ODDS and ENDS:
(A) I AM SO NOT DUE right now . . . I am never reluctant to post any of my plays before an event, although I do get particular about the order in which I post the plays on various forums, and then there are times when I won't post in-running plays because of the vibe it gives me about plays I've already posted. And I really do enjoy including comments and INFORMATION and such with my plays (it's the funnest part), even though that takes time away from my capping. But
my real rituals about posting plays are when I'm in a slump, and then I really get in a mind set of posting only the plays, and not offering any cryptic comments or reasons, but at most offering some links or observations in an entirely separate post. But when I'm out of a slump, I often can't keep my yap shut. I AM SO NOT DUE right now.
(B) It's always been a rule of mine that
I need a strong reason or belief to pick up a winning marker (one of the few examples which comes to mind was after Boo Weekley chipped in on the last two holes to win his first tournament at Harbour Town, when I was confident his chances were zero/nada/no way the following week, and I was absolutely right). Other than that, the winning marker stays, and now Brett Rumford has sweetly reinforced my notion . . . So now Adam Scott makes his first appearance since Augusta, and I don't really fancy his chances, but with his immaculate game, there is no way I'll be picking up his marker . . . I can't see me not giving him a chance to carry my cash at Merion, either.
(C)
Three ANGLES are always my starting point for capping The Players: (1) From my 2006 notes:"Only four players have won more than once on the Stadium Course. Tiger Woods credits the diversity to "the nature of the design." "How Pete (Dye) designed it with the cutoff bunkers and the mounding that it just brings all of us together,? said Woods, who hasn?t earned a top-10 at The Players since his 2001 triumph.
?We're all hitting the balls to the same spots. A lot of times for the longer hitters, it's 3-wood or 2-iron or some kind of utility club off the tees where the shorter guys are hitting drivers, so we're all in the same spot. With that in mind, it becomes a second shot course and see who can hit their irons the best and put themselves in positions where they can make putts.?"; (2) Even when you can find a few golfers that really seem to like the place (Stephen Ames or Ben Crane or Luke Donald as possible examples), the fact is that unlike Augusta or the U.S. Open which have some well-defined specialists, almost everyone has a spotty record at Sawgrass. In addition, it's a venue that definitely favors champions with some experience, including at least one good turn through the championship on their CV. On the other side of the coin, although there are some players who really love Sawgrass (being few and far between), you get the sense there is no shortage of players the venue just does not suit, and their record reflects it . . . I think other cappers have spotted similar trend lines and offered similar takes, and
one set of observations I particularly like in 2012 and 2011: "7/10 winners International players,Ball strikers track,Bermuda Greens,course form does not seem that important,whilst being in decent current form does with the places littered with players with Good recent finishes,Winners have had Multiple runs at the course,Power not an issue,Total Accuracy has been a key stat . . . since 2003, the average number of starts for a winner before he broke through at THE PLAYERS was 7.57. (That included two-time champion, Davis Love III -- 1992, 2003 -- whose first triumph came in his seventh appearance.) Lo and behold, Tim Clark supported the theory that experience matters at TPC Sawgrass, as he emerged victorious in what was his eighth start"; and (3) I really don't have much of a problem swerving prices on the top tier of market leaders like Donald and Garcia, and if they get it done, more power to them. (NOTE: I thought that this week the Betfair forum offered an uncharacteristically smart capping discussion, and is worthy of a link:
THE PLAYERS. > Betfair Community > Golf .)
(D) The Players championship IMO closely resembles the four majors in some significant attributes when it comes to capping, including my focus and approach of trying to track players for weeks or even months heading in for their chances of peaking at this extra large event. And when play begins, you better know the players will have a long week of grinding in front of them . . . This year I have
an exceptionally large short list, and while I feel I've done a decent job of finding names I'm really comfortable dropping, it was a really long list(!) when I started on Sunday morning. . . And in another similarity with the majors, it's a fact I have a far better capping record in the four majors and The Players than I do in the week-in-and-week-out of the regular tours (although the U.S. PGA is the exception in that run of success), quite possibly because of the effort I give, but I think it's based more on a solid catechism of knowing what I like (and don't particularly like) around each of those events.
(E) So my big scores in this championship have been Stephen Ames(150/1) in 2006, which was one of my strongest plays of that season; Adam Scott(33/1) in 2004; and Davis Love(6/1) in-running for Win Only on Friday night in 2003, which at a "whopping" $24.00 is still my largest wager ever on an "outright" play with "long shot" odds (and in my low stakes world, that wager paid off as well as a 33/1 e.w. wager using my normal stakes). . . . But what I most remember right now about my wagers in this event is that
David Toms(80/1) was my strongest play all year in 2011, maybe one of my four or six strongest golf plays ever, had been building in my mind for weeks, and after brilliantly building a 3 stroke lead through the 7th hole on Sunday, it got away from him even though he really did very little wrong; then a bit of a repeat the next year when Zach Johnson(80/1) was one of my strongest golf plays in 2012, building in my mind for weeks, as Zach was rising from a disappointing 2011 campaign to establish what I was fairly certain were going to be his credentials for a place on the Ryder Cup team, and I was thankful he holed a long putt on the 72nd hole for a rock solid week at T2 . . . So now we get to 2013, and it's a fact that Lucas Glover is the name I've been tracking for this spot and for this event for even longer than I did Toms or Zach or Ames. However, as I've already noted, this event is like a major when it comes to the contenders having a long week of grinding in front of them, and now that G-Lover has sort of "popped early" two weeks ago, and to my way of thinking probably used up instead of built up his store of emotional capital last week in Charlotte, I just can't say this sets up the way I pictured it over the last two months. With the added development of his being ready to leave the course at the drop of the hat if his wife goes in to labor, I'm just thankful the price has help up pretty well on what I would no longer characterize as anything approaching a Toms-esque play.
(F) In my capping I know I'm still not using twitter like I could or should to mine for valuable nuggets of INFORMATION and ANGLES, and since golfobserver.com faded away, I don't have that library of media coverage just lying there for me to access whenever I make the time to do it. But for the umpteenth time I'll repeat that my richest vein of ANGLES and INFORMATION comes from
what I see and hear while watching the television coverage, and from tracking the live scoring consoles for hours and seeing or thinking I'm seeing tell-tale signs, and in that regard my capping for the first four months of this season has been as diligent as any in recent years, and it seems the harder I've worked the luckier I've gotten. Accordingly, even my natural pessimism doesn't lead me to expect a cache of clunker picks this week, but I AM SO NOT DUE right now.
(G) I mentioned it was a long short list this week (I wish I could scan in my sheet and post a link sort of showing "twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one"), so
I should probably give mention to some of the names left on the cutting room floor (so far), to-wit, Karlsson, Stanley, Donald, Van Pelt, and Streelman; and Garcia, Haas, O'Hair, Horschel and Zach: and Stricker, Pettersson . . .
TO BE CONTINUED (too long for one post) . . .
GL
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