Par Golf Crush Disable Into Curtis

Golf Betting Lines

Bandon, OR (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Cheyenne Woods, the stroke-play medalist, picked up a 4 & 3 win Wednesday at the U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links Championship. Woods, the niece of Tiger Woods, took down Ashley Edwards in the first round and will face Bethany Wu in the second round on Thursday. Wu needed 19 holes to beat Ashlan Ramsey.

 

Defending champion Emily Tubert was a 4 & 2 winner over Mandi Morrow. Tubert will face Harin Lee in round two on Thursday. Last year's runner-up Lisa McCloskey fell 2 & 1 to Catherine Dolan.

 

Stephanie Kono and Tiffany Lua, who were teammates on the 2010 U.S. Curtis Cup team, both advanced on Wednesday. Lua will battle Christine Wolf, who qualified for the 2011 U.S. Women's Open.

 

Ponte Vedra Beach, FL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The PGA Tour announced several changes to the Bob Hope event in La Quinta, California, including a different name and format. Starting in 2012, the event formerly known as the Bob Hope Classic will be called The Humana Challenge. The tour, Humana and the William J. Clinton Foundation entered into an eight-year agreement.

 

Traditionally a five-round tournament where pros tee it up with amateurs, the Humana Challenge trimmed the championship back to four rounds. Professionals will team with different amateur partners over the first three rounds. The top 70 professionals make the 54-hole cut and the winner will get the newly- created Bob Hope Trophy.

 

The 2012 edition will run from January 19-22.

 

Paris, France (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Australian Richard Green and Englishman Graeme Storm both posted rounds of six-under 65 on Thursday to share the first-round lead of the Open de France. George Coetzee got to seven-under par, but bogeyed 15 and 17 to shoot a five- under 66. He is tied for third place with Thorbjorn Olesen and James Morrison at Le Golf National.

 

World No. 4 Martin Kaymer carded a respectable even-par 71, but the man he beat in a playoff last year for the PGA Championship fared slightly worse on Thursday.

 

Green parred his first two holes, then rattled off back-to-back birdies at the third and fourth holes. He parred the next four, but caught fired around, and after, the turn.

 

The Aussie birdied nine and 10 to reach four-under par. Green parred No. 11, but recorded three consecutive birdies from the 12th to get into the lead at seven-under par.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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