PGA: Turning Stone Resort Championship

Game Time: 09/21/2007 04:00 PM
By: Brian Gabrielle | bgsports.com

With the FedEx Cup decided last week, the PGA Tour enters its Fall Series starting up in Verona, N.Y., at the Atunyote Golf Club where Fall is already in full swing.

The PTI guys took up the premature debate about the Patriots this week. The question was would you take the Pats against the field to win the Super Bowl. Tony Kornheiser narrowed the question to the AFC and argued that at this early point in the season he would take them to make it to the Super Bowl as the AFC representative because they’re much better than the other 15 teams in the AFC. Just like you always have to take Tiger Woods in a short field tournament, he said.

That’s sound reasoning (at least in the Tiger scenario). There are two chances to take him in a small field any given year: the season-opening Mercedes and the season-closing Tour Championship. He’s won both, including last week’s romp in Atlanta, wrapping up another dominant year.

The only problem is that with the very good chance that he’s going to best 30 players, the odds stink. So the question really becomes, "Should you put all your money on him?"

I chose to go the conservative route of using one of three outright picks on Tiger and picking two other guys as well. That way you cover if Tiger wins and have a 30% chance by picking three.

With this week’s Turning Stone Resort Championship we begin what the PGA Tour calls the Fall Series, seven tournaments through the first week of November that amount to the official end of the 2007 season. Every January a handful of players in the Mercedes stick out because you can’t remember what tournament got them into the field. They win tournaments like these seven, and tournaments opposite majors.

The challenge with full field events that have few stars in the field is to win the head-to-head. That’s always the idea but it’s especially important in these events because picking a winner out of 150 or so with no strong bets like a Woods is nearly impossible.

What it boils down to is that the Tour’s plan to make the back end of the schedule more exciting with the FedEx Cup playoffs still has left us with almost two months of weighing the odds of players like John Mallinger and Steve Allan. Let’s just say you can’t confidently take a Mallinger or Allan against the field.

At this week’s Turning Stone Resort Championship, take Daniel Chopra (100-1), 1/6 unit: Chopra had a strong finish to 2006 in these quasi Silly Season tournaments. In fact, he had a strong finish in 2005,too. No wins to show for it but talent-wise he’s up there. Chopra finished T41 at the B.C. Open held last year at Turning Stone.

Take Rich Beem (66-1), 1/6 unit: The former major winner put together a decent year with two top-10s and five top-25s. Recently, he went T7 and T30 in the Barclays and Deutsche Bank, solid performances in strong fields.

Take Justin Leonard (66-1), 1/6 unit: He got off to a brutal start to the year, missing his first six cuts.He continued to miss cuts consistently but also sprinkled a couple top-10s in there. Betting on experience here.