PGA Tour Hits Lull Before Playoffs

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Vijay Singh

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Padraig Harrington won his second major tournament of the season last week, taking the trophy in the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills. However, those who plan on doing any golf betting this week won’t find as deep of a field in the featured tournament.

The PGA Tour will stage the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina starting on Thursday, but most of the top players won’t be making the trip. However, golfers jockeying for position near the bottom of this year’s FedExCup standings will play, and fans will get to see at least one of the world’s best.

And that’s Vijay Singh – who sits at No.5 in the current World Rankings and seventh in the FedExCup standings. Singh is the only player in the Top 30 of the rankings playing in the Wyndham Championship this week, and he’s one of just three players in the Top 30 of the FedExCup standings (with Ryuji Imada and Jeff Quinney) who will be playing.

Singh also has the most impressive resume of any of this week’s participants – he has three major victories, and he won the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational two weeks ago. Three more of this week’s participants have a 2008 PGA Tour victory – Imada (AT&T Classic), Brian Gay (Mayakoba Golf Classic), and Richard S. Johnson (U.S. Bank Championship). Those last two tournaments, though, ran parallel to bigger golf events.

There are also five past winners of the Wyndham Championship in the field again this week – Brandt Snedeker (2007), Davis Love III (2006 and 1992), Brent Geiberger (2004), Trevor Dodds (1998), and Mark Brooks (1991). Still, none of those past winners will have an advantage this week, as they all got their victories at another Greensboro-area course, Forest Oaks Country Club. Sedgefield was last the tourney host in 1976.

Singh is the +1000 favorite to win the Wyndham Championship this week, with Paul Casey at +1600, David Toms at +2500, and Tim Clark at +2800. Each of Carl Pettersson, Ken Duke, and Snedeker are listed at +3000 odds. Love III is farther back at +6000 odds, with both Imada and Quinney pulling down longshot lines of only +10000.

There’s a deeper field of golfers playing north of the border this week, as the CN Canadian Women’s Open will get underway at the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club on Thursday. Once a major on the LPGA Tour, the Canadian Open has recently been relegated to second-tier status – but that hasn’t kept all the top players from competing.

Most of the top-ranked golfers on the LPGA Tour have made the trip to Ottawa this week, including world No. 1 Lorena Ochoa and No. 2 Annika Sorenstam. Ochoa won this tournament by three strokes over Paula Creamer last year at the Royal Mayfair Golf & Country Club in Edmonton. Creamer, No. 4 in the rankings now, is also back this year.

The FedExCup playoffs will begin next weekend, with The Barclays at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, New Jersey. That event is then followed by the Deutsche Bank Championship at TPC Boston, and the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis. The playoffs will then wrap up from September 25-28 at East Lake Golf Course in Atlanta when the last remaining golfers play in The TOUR Championship.

Check golf lines for all of the latest odds and prop bets for the four playoff tournaments, and for all the latest odds on the Ryder Cup (September 18-21). Currently Europe is pegged as the -120 favorites to win that team event again this year, with the United States (minus Tiger Woods) listed at EVEN, and the tie result at +1000.