General / Craig Dutton / 17 September 2007 / Leave a Comment

Englishman's schizophrenic displays make him one to swerve, says Betfair blogger Craig Dutton

A quiet week this but a few lessons have been learnt.

The Mercedes-Benz championship further cemented Lee Westwood, at least in my books, as a bottler. It was a sensational first round but what cam enext was pure dross.

At the top of his form Westwood's a great player, and so his decision to play in this B event looked well justified. I'm sure the tournament sponsors would argue it isn't a B event, and I'm sure they couldn't give two hoots about what a random blogger has to say about it, but in my eyes Westwood has undoubtedly opted for the "big fish in a small pond" route. After eighteen holes of a demolition derby, with a 61 to show for it, it looked like his to lose.

So he did. Yet again, he ruined his tournament with a disastrous 18 holes - in this case a second round 73. How can you shoot twelve strokes differently in the space of 24 hours? It could be his stroke had deserted him, but even Westwood conceded his game hadn't bit the dust completely. Blaming the wind at the end of the day, for a player of Westwood's class, was a cop-out. As it is, playing in these minor events will be Westwood's only chance of success, because if he led a Major on the forth day now, there's no doubt he'd capitulate.

On these B events, the same old faces keep cropping up - Hansen, Archer, Forsyth. Clearly, Forsyth has took it as personal mission to come as close to winning an event as he possibly can whenever I don't have money down. But he's a consistent player, and he deserves our respect in most tournaments. I would steer clear of him in more hotly contested tournaments though - at best he is a very good player, and I don't see him improving to sit with the pack contesting majors. On the other hand, it would be foolish to write him off tournament victories altogether, and another Tour win to add to his Malaysian Open gained in 2002 would not be undeserved. His second place in Cologne this week underlines that.

Hansen was a good victor, and is another consistent player, and at 33 has got mileage left yet. You still wouldn't expect him to get into the upper echelons of golf though. He can best be described as a good, solid player. Any advance on his T8 at the 2002 Open would come as a surprise to me. The tour is so strong at the moment that 30/40 players are contesting tournaments, any of which each player has the ability to win. I wonder though, how many of these players have somebody like Woods on their horizon. Hansen must think to himself, sometimes, why can't I play like Woods? It's understandable. Our only value as bettors is finding the next big thing, and each tournament can teach us a little more about what may happen in the future.

The Mercedes-Benz will not go down as a historic tournament but gave us food for thought nonetheless. Lee Westwood will be very lucky to win a Major during his career. Alastair Forsyth, Thomas Bjorn, Simon Khan and many others are good, consistent players, but will not be challenging for major honours. Paul Lawrie is still underrated. He is not getting any better. But he deserved a lot more credit for the '99 Open than he received and you wouldn't want to back against him in a mediocre three-ball.

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