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PGA - John Deere Classic
PGA, fans and bettors missing Tiger Woods
It is bad enough that the PGA doesn't have its star attraction Tiger Woods playing these days. This week the duffers and the gallery will also have to get by without a few other marquee names that have dashed 'cross the pond to bonnie Scotland for the Barclays Scottish Open. That leaves a thin field competing at the John Deere Classic here in the USA at the TPC Deere Run in soggy Silvis, Illinois.
The PGA Tour is having enough trouble without Tiger Woods in the mix. Now they’ve got Scotland to contend with.
The European Tour’s Scottish Open is taking away a lot of the talent that would otherwise be available for this week’s John Deere Classic. And no wonder – there’s a purse of £3,000,000 available at Loch Lomond. That’s almost $6 million in American greenbacks, more than enough to lure Phil Mickelson and others across the pond to warm up for the British Open later this month at Royal Birkdale.
That leaves another list of semi-familiar names up for golf betting grabs at the John Deere. Head and shoulders above the crowd is Kenny Perry, the favorite at 7-1 and already a winner in these post-Tiger times. Perry has won two of his last four tournaments: the Memorial and the Buick Open. He’s never won the John Deere, but Perry has yet to miss the cut there in seven previous appearances, finishing 11th last year.
The emotional favorite for this week’s event will be Zach Johnson, the 2007 Masters champion from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, via Iowa City. The John Deere Classic is hosted by the TPC at Deere Run, a beautiful course that opened in Silvis, Ill. in 1999. Last month’s flooding of the Midwest hit Cedar Rapids hard; Silvis remains under flood warning but has escaped the worst.
Johnson is on the board of directors for the John Deere Classic, but his chances of winning are slim at 33-1. He’s coming off a bout of tendinitis in his left wrist that has kept him out of action for the past three weeks, and he missed the cut at three of his last six tournaments.
The defending champion, Jonathan Byrd, is also pegged at 33-1 on the golf odds. But he’s a much better pick at that price, having also finished second at Deere Run in 2003. Byrd just turned 30 this year and was the PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 2002, and he’s one of the few American “youngsters” on the Tour with three wins on his resume. He hasn’t been a regular feature on the leaderboard, but at these odds Byrd has the kind of value handicappers are looking for in a wide-open tournament like the John Deere.
The same can be said for Sean O’Hair at 33-1. This is where O’Hair picked up his first Tour victory in 2005, going on to win Rookie of the Year before enduring his own bouts with inconsistency. O’Hair finally picked up his second career victory this year at the PODS Championship, following that up with a third at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and a respectful 14th at the Masters.
However, O’Hair is only 130th on the Tour in driving accuracy at 60.1 percent. Byrd is 41st at 67.5 percent, and Deere Run is an old-school design that favors hitting it in the fairway over hitting it for distance. Perry may also have his struggles this week, ranking 98th in accuracy at 62.4 percent.
John Senden (33-1) was the 2006 John Deere Classic winner and finished second to O’Hair at the PODS Championship. He’s an accurate driver at 66.6 percent, good for 49th on the Tour, but Senden missed the cut at Deere Run last year and in 2003. The field at 5-2 includes former champions Mark Hensby (2004) and J.P. Hayes (2002), either of who would have arguably made a better pick than Senden based on their results at this tournament.
The John Deere Classic gets the package treatment on television this week. The Golf Channel has early-round coverage on Thursday and Friday before CBS takes over on the weekend. Start time on each day is 3:00 p.m. Eastern.
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Originally Posted by capperwizzard
