The Punter / Steven Rawlings / 25 March 2009 /

The Arnold Palmer invitational will doubtless be another thrilling event but for now the week's most intriguing battle is being played out on the golf pages of Betting.Betfair as The Punter takes on Tiger and, in the process, a fellow columnist.

I seem to have gone completely overboard this week with loads of selections.

Most of them are at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where in stark contrast to fellow columnist Paul Krishnamurty, I'm of the opinion that Tiger's well worth taking on.

The world number one has a very good record at Bay Hill and he even won the event last year but in the three years prior to that he struggled. He's not the only one though; Palmer has made a lot of changes to the course over the years.
When he edged out Bart Bryant 12 months ago with a monster putt after looking out of it for most of the final round, Tiger was in arguably the best form of his career, and was winning his fifth straight PGA event. I know he drove well at Doral two weeks ago, a key requirement here, but I think he's at least a point too short and I've looked elsewhere.

My first pick is a big gamble; Vijay Singh must be devastated to be hindered by a knee injury after finishing last year so strongly. He hasn't found any form since the surgery and even withdrew from last week's event because of swelling on the offending knee but there's no better place to bounce back than Bay Hill. His recent record here is outstanding and I've backed him at [38.0].

My other main selection is Kenny Perry, also backed at [38.0]. A bit like Tiger his form here isn't brilliant lately. He followed his victory here in 2005 with a missed cut in 2007 and a 48th placed finish last year, but he's in solid form this season. If he doesn't sit up until the middle of the night watching basketball as he did last week, he could be bang in there come Sunday.

The others are too numerous to mention individually but they're all players I've backed regularly and were just too big for me to resist.

Selections:

Vijay Singh @ [38.0]
Kenny Perry @ [38.0]
Stephen Ames @ [85.0]
Zach Johnson @ [85.0]
Jeev Milkha Singh @ [90.0]
Bart Bryant @ [120.0]
Ben Crane @ [180.0]
Will MacKenzie @ [420.0]

It took me a little while to suss that this week's event in the Race to Dubai is to be staged at a different, yet mildly familiar venue.

This is the third staging of the Open de Andalucia, won last year by Thomas Levet, but it's at a new venue this time, the Real Club de Golf de Sevilla, which was the venue for the 2004 Open de Sevilla, won by Ricardo Gonzalez and also for last year's Open de Espana, won by Paul Lawrie. Confused? Yeah, I was for a while.

Anyway, my first pick is this week's host, Miguel Angel Jimenez, who was playing like a winner here last year in the Open de Espana until two visits to the water on Sunday derailed him. I know he could get side-tracked handing out vol-a-vents and attending to other hosting duties, but he looked just a shade too big to be left out.

I've also backed Thomas Aiken, who his in a very rich vein of form. I thought his seventh last week in Madeira was an excellent effort after travelling back from the CA Championship, where he'd also finished seventh. I'm still not convinced by his mental fortitude at the business end of an event but felt he was worth a play at [44.0].

My final serious pick is Robert-Jan Derksen, who in his two appearances here has finished fourth and tenth. After that I've played some familiar faces at fun-sized prices. Most worthy of a mention is Daniel Vancsik, who I backed last week when he missed the cut, but he was coming back from a break and did manage to follow his first round 83 with a 69.

Selections:

Miguel Angel Jimenez @ [21.0]
Thomas Aiken @ [44.0]
Robert-Jan Derksen @ [50.0]
John Bickerton @ [170.0]
Miles Tunnicliff @ [270.0]
Daniel Vancsik @ [320.0]

As usually, I'll post an update on Saturday morning.

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