This Week in Golf - August 9th through August 12th

Golf Betting Lines

08/06/2007 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - PGA OF AMERICA - PGA CHAMPIONSHIP, Southern Hills Country Club, Tulsa, Oklahoma - The final major of the season is upon us with the 89th PGA Championship.

Last year, the championship was contested at Medinah Country Club, and this year returns to Southern Hills Country Club.

Southern Hills Country Club is the first course to host the PGA Championship four times. Southern Hills was also home to three U.S. Opens, including the 2001 Open where Retief Goosen defeated Mark Brooks in a playoff.

Along with the various ways professionals gain entry into this championship, the 20 low scorers from the PGA Professional National Championship also will tee it up at Southern Hills this week.

Last year, Tiger Woods collected his 12th professional major championship and his third PGA Championship, as he won the PGA for the second time at Medinah. Woods became the first player to win the PGA Championship on the same course twice.

Woods led entering the final round and is now 12-for-12 when owning at least a share of the 54-hole lead. His 18-under 270 total matched his own PGA Championship record for lowest score in relation to par.

TNT has extensive coverage of the event on Thursday and Friday, beginning at 2:00 p.m. (et), then has mid-day coverage on Saturday and Sunday. CBS takes over Saturday and Sunday afternoons, with live action from 2:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. each day.

The PGA Tour returns to action next week with the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, where Davis Love III won last year.

NATIONWIDE TOUR

NORTHEAST PENNSYLVANIA CLASSIC, Glenmaura National Golf Club, Scranton, Pennsylvania - The Nationwide Tour returns to Scranton and Glenmaura National for the eighth year of the Northeast Pennsylvania Classic.

Craig Bowden parred the first extra hole last year to beat Jess Daley and win the title. It was Bowden's third Nationwide Tour win overall, and helped him return to the PGA Tour.

Daley was not as lucky, as he remains on the Nationwide Tour having finished 25th on the money list last year. He is only 99th on the money list this year, but will look to improve that position this week at Glenmaura.

There is no television coverage this week. The Nationwide Tour returns to New York next week for the Xerox Classic, where Kevin Stadler won in 2006.

USGA

U.S. WOMEN'S AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP, Crooked Stick Golf Club, Carmel, Indiana - The U.S. Women's Amateur heads to Indiana for the fifth USGA Championship, hosted by Crooked Stick.

The last USGA event here was the 1993 U.S. Women's Open. It is the first time this event is being contested at Crooked Stick.

The format is 36 holes of stroke play, before the match-play rounds start Wednesday and conclude Sunday with the 36-hole final.

Fourteen-year-old Kimberly Kim became the youngest winner ever last year, when she came from behind to beat Katharina Schallenberg at Pumpkin Ridge. Kim was five down after 15 holes, but she rallied and won on the 36-hole when she sank a five-foot birdie effort.

Among those trying to take the crown from Kim this week include Meghan Bolger, the 2006 U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur Champion; Mina Harigae, the 2007 U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links Champion; Diane Lang, 2006 USGA Senior Women's Amateur Champion; Stacy Lewis, 2007 NCAA Individual Champion; Kristen Park and Jenny Shin, the last two U.S. Girls' Junior champions.

The Golf Channel will cover five days of action starting with Wednesday's First Round of Match Play.

The next USGA event on the schedule is the U.S. Amateur, which will be played at Olympic Club in San Francisco starting August 20th. Richie Ramsay won last year, but has turned professional.

DURAMED FUTURES TOUR

BETTY PUSKAR GOLF CLASSIC, The Pines Country Club, Morgantown, West Virginia - The Duramed Futures Tour is down to the final four events, as players jockey for position on the money list in an attempt to gain their LPGA Tour card for next year.

Last year's winner, Kristy McPherson, has moved on to the LPGA and will not be on hand to defend her title. The top-10 players on the money list are all scheduled to play this week, however.

Next week the tour moves to Maryland for the Hunters Oak Golf Classic.

Tenniss Golf Betting News

<< Lightning's Craig granted arbitration award
Tampa, FL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Tampa Bay Lightning forward Ryan Craig was awarded a one-year, $850,000 deal through arbitration on Monday. The only Lightning player to file for arbitration this offseason, Craig had been seeking a o

<< Cowboys' Owens has MRI
San Antonio, TX (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens had an MRI on Monday to examine his stiff lower back. Owens missed practice for a second straight day with lower back spasms and the team sent him for a precau

<< Bammer advances in Carson
Carson, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Thirteenth-seeded Austrian Sybille Bammer was among Monday's first-round winners at the $600,000 East West Bank Classic. Bammer, a 27-year-old mother on the WTA Tour, handled American Laura Granville 6-4, 6-2 on

<< Cano, Yanks edge Blue Jays thanks to four-run sixth
Toronto, ON (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Robinson Cano keyed a four-run sixth inning with a two-run double and a run scored, leading the New York Yankees to a 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in the opener of a three-game series at Rogers

<< Hewitt wins; Berdych bows out at Rogers Masters
Montreal, QC (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Former world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt posted a first-round win, while 10th-seeded Czech Tomas Berdych came up a Day-2 loser at the $2.45 million Rogers Masters -- the sixth of nine Masters Series events this year.

Ochoa strengthens lead in Rolex Rankings >>
Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Lorena Ochoa finally collected her first major championship victory Sunday at the Women's British Open Championship and is now a little less than seven points ahead in the Rolex Rankings. Karrie Webb an

Panthers' Minter to retire >>
Charlotte, NC (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Carolina Panthers safety Mike Minter is expected to announce his retirement on Tuesday, a Charlotte newspaper reported Monday. The 33-year-old safety was planning to make the 2007 season his 11th and fi

New York Jets 2007 Season Preview >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Soon after he was spotted at a restaurant table chatting with New York Jets coach Eric Mangini, things began to go awry for one Tony Soprano. And not so long after it had seemed that the fictional Soprano had the world on a s

Getting to 53: New York Jets Roster Prediction >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Below we take our stab at predicting how the 53-man roster of the 2007 New York Jets will take shape: QB (3): Chad Pennington, Kellen Clemens, Marques Tuiasosopo RB (4): Thomas Jones, Leon Washington, Tony Hollings, D

Warriors re-sign Barnes >>
Oakland, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Golden State Warriors re-signed forward Matt Barnes, rewarding the 6-foot-7, 226-pounder's breakout 2006-2007 season. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Golden State re-signed Barnes for $3.5

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.

To visit this sports book go to MySportsbook.com for all your football betting needs.