TOUGHNESS>ME

West Virginia 75 (-5.5), Villanova 82

I actually prefer the the game where WVU has no shot from the start to the up-and-down-roller-coaster-lose-by-two-points-at-the-end type of game. There were two highlights of this one for me:

-At halftime, I found out that Mitch Lowe is making his triumphant return to the PGA Tour at this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am. No he is not a celebrity amateur, either.

-This game ended approximately 50 minutes before Jack Bauer took a knife that he had been stabbed with out of his abdomen, threw it across the room and hit the generic Russian henchman in the jugular. Good work, Jack, you deserve two starting spots on Villanova.

Providence looks like a good option tonight. I like to Purdue too, although I’m a little scared off because of Michigan State’s recent play.

HE’S BACK

Courtesy of YahooSports Leaderboard.

5Dimes has him listed at 1000-1.

FIRST LOOK: WGC MATCH PLAY

So, the rankings are finalized and the field is basically set. Tiger looks doubtful to show up, Phil is skipping it to pretend he likes his family, but the rest of the field would be crazy not to show up since it’s basically a free $40,000 round of golf at worst.

Here is a first look at a quick simulation I did using my 2-yr rankings. Slightly under 20,000 simulations using a spreadsheet provided last year by XLSsports.(Thanks again)

Notes:
-Obviously assumes Tiger is not playing.

-Ryo Ishikawa only has 28 rounds on major tours. I just used his ranking after those 28 rounds, assuming that was an accurate reflection of his skill which is probably not true.

-Yuta Ikeda has 6 rounds. I set him as the average PGA Tour player. No idea if that is true or not.

Thoughts on the Brackets:
STRICKER
-Ishikawa v. Sim is a pretty awesome first round match-up in a won’t make it on the golf channel kind of way.

-I wish I could switch Kuchar(#40 v. Kim) with Scott(#41 v. Cabrera).

-The Asians(Jaidee, Jeev) will probably be pretty decent first round looks.

-Best value(straight by the numbers) to win this group will probably be Karlsson, though, I am most likely to bet on Kim to win this group. Overall, this looks like a big stay away since Stricker will probably not get full credit for how good he has really been.

KAYMER
-It’s ridiculous that you take out two top players and all of a sudden young Martin has a group named after him.

-There is almost no way I’m not losing money three times in this group on Rory McIlroy. Kevin Na is an obvious round 1 play, then he could face MAJ, and the possibility of Allenby/McDowell/Hanson and Donald. Out of those four, I doubt there is one that isn’t a solid play against Rory in the round of 16.

-Sergio, Big Shot Bob and Luke Donald should all have good prices to win this group. Considering first round opponents, though, Na and Tim Clark could be good looks as long shots. With Rory and Kaymer in this one I would have to say this looks like the best shot at Value on paper, although I’m not sure PGA Tour bettors will be as high on those two as Euros seem to be.

-G-Mac v. Luke Donald is my favorite won’t make it onto TV match of round 1 in this group.

-The Hanso(e)n Brothers look like the best round 1 plays, outside of Na.

WESTWOOD
-Ikeda has W.C. Liang(I think) v. AK last year in the first round written all over it. Should get a nice dog price on Ikeda that is well worth it, though I have no idea what Ikeda looks like. YUTA!

-England will be all over the Westwood-Wood match-up.

-I can’t wait until Soren Kjeldsen is -110/100 against Y.E. in 5dimes reduced section next week.

-No way Alex Noren at +150ish should be a personal max(like Hurricane Steve v. Ryo last week) but its pretty much an ideal situation for value on Noren going against the defending champ.

-Camilo should be a good look for a favorite against the hot Dustin Johnson. Of course he will flame out within the first 4 holes.

-I’m saying Alex the Great will be good value in this group, only because he won’t have to look at “T-1 A. Noren -6″ on the leaderboard at any point during the week.

-It’s hard to envision me not on at least Noren, Villegas or YUTA! to win this group. I have Els, Goosen, Ogilvy, YE, Moore, Dustin Johnson, and Watney all penciled in as overrated. Westwood should have a pretty fair price.

FURYK
-This bracket sucks.

-Furyk should be fairly priced, there may be some value on Mahan, but looking at the rest of the bracket…meh.

-Mahan v. Furyk is a brutal second round match-up.

-I could go through this whole bracket without wagering on any of the match-ups.

All in all, I can’t wait for this tournament.

DUBAI DESERT CLASSIC ROUND 1

Things this does not include:
-Rory McIlroy’s upside. Even considering that for 3.5-1 to be a fair price you have to believe he is better than Mickelson, Furyk and Stricker by about .1 standard deviations per round. That is not true.

-Alex Noren’s obligatory 81 tomorrow.

-Edoardo Molinari’s dominance on the European JV tour last year.

-Who knows how to value Matteo Mannasero, the amateur. He’s played well at times, played poorly at other times and doesn’t have the 40 round minimum over two years to be treated in my rankings as better than the average of Euro Tour players with less than 40 rounds. He’s probably somewhat better than that, although it’s impossible to say how much so right now.

