven.

Charley Hoffman soared to No. 2 on the FedExCup points list as he won the Deutsche Bank Championship by five strokes. Hoffman carded six birdies on the back nine, and 11 in his round, as he fired a nine-under 62. He matched the tournament scoring record of 262.

Padraig Harrington, Lucas Glover, Chris Couch and Charles Howell III started the week inside the top 70, but were bumped out and will miss the final two playoff events.

Scott Verplank was 70th after the Deutsche Bank, but is out for the year with a wrist injury.

Golf Channel will have coverage of the first two rounds of the BMW Championship, while NBC will broadcast the final two rounds.

Mickelson will defend his title at the Tour Championship beginning Sept. 23. Any player inside the top five in the playoff standings will have a shot to win the FedEx Cup by winning the Tour Championship.

LPGA TOUR

NW ARKANSAS CHAMPIONSHIP, Pinnacle Country Club, Rogers, Arkansas - The LPGA Tour returns from a one-week break for the NW Arkansas Championship, a 54-hole event.

The tour has been away since Michelle Wie's victory at the Canadian Women's Open.

At last year's NW Arkansas Championship, Jiyai Shin birdied the second playoff hole to defeat Angela Stanford and Sun Young Yoo.

Seon-Hwa Lee also earned a hard-fought win at this event in 2008 when she birdied the final hole for a one-shot victory over Jane Park and Meena Lee.

The tournament suffered an inelegant debut in 2007 when it was shortened to 18 holes after three days of weather-related problems in the wake of Hurricane Henriette.

Stacy Lewis, then an amateur and the reigning NCAA champion, carded a 65 for the best score, but was not credited for an official win. Officials believed it was the first full-length tour event ever shortened to 18 holes.

Shin, Lee and Lewis will be part of a field at Pinnacle Country Club that is also scheduled to feature Wie, who has begun another year of juggling golf and college.

Golf Channel will have coverage of all three rounds.

The tour is off until Oct. 7 when the Navistar LPGA Classic begins. Lorena Ochoa won the tournament last year, but retired earlier this season.

EUROPEAN TOUR

KLM OPEN, Hilversumsche Golf Club, Hilversum, Netherlands - Simon Dyson birdied the first playoff hole at last year's KLM Open to beat Peter Lawrie and Peter Hedblom for his third European Tour title.

Dyson, who also won the 2006 KLM Open in a playoff, went on to capture win No. 4 at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship four starts later.

The Englishman will try to defend his title this week against a field that also includes the last two major championship winners -- British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen and PGA Championship winner Martin Kaymer.

The tournament returns to Hilversumsche Golf Club in the Netherlands for the first time in five years.

Golf Channel will have coverage of all four rounds beginning at 9:30 a.m. (et) on the first two days and an hour earlier on the last two.

Next week's event is the Austrian Golf Open, where Rafael Cabrera-Bello won last season.

CHAMPIONS TOUR

SONGDO CHAMPIONSHIP, Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea, Songdo, South Korea - The Champions Tour travels to Asia for the first time ever this week for the Songdo Championship.

The tournament will be played at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea, a new track designed by the Hall of Famer.

The field is scheduled to include half of the players ranked in the top-10 in the Charles Schwab Cup standings, including leader and five-time 2010 winner Bernhard Langer.

U.S. Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin, who is 10th in the standings, has bigger things on his mind and won't be in attendance.

Golf Channel will have coverage of all three rounds.

The Champions Tour will take a one-week break before returning for the SAS Championship, which was won by Tom Pernice Jr. last year.

NATIONWIDE TOUR

UTAH CHAMPIONSHIP, Willow Creek Country Club, Sandy, Utah - Three players in the field this week will be looking to drastically improve their fortunes.

Chris Kirk, Tommy Gainey and Martin Piller are each seeking their third victory of the season. If any one of them reaches the milestone, they would earn automatic promotions to the PGA Tour.

The promotion wouldn't kick in until the PGA Tour playoffs are over.

Josh Teater, who won last year's Utah Championship, is playing on the PGA Tour this season and has earned $900,723 in 26 starts. By contrast, Kirk, the leading money winner on the Nationwide Tour this season, has earned $400,475 in 18 events.

Golf Channel will have coverage of all four rounds.

Next week is the Albertsons Boise Open, which was won by Fran Quinn last year.

Betonsporst Golf Betting News

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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