Its July time again which essentially means one thing, Tennis at Wimbledon, Cricket and of course the Open Golf Championship. This year the event is being held at Turnberry, the home of one of Tom Watson’s greatest triumphs. Funnily enough the ageless Watson was the clubhouse leader during the first round as I put pen to paper writing this article.
But Golf betting affords the punter some very big differences over other forms of sport. Firstly there are not many sports where competitors who have odds as high as 66/1 or even 100/1 have a realistic chance of winning. If you looked at football teams in the Premier League who had odds of 66/1 or 100/1 to win the title then you would essentially be looking at teams with virtually no chance.
It is the same with sports like Tennis, take a look at the 66/1 shots before a Grand Slam event and you would be forgiven if you said that you had never heard of them before in your life. Golf betting is definitely an avenue where shrewd punters can cash in. This is basically because you can have a stupidly low strike rate and still make money.
If you placed a bet on a player at 50/1 to win a tournament every week and only had two winners during the entire year then you would still have made money despite only having two winners out of a total of fifty two bets. It is for this very reason that the owners of some of the dubious betting systems that are out there totally miss the boat when it comes to quoting strike rates.
If a particular betting system has a 70% strike rate then that does not automatically mean that it will make money. It is the long term average return on investment that matters. You could have a strike rate of 70% but yet still not be making more than 100% of every dollar or pound that you wager.
As we have just seen, your strike rate in a sport like Golf can be very low (which it will be due to the size of the prices if you are betting on event winners) and yet you can still make money. Another interesting feature of Golf Betting is that it isn’t as dependent on having an up to date feed if you are considering betting in running on the exchanges. In a fast moving sport like Horse Racing then not having the fastest picture feed possible is a recipe for disaster.
But there are time delays in Golf, like after the players have driven for instance. It will take them several minutes to wait for their playing partners to drive off, walk the distance to their ball and then play their next shot. This doesn’t place as much dependency on you having the same data feed on your television as the next person if you time it correctly.
Doing your homework on certain holes on a course and how they shape up against the styles of certain players can also reap dividends. Many courses favour certain types of player and certain swings are more suited to some courses than others. A Golfer can play his entire career on a certain course without ever doing well enough to win.
The really great players of course can and do adapt to any course and is why they win so many tournaments during their careers! But even on courses that suit a players swing, you still may find certain holes where birdies are hard to come by for specific players and a quick look back through the record books can reveal some very interesting patterns. During the earlier rounds then this would tend not to have an effect. But the overall winner market during the last few holes will witness some very violent swings and this is where huge potential profits can be made.
/ Carl “The Dean” Sampson
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