Those things considered, I still think there is value elsewhere considering Schwartzel’s play of late, Rory being obscenely overrated, and guys like Jeev, Noren and Paul Casey lurking.

Made some reasonable adjustments to McIlory, Molinari and assumed Mannassero’s level of play in around 20 rounds is an accurate representation of his skill. This is what I came up with:

BILL BELICHICK WOULD HAVE GONE FOR THE GREEN

Did Michael Sim make the wrong decision?

Reading his logic here, it seems sound enough. He obviously had some questions whether he could get a 3-wood 245 in the air, so wanted to avoid the penalty shot.

For 71 holes, that is absolutely the right decision. On the 72nd, it gets a bit more complicated.

Let’s reset the scenario:
-Ben Crane is 80 yards out on the fairway lying 2, with a one shot lead(-13).
-Sim is lying 1, with 245 yards to carry the pond in front of the 18th green.
-Hurricane Steve Marino is in the clubhouse with a 77
-The clubhouse lead is -12.

I don’t think there was any worse than a 10% chance that Crane makes bogey from that spot, shaky putting aside. Crane averages about 18 feet on proximity from 75-100 yds. He makes ~20% of those putts. Add in the water, pressure and easy pin and I’ll estimate Crane at

25%- Birdie
67.5%-Par
7%-Bogey

Those are just guesses, but the moral of the story is Michael Sim needs to play for the birdie. On any other hole, bringing the water(and penalty) into play is the wrong decision. On the last the hole of the tournament, you need to play for the outlier. The possibility of 6 or 7 doesn’t matter.

Consider the trade-off:
Eagle- Probable winner. 954,000 dollars. Two-year PGA Tour exemption. Sponsor bonuses. Exemptions in majors/bigger tournaments

Birdie- Playoff. Basically 50% chance of all of the above happening.

Par- -12. ~10% chance of making a 4-way playoff. 395,000 dollars. No exemptions.

Bogey- $186,000 tie for fifth.

It’s hard to be exact, but you’d have to say the benefits of winning this tournament outweigh the risks of losing about $210,000. On 99% of the holes that Michael Sim plays this year, taking the water out of play would be the right call. In this case, I think he had to go for the outlier.

THOUGHT PROCESS: FARMERS INSURANCE AND QATAR

I think when you look at out-rights the best way to do it is to view it in terms of everything you play. That’s kind of hard to do, but it’s much easier to look at both of these tournaments side by side. Here is the list I made earlier in the week with both tournaments grouped together.

Probably real value
-Sergio Garcia(Qatar)
-Camilo Villegas(Qatar)
Both of these guys are pretty good looks based on their level of play from the past two years and there is probable upside in taking them. Garcia should soon be entering the prime of his career(expect lots of runners up in majors) and Villegas should definitely be improving from this point forward. Add in that both of these guys had down years last year and I think they were definitely good prices*

*I could be making this up after both shot -2 today, but they were my only picks for the week.

Generous price, not messing around
-Kenny Perry(Qatar)
-Robert Karlsson(Qatar)
-Miguel Angel Jimenez(Qatar)

All of these guys were priced way too high based on their last 2 years of play. However, what is the upside to taking them? It’s doubtful there next 2 years will be as good as their last 2 and that’s the point.

Small value
-Hunter Mahan(FI)
-Matt Goggin(FI)
-Steve Marino(FI)
-Luke Donad(FI)

I like all these guys in their own right, and most of them have upside, but they just aren’t as undervalued as Sergio or Camilo. If I made bigger plays on those two, maybe I could justify a smaller play on one of these guys, but there is no way they are equal.

Out-of-Leftfield
Tom Gillis
Gillis has to be the most obscure ugly pick on the PGA Tour as he was basically the Robert Allenby of the NW tour last season. Still, he is raising some eyebrows as he drifted from 600-1 in his debut to 270-1 this week. If he wins, damn, you heard it here first.

Keep in mind
The North course is much(I think over 3 strokes last year) easier than the South course. That means a 68 could be better than a 66. Keep and eye out for one of the aforementioned golfers if they get off to a hot start on the South course.

ABU DHABI ROUND 2

It’s hilarious that Keith Horne, who shot a 65 and shares the lead currently does not have a price listed at 5dimes.

I think its time to take a stab on Sergio. He is probably not as high as 5-1 to win, because McIlroy and Kaymer are almost certainly better than their current rankings indicate, but I think 9-1 is a generous price on Sergio.

ABU DHABI CHAMPIONSHIP

Total brain fart thinking today was Tuesday and missing out on the Bob Hope Classic. Oh well, that’s a pretty garbage tournament compared to the first leg of the European desert series.

The Options:
It seems that people have already assumed that Rory McIlroy is one of the 5 best players in the world based on this line. Kaymer as the defending champion is also probably higher than he should be. I think that leaves some pretty good options elsewhere.

Alex Noren: Sadly, we can cancel out Alex pretty quickly. He is my favorite with a lot of upside, but 45-1 against this field(when someone like Villegas is 40-1) is pretty crazy. I’ll be on the sideline with Alex, but rooting for him hard over the weekend(Masters!) when both of my outrights are on the plane back home.

