posted August 11, 2009 at 12:55 EST in Golf Articles
Golf's Last Major- Introducing the PGA Championship
by Charles Jay
BetUS Sportsbook Odds
To Win PGA Championship
(Top 20 plus ties on list)
Tiger Woods +150
Phil Mickelson +1600
Pedraig Harrington +2000
Hunter Mahan +2500
Lee Westwood +2500
Retief Goosen +2500
Steve Stricker +2500
Stewart Cink +3000
Sergio Garcia +3000
Kenny Perry +3500
Angel Cabrera +4000
Anthony Kim +4000
Geoff Oglivy +4000
Henrik Stenson +4000
Jim Furyk +4000
Ross Fisher +4000
Vijay Singh +4000
Camilo Villegas +5000
Ernie Els +5000
Ian Poulter +5000
Luke Donald +5000
Zach Johnson +5000
There are actually some things you should know about the PGA Championship, which might be useful in your evaluation of the golf odds. One of those things is that this is going to be hottest tournament of the year, in the teeth of August, and usually at a locale that is unforgiving as far as the weather is concerned. This year the tourney is being held at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota, which hosted it in 2002 when Rich Beem, a virtual unknown (250/1 to win this year's title in the BetUS odds) beat Tiger Woods (the favorite in this year's event at +150 at BetUS) for the title. Hazeltine will also host the 2016 Ryder Cup matches.
There will be a purse of $7.5 million,
The PGA Championship is always the final major tournament of the year in professional golf, although plenty of prestigious and lucrative events will be played for the balance of the year, namely the Players Championship. It is also a tournament that, up until 1957, had been a match-play event, and even though the dominance of television would probably get in the way, there has been more than one discussion about going back to that format, in order to add some luster and uniqueness to it.
You see, the PGA has something of an identity crisis because it has also acquired the stigma of having perhaps less prestige than the other three majors - the Masters, British Open and U.S. Open, making it somewhat similar to the Australian Open in tennis. And in some ways that is indeed a shame, because truth be told, you may just have a deeper and tougher field in the PGA than in any of those other three majors.
The Masters is a tournament that has a number of spots open for amateurs, both foreign and domestic, as well as all past winners (up to a certain age), even if they are no longer very competitive, and also accommodates a number of international players. The U.S. Open actually leaves out a number of very competent professionals because of a lack of exemptions for them, and some players who you will see in the PGA, and whom have a chance to win almost any tournament they enter, may have been left behind in regional qualifying. The British Open is not a contest that welcomes most players if they cannot take to the links courses; although most of the outstanding players make the trip overseas, some do not, and the British Open also has to leave a certain number of spots open to those who qualify in any number of ways other than winning on the PGA Tour.
So here they are - 136 of the world's best players, and twenty more who will be fulfilling the dream of a lifetime by competing in one of their sport's most important events. I remember talking to one of them, a club pro from Fort Lauderdale named John Nelson, who qualified for the tournament twice, and he couldn't even describe the thrill of lining up with a chance to go against some of the greats who ever played the game.
The pros will take aim at a course that has nine water hazards and is 7678 yards in length (by comparison, Augusta National is 7445 yards), and which will feature a lot of narrow fairways. Beem is the only player in the field who has actually won a major on this course. The other major champions from this year who are in the field are Masters champ Angel Cabrera (+4000 at BetUS), U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover (+6000 at BetUS) and British Open titleholder Stewart Cink (+3000 at BetUS).
