Last Sunday saw one of the most dramatic Open Golf Championships in years. But anyone who watched that event could have made some profit by laying all of the leaders during the final round. None of the leading contenders apart from Retief Goosen had experienced recent success in a major championship.
We had veteran Tom Watson, despite the fact that he has numerous majors to his name, the pressure and fatigue were bound to tell on someone of his age and also because he hasn’t been in that situation for a long time.
We had Ross Fisher, Mathew Goggin, Chris Wood, Stewart Cink, Lee Westwood and Tom Watson all in contention going into the final day. The price swings during the final days play tend to be more severe than at any other stage of the tournament with the betting public en masse seeming to believe that anyone who takes the lead is going to stay there.
The pressure of leading the Open with just a few holes to go is immense, some players can handle that but most can’t. In fact there have been many cases where the winner has basically stumbled over the line. One only has to look at the catastrophic finishes made by Thomas Bjorn, Jean Van Der Velde and Paul Azinger in recent Opens to witness this. Then we have the six shot lead that Greg Norman threw away in the 1996 US Masters during the final round.
There have been countless other examples down the years that indicate that leading a major is difficult even for the very best and it takes a special golfer like Tiger Woods to have a really high conversion rate. So what this means is that it can be a profitable strategy to lay the leader (within reason) going into the final round and also during the final round as well.
The Open Golf Championship was a great example, Tom Watson who was the overnight leader lost the lead almost immediately. He retook the lead several more times, each time presenting an opportunity to lay him once again. Ross Fisher quickly took the lead and at one stage held a three shot lead. An eight on a par 4 meant that he dropped like a stone and he never recovered.
An early eagle by Lee Westwood saw him take a two shot lead but he blew his chances by finding sand on the 18th. Mathew Goggin and Chris Wood also had the lead or a share of the lead at one stage. So at different stages of the final round we saw so many tournament leaders that it was almost surreal at times.
But on reflection given the closeness of the situation and the overall level of inexperience with regards to the field when it comes to winning majors then it was hardly surprising. When you lay the leader then you are already laying a short priced competitor and the normal fluctuations of a round of golf will merely take their normal route and you can make money.
Yet the market as a whole tends to over react in situations like these and every leader seems artificially short and every player who loses the lead seems to be out of it in the minds of many punters. The best tournaments to adopt this strategy are the ones where there are numerous players all within a handful of shots and when you throw in a few major rookies then what you have is a recipe for players taking the lead and then losing it all afternoon. That can only point to one thing for the shrewd traders and that’s profits.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson
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