Lee Westwood: Not sure what the deal with Westwood is. Not counting last week, which shouldn’t affect it too much, I have Westwood as slightly behind Sergio for the best player in the field. He also won won in Dubai by like 15 strokes his last time out. I think there are better options, but if I had to pick a favorite I’d go with Westwood.

Sergio Garcia: I know there are questions surrounding a hand injury, but Garcia should probably be in the 12-1 group. Garcia had a down year by his lofty 2008 standards last year and always seems to struggle to close the deal, which might explain some of the overlay. On the other hand, I’ll wait until I seem some signs of life coming off the injury before I take something that is pretty unlikely to happen. I have a feeling if you like Garcia, you will still be able to get good prices later on in the year, at least until he wins.

Camilo Villegas: Camilo is crazy. Every time I watch him play especially in the past few months he seems to be all over the place. Still, over two years this price is way too generous so I’m getting sucked in again.

Anthony Kim: Anthony seems to have disappeared for awhile and my guess is with the Tiger “scandal” resident party boys AK and PP really feel the need to step up their off the course game this year. Hopefully Kim has been doing more practicing than binge drinking during the break as overall, 34-1 against this field is preposterous.

If you like to see what I arbitrarily came up with: Click here.

Match-ups:
Sergio +100 v. Ian Poulter(1)
Like I said, I hate messing around with this injury stuff, but everyone seems to be on Poulter, and Sergio would not have to be in full form to beat Poulter more than 50% of the time.

Last year:
Finally, for entertainment here’s what I had last year for this.

Alexander Noren-First he is a swede.* Very consistent results on Tour last year, but has yet to produce the all important win. To be honest, I somewhat regret this pick, because he is coming off 2 top-5 finishes in his last three events, but I think Noren is the best bet out there this week.

NOREN +5250(.18)
NOREN Top-5 +845(.51)

Interestingly enough, Noren is not much worse off than last year, though 45-1 seems pretty nuts. I doubt this was really a great price for Noren, though he definitely had(and still has upside).

Hopefully the posting schedule will be back to normal after today.

HANDICAPPING THE DIVISIONAL ROUND

This weekend is probably my least favorite weekend of NFL Football. It is almost impossible to come up with an angle for these games. Year in and year out, you have the “hot” teams(last weeks winners) taking on the teams that everyone thinks are better than they are. The Jets, Ravens and Cowboys all scored big wins last week, but have fun fading them with the 10-wins-in-a-row-Norv-coached Chargers, Undefeated-when-they-tried Colts and Jesus-led Vikings, respectively.

The closest thing I have to a lean this weekend, is the under in the Saints-Cards game. Don’t see how that one is not a 42-21 game. I think there is a difference between games that look “ugly” and games that legitimately have no shot. File this one closer to the latter.

With that, why not break down the games with some random thoughts and opinions. (Lines from Pinny)

Cardinals @ Saints, Sat 4:30
Saints -7 -102

-My favorite part of last weeks game, aside from Rackers nearly driving me nuts missing that gimme, was how I listened to almost two hours of “Dom Capers is a genius talk” in the pregame shows across all networks, then his defense went out and played awful.

The Packers showed a lot of “creative” 3-4 looks with no down lineman, yet it seemed they always blitzed the same four people they would out of the regular 3 down lineman, 4 linebackers formation. The Cardinals offensive line had NO problems picking up the blitz(they might have just looked really good compared to the sieve that was Green Bay’s O line). Give Warner time and man-to-man coverage and its not surprising he was like 150/138 with 2,342 yds passing and 11 touchdowns.

-Arizona still can’t play defense, though, the Saints had two weeks to come up with a game plan and I’m not sure the Saints will fare much better stopping the Cards. Lean to the under, and opinion on the Saints -7.

Baltimore @ Indy, 8:15 Sat
Colts -6.5 +103

-Baltimore dominated the Pats last week, though I doubt it was really as bad as the 33-14 score might indicate. Flacco looked like Kurt Warner, except the complete opposite.

-This is the most interesting game this weekend with the Ravens D taking on the Colts O. I honestly have no idea or interest in trying to guess who wins that match-up.

-In my mind this game is the ultimate toss-up, but I’d go with the Ravens and the points if I had to take a side.

I’ll get around to the Sunday games later.

GATOR BAIT

Florida 77(+3.5), #2 Kentucky 89
Predictably this line made us all look like fools, but I also spent less time fretting over that point because ESPN was convinced to get as many Lane Kiffin mentions as possible into the broadcast and Dick Vitale has gotten to the point that he no longer talks about anything remotely related to basketball. In what I did watch, Florida’s offense reminded me of a poor man’s UConn, good in transition, but slow it down and there is an insanely proportion of stupid decisions and 28 foot shots.

Today:
I’m sure Iowa State will follow in the elite footsteps of Florida tonight against Texas. Minnesota and Clemson look good on Wagerline and fit with my opinion of their opponents(MSU, UNC), but I want some further research first.