The Players Championship Preview

The biggest payday on the PGA Tour arrives this week with The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

Golf betting fans could be in for a big payday as well if the underdogs continue their recent run atop the leaderboard.

If you were lucky or smart enough to make the right golf picks in April it could have been a very lucrative month on the PGA Tour. During the month of April the following players all tasted victory on tour - Paul Casey, Angel Cabrera, Brian Gay, Jerry Kelly, and Sean O’Hair. All of them are likely known names for even the casual golf fan, but that didn’t put them near the top of the golf odds the week they recorded their win and made them a profitable pick for bettors.

There’s definitely a good chance that the streak of high-odds players winning will continue this weekend at TPC Sawgrass. The field for The Players Championship is the best of the best, so anyone among the field could get to the top of the leaderboard on Sunday. To get there, though, they’ll have to deal with Tiger Woods, who is the favorite as usual. Woods missed last year’s Players Championship while recovering from his first knee surgery, and you have to go back eight years to find his lone win at Sawgrass. Woods’ only win in The Players Championship came in 2001, but since then he’s failed to crack the Top 10 at Sawgrass in six appearances.

With Woods out last season it opened the door for Sergio Garcia. Garcia ended up in a playoff with Paul Goydos after shooting five-under, and won the tourney with a birdie on the first playoff hole. Jeff Quinney finished third at four-under, while Briny Baird was the only other player in the field to go under par at one-under.

Including Garcia the last five winners of The Players Championship will all be returning to Sawgrass this week to look for a repeat victory. Those five former champions are 2007 winner Phil Mickelson, 2006 winner Stephen Ames, 2005 winner Fred Funk, 2004 winner Adam Scott, and 2003 champion Davis Love III. Love III also won at Sawgrass in 1992, and there will be two other former multiple winners looking for a third win at Sawgrass this week. They will be Fred Couples, who won in 1984 and 1996, and Steve Elkington, who won in 1991 and 1997.

Last week’s stop on the PGA Tour was the Quail Hollow Championship. It looked like Woods was going to run away with the tournament after he shot seven-under in the first round, but Tiger stumbled in the later rounds and ended up finishing fourth at nine-under. Woods’ final round allowed Sean O’Hair to claim his first win of the season. Despite bogeying the final two holes O’Hair finished at 11-under, one stroke ahead of Bubba Watson and Lucas Glover. O’Hair should be one to watch this week at Sawgrass and is a legitimate threat to post back-to-back wins. Back in 2007 at Sawgrass O’Hair was battling Mickelson in the tournament’s final pairing before imploding on the 17th hole. On the infamous par-three “island green” O’Hair took an aggressive approach to the hole and it cost him as he found the water twice and ended up posting a quadruple-bogey seven. That one hole dropped him from second to 11th place and took him out of the running. If O’Hair can avoid another meltdown and put together four solid rounds he could be a profitable pick on the golf odds this week.