Tiger or Lefty to drive off with BMW Championship

The FedExCup Playoffs move on to the BMW Championship at the Crooked Stick Golf Club in Indiana, which is seldom used for professional events and, therefore, robs golf punters of the chance to line up historical course form with recent form.

The top guys have not played in a Crooked Stick tournament since 1991 when it hosted the PGA Championship that John Daly, the ninth alternate for the event, won by three strokes by bombing the Pete Dye-designed layout.

Based on Daly`s major win and the make-up of Crooked Stick`s 18 holes, one would think that the BMW Championship entrants on which to concentrate would be the ones who drive the ball quite a long distance and possess an excellent short game.

Basically, Crooked Stick should be right up the alley of the golfers who perform well in the Masters Tournament and no-one has better record in that than Tiger Woods.

Woods is the general BMW Championship second favourite at odds of around 15-2, with only bang-in-form Rory McIlroy quoted at shorter prices. The Northern Irishman, winner of last week`s Deutsche Bank Championship, is around 7-1.

Third on his own in the Deutsche Bank Championship, Woods carded four sub-70 rounds for the first time in three years last week, including a superb bogey-free, five-under-par final round to signify that he is ready to win again.

Woods leads the PGA Tour in total driving, he is second in adjusted scoring and third in scrambling. Crooked Stick is made for his game and the only negative against him is that this year he has not won on a course new to him. That said, Crooked Stick is new to pretty much everyone in the field.

Another BMW Championship entrant who catches the eye is Phil Mickelson, whom bookmakers are quoting at around 22-1. Lefty looks like he is coming back into form, finishing in a tie for fourth place in the Deutsche Bank Championship to end his run of events away from the top of the leaderboard.

Mickelson drives the ball a long way but he is wayward off the tie. That should not be too much of a drama at Crooked Stick, with the penalties for being off the fairway not all that stiff, similar to the Augusta National Golf Club.

Apart from Woods, no active golfer has a better Masters Tournament record than Mickelson, who has changed his putting technique but still sinks balls as well as anyone.

The BMW Championship is such a high-quality tournament that almost anyone in the field could pop up and win it but, at the odds, Woods and Mickelson represent the best bets.

The KLM Open at the Hilversumsche Golf Club is this week`s European Tour event and Miguel Angel Jimenez is the golfer who makes the most betting appeal at around the 40-1 mark.

As a KLM Open champion, albeit in 1994, Jimenez has some of the best Hilversumsche course form on offer and, while 2012 has not been his most successful year, his current world ranking of 74 indicates that the veteran Spaniard remains one of the European Tour`s most reliable performers.

Jimenez would have gone very close to winning the European Masters last week had he not opened with a 77. He followed that with rounds of 65, 66 and 66 to finish just outside the top 10, with his putter on fire over the last 54 holes.

Joint ninth in the Open Championship and tied for 27th in the PGA Championship, Jimenez is a better golfer than many of the men listed above him in the KLM Open betting and he has proven himself on the Hilversumsche layout many times.

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05/09/2012     © Frixo 2024