Players Championship Odds: Tiger Woods the Favorite
by Frank Doyle of Sports Interaction - 5/11/2011
The Players Championship is popularly considered the fifth major. It has big prize money, it always attracts a strong field and it has one of the most iconic holes in golf, the infamous island green at the 17th. There’s nothing not to love about Sawgrass.
Tiger Woods has only won the Players Championship once, in 2001, but he’s the ante-post favorite at +1400 with Sports Interaction to claim the title this year. This tells you everything you need to know about Tiger – his talent is such that it’s impossible to discount him, but Tiger hasn’t been this big a price to win a tournament in a decade if not more.
We’ve seen it at every tournament where he’s competed, most recently his storming challenge over the front nine at Augusta last month. But as well as the talent, we saw the flaws that weren’t there before, as putts that were once commanded to the hole by the sheer strength of Tiger’s will lipped out and didn’t drop.
Tiger Woods is a big price for the Players’ Championship but it only seems a big price because he’s Tiger Woods and he used to be king of the world. Whether or not that’s a value price depends on whether or not Tiger can reclaim his crown, and if that process of reclamation can happen at Sawgrass.
Who are Tiger’s challengers? Phil Mickelson, of course, a man who seems much more at ease with himself since he came out of Tiger’s shadow when he won his first Masters. He’s certainly a contender and has won at Sawgrass before. Martin Kaymer, having put his disappointment at failing to make another Augusta cut, is the highest ranked player at Sawgrass in the absence of World No 1 Lee Westwood, and Kaymer’s certainly an attractive price at +2800.
Although the Players’ Championship attracts a strong field and the great names in golf have won it, like Tiger, Mickelson, Nicklaus and so on, there have been a lot surprise winners too. That makes consistent performers like KJ Choi or Vijay Singh worth a look at big prices.
Also worth a look is Alvero Quiros at +10000. The Spaniard is one of the young stars of the game, and he may arrive at Florida with a sense of mission following the passing of his countryman and one of the great stars in the history of the game, Seve Ballesteros. For Quiros to win at Sawgrass would be the best way to honour Seve’s memory.
Sports Interaction has a range of golf bets for the Players Championship – as well as the outright we have group betting, matchup betting, region betting, big guns and even a piñata pick, where you are given a random golfer at fixed odds of +12500, irrespective of who he is. Not a member? Just click here to make the most of our super signup bonus offer!