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

Golf Betting Lines

09/06/2010 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - PGA TOUR - BMW CHAMPIONSHIP, Cog Hill Golf & Country Club, Lemont, Illinois - The BMW Championship marks the third round of the PGA Tour playoffs, reserved for the top 70 players in the FedExCup standings.

Following the fourth round at Cog Hill, only the top 30 players on the points list will make the field for the playoff finale at the Tour Championship, which begins after a one-week break in the schedule.

Tiger Woods won last year's BMW Championship by eight shots after posting four consecutive rounds of 68 or better, collecting his fifth career victory at the tournament.

The win catapulted Woods to his second FedExCup title in three years.

Fighting for his playoff life -- and his No. 1 ranking -- Woods birdied three of his last four holes at the Deutsche Bank Championship on Monday to earn the right to defend his title.

He closed with a three-under 68 to share 11th place at 10-under-par 274. That was good enough to hold off Phil Mickelson and retain his No. 1 ranking. Mickelson needed a top-four finish to pass Woods and was there for a while.

However, Mickelson had a birdie, two bogeys, a double-bogey and a triple-bogey on the back nine en route to a closing 76. That dropped him 14 spots behind Woods on the leaderboard as the left-hander finished at minus-seven.

Charley Hoffman soared to No. 2 on the FedExCup points list as he won the Deutsche Bank Championship by five strokes. Hoffman carded six birdies on the back nine, and 11 in his round, as he fired a nine-under 62. He matched the tournament scoring record of 262.

Padraig Harrington, Lucas Glover, Chris Couch and Charles Howell III started the week inside the top 70, but were bumped out and will miss the final two playoff events.

Scott Verplank was 70th after the Deutsche Bank, but is out for the year with a wrist injury.

Golf Channel will have coverage of the first two rounds of the BMW Championship, while NBC will broadcast the final two rounds.

Mickelson will defend his title at the Tour Championship beginning Sept. 23. Any player inside the top five in the playoff standings will have a shot to win the FedEx Cup by winning the Tour Championship.

LPGA TOUR

NW ARKANSAS CHAMPIONSHIP, Pinnacle Country Club, Rogers, Arkansas - The LPGA Tour returns from a one-week break for the NW Arkansas Championship, a 54-hole event.

The tour has been away since Michelle Wie's victory at the Canadian Women's Open.

At last year's NW Arkansas Championship, Jiyai Shin birdied the second playoff hole to defeat Angela Stanford and Sun Young Yoo.

Seon-Hwa Lee also earned a hard-fought win at this event in 2008 when she birdied the final hole for a one-shot victory over Jane Park and Meena Lee.

The tournament suffered an inelegant debut in 2007 when it was shortened to 18 holes after three days of weather-related problems in the wake of Hurricane Henriette.

Stacy Lewis, then an amateur and the reigning NCAA champion, carded a 65 for the best score, but was not credited for an official win. Officials believed it was the first full-length tour event ever shortened to 18 holes.

Shin, Lee and Lewis will be part of a field at Pinnacle Country Club that is also scheduled to feature Wie, who has begun another year of juggling golf and college.

Golf Channel will have coverage of all three rounds.

The tour is off until Oct. 7 when the Navistar LPGA Classic begins. Lorena Ochoa won the tournament last year, but retired earlier this season.

EUROPEAN TOUR

KLM OPEN, Hilversumsche Golf Club, Hilversum, Netherlands - Simon Dyson birdied the first playoff hole at last year's KLM Open to beat Peter Lawrie and Peter Hedblom for his third European Tour title.

Dyson, who also won the 2006 KLM Open in a playoff, went on to capture win No. 4 at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship four starts later.

The Englishman will try to defend his title this week against a field that also includes the last two major championship winners -- British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen and PGA Championship winner Martin Kaymer.

The tournament returns to Hilversumsche Golf Club in the Netherlands for the first time in five years.

Golf Channel will have coverage of all four rounds beginning at 9:30 a.m. (et) on the first two days and an hour earlier on the last two.

Next week's event is the Austrian Golf Open, where Rafael Cabrera-Bello won last season.

CHAMPIONS TOUR

SONGDO CHAMPIONSHIP, Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea, Songdo, South Korea - The Champions Tour travels to Asia for the first time ever this week for the Songdo Championship.

The tournament will be played at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea, a new track designed by the Hall of Famer.

The field is scheduled to include half of the players ranked in the top-10 in the Charles Schwab Cup standings, including leader and five-time 2010 winner Bernhard Langer.

U.S. Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin, who is 10th in the standings, has bigger things on his mind and won't be in attendance.

Golf Channel will have coverage of all three rounds.

The Champions Tour will take a one-week break before returning for the SAS Championship, which was won by Tom Pernice Jr. last year.

NATIONWIDE TOUR

UTAH CHAMPIONSHIP, Willow Creek Country Club, Sandy, Utah - Three players in the field this week will be looking to drastically improve their fortunes.

Chris Kirk, Tommy Gainey and Martin Piller are each seeking their third victory of the season. If any one of them reaches the milestone, they would earn automatic promotions to the PGA Tour.

The promotion wouldn't kick in until the PGA Tour playoffs are over.

Josh Teater, who won last year's Utah Championship, is playing on the PGA Tour this season and has earned $900,723 in 26 starts. By contrast, Kirk, the leading money winner on the Nationwide Tour this season, has earned $400,475 in 18 events.

Golf Channel will have coverage of all four rounds.

Next week is the Albertsons Boise Open, which was won by Fran Quinn last year.

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Sportsbook Betting Lines

Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.

“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.

“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “

What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?

There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).

Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).

How the Opening Line Is Made

The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.

Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.

Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.

Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.

The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.

A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.

Why Sports Betting Lines Change

Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:

Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game

Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)

The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.

Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.

For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.

Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."

“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

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