The Open / Steven Rawlings / 13 July 2009 / Leave a Comment

Tiger tempts but it's an Irishman who looks the real value

There's an old adage in golf that says you can't win an event on a Thursday but you can certainly lose it and like most old sporting adages that's pretty bleeding obvious to say the least, but getting a fast start at the Open Championship is certainly very important. It's not easy to make up ground on a links course, so everyone will be keen to make a fast start.

Scanning over the list of first round leaders, it's interesting to see how many names crop up more than once. The likes of Tiger Woods, Greg Norman, Tom Watson, and Seve Ballesteros have all led on a Thursday night at least twice, so it seems the top-class players know how important a good start is.

That evidence is nearly enough to convince me to plump for Tiger at double figure odds but it doesn't sound like his preparation is going brilliantly so I've passed him over.

At the US Open I went for Steve Stricker in this market, but on the wrong side of the draw he didn't have a prayer. He turns up at Turnberry as the brand new John Deere Classic champion after his comfortable three-shot win on Sunday and could well get off to a fast start but I'm going to leave him in preference for an Irishman with quite the most obvious credentials.

Graeme McDowell, a very fine links player, will be keen to improve on his lacklustre defence of his title at Loch Lomond last week and I can see him getting off to a flyer...again.

I say again, because he's finished atop of the field after the first day's play in two of the last three years and looks an essential play at anything above [70.0].

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