IF you fancy the occasional flutter on sport and are sick of throwing your money at Brazilian 3rd tier football then golf is the place to be.
Top-level golf can be watched and bet on almost every week of the year.
The PGA Tour, for example, has only a two-week off-season.
But there are a few factors you need to grasp before shouting about your golf bets at the local boozer.
Which Tour is best to bet on?
The elite level of men’s golf is split across two tours – the European and the PGA.
The PGA Tour is widely regarded as the better of the two with bigger attendances, prize pots and quality of golfer. From a betting perspective, this means every week in America you will have a strong field to choose from and plenty of value.
The European Tour is a much more inconsistent. You will often see weak fields as Europe’s elite golfers journey over to America for better money and ranking points.
The tour gets into its groove between the months of May and August where we see huge events such as the BMW PGA, Open De France and Scottish Open.
Luckily for us, Europe’s top golfers are obliged to play a certain amount of tournaments on their home tour to become eligible for Ryder Cup selection.
Current Form
Golf is the hardest sport to master making it impossible for golfers to be hitting their straps 52 weeks a year.
It’s very common for players to go through 5/6 week purple patches where they consistently finish inside the top 10 and are seeing it like a beach ball on the putting greens. It’s in these periods you need to put your money on said players.
Form is usually very obvious – you look through their previous tournaments and see that they’ve been finishing strongly.
Sometimes it’s not.
A player could shoot three low rounds in the 60’s and then have a shocking final day, throwing in a couple of triple bogeys. That player, for 70 holes, was looking imperious yet they don’t have the final position to show for it.
Next week, however, they could eradicate those two errors and finish six shots better off. Don’t be quick to eliminate players from your betting strategy just because of mediocre finish.
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Course Form
It’s no secret that certain golfers are suited to particular types of courses.
You only have to look at Angel Cabrera when he rocks up at Augusta every year to see that. This factor is almost more important than current form.
A player could be in great nick for several weeks as he enters a tournament but in all the years previous they have never performed well there.
This could be for a number of reasons: distance of the course; type of putting surface; bunker positioning; climate and weather; is a links course – just to name a few.
If a player has performed poorly on a regular basis at a course, that’s usually cause for concern. Something just doesn’t suit their eye there.
That’s not to say this is an exact science. Players in good form could just carry this into the week and finally things click for them.
Equally, courses will be regularly revamped and these changes could give the place a different edge that favours a completely different type of golfer.
Course Type
Golf courses come in all different shapes and sizes that lend themselves to different facets of a player’s game. Courses can be long or short. Fairways can be wide or narrow. Rough can be thick or thin. Nailing down the attributes of a course can really help when backing a player.
One particular type of course to pay attention to is links (courses situated on the coast). The Open is always played on a links track and requires a completely different skillset. You will often find PGA Tour regulars coming over to play the Scottish Open prior to the Open so they are accustomed to the conditions.
Weather
Arguably the best entertainment in golf is when the top players in the world are battling against the elements. Golfers have to adapt their games completely.
When the wind is up players need to change their ball flight, move it both ways off the tee and be very patient.
Equally, when the heavens open a course becomes a different beast. With no roll out on the fairway players are at the mercy of their carry distance (the distance the ball is in the air for). Sodden fairways are therefore advantageous to the bigger hitters.
The more golf you watch the more you see a trend of golfers who perform well in tricky conditions.
Rickie Fowler, Justin Rose, Shane Lowry, Padraig Harrington are just some of the names you need to keep an eye out for.
Pay particular attention to the four-day forecast before parting with your money.
The Draw
This comes hand in hand with weather. On the opening two days of a tournament the field will be split in half.
The first half will tee off in the morning and the second half will tee off in the afternoon.
These timings can be very crucial in relation to the weather forecast. High winds could be forecast all morning meaning anyone in the afternoon slots will have a huge advantage. But don’t forget - a player who tees off early on day one will have to tee off late on day two.
Another slight factor to consider is who golfers are playing with on the first two days. If someone is paired with Rory McIlroy for instance, they need to expect large crowds. Suddenly those six-foot putts for par look a lot bigger when there are hundreds of spectators breathing down your neck.
Key Statistics
Both the PGA Tour and European Tour kindly provide us with a wealth of statistics that indicate how all players are performing in every area of their game.
The statistics you need to pay particular attention to are: driving accuracy, driving distance, greens in regulation (GIR), ball striking, scrambling, strokes gained-putting.
There are no surprises that if a player is playing well you will find him at the top of all of these statistics. But often these rankings are pivotal in seeing whether a golfer has the attributes for a certain course.
If a track requires big hitting you check who is high in the driving distance category. If the fairways are thin, you delve into the driving accuracy rankings. And so forth.
You can follow Andy Taylor at @DownThe18th
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