Golf Betting

Golf betting is one of the most popular activities for punters opting to bet each week with various bookmakers.

A range of markets are available on the European and PGA tour events across the calendar and these include outright betting, first round leader betting and a series of golf match-bets.

Interest in golf betting increases for the four Major Championships, which are the US Masters, US Open, Open Championship and PGA Championship.

The Masters takes place each year in Augusta in April and is always played on the same course. Tiger Woods is usually very popular due to his record in the event. The world number one was well backed in all four of his triumphs in the tournament. He won the Masters for the first time in 1997 and followed that up with further success in 2001, 2002 and 2005.

In the US Open, the venue changes each year so punters have to take into consideration the type of course when choosing the player they back in the golf betting markets. Woods is also normally heavily supported in the second major of the year. He has won this competition three times. 

Graeme McDowell upset the golf betting odds in 2010 as he was the first European to win the US Open since Tony Jacklin in 1970. Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose have since followed in his footsteps.

Due to the conditions in which the field have to participate during the Open Championship, the betting for the third major of the season is generally more wide open. In the early 2000s, Ben Curtis and Todd Hamilton both won the event at triple figure odds. There was also a first major win for Darren Clarke at the age of 42 in 2011. 

The last ante-post favourite to win the Open Championship was Woods in 2006 at Royal Liverpool Golf Club. It was the second consecutive year that he lifted the Claret Jug, the third of his career.

Like the US Open and Open Championship, the US PGA Championship is also played on a different course each year. In 2009 Yang Yong-eun became the first male Asian player to win a major with his success.

More recently in 2012, McIlroy was popular in the golf betting for the event. That brought up the second major of his career as he scored comfortably at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina with a combined score of 275 which was -13.

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