\nErik Matuszewski, Bloomberg \u00b7 April 7, 2015 at 11:32 am<\/p>\n
\t(Bloomberg) \u2014 Tiger Woods last won a golf tournament 20 months ago and has plummeted to 111st in the world rankings, the lowest he\u2019s ever been in his professional career. That isn\u2019t stopping bettors from backing him at the Masters Tournament.<\/p>\n
\tA win for Woods this week at the season\u2019s first major championship would result in the most significant financial loss for the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook \u2014 the result of odds that have fluctuated between 40-1 and 50-1. The biggest sports book in Nevada, the SuperBook has more liability on Woods than any other golfer in the 98-man field.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWhether he\u2019s playing well, in the 5-1 range, or he\u2019s playing poorly and he\u2019s up here at these odds, he always gets support,\u201d SuperBook Assistant Manager Jeff Sherman, who runs the website Golfodds.com, said in a telephone interview. \u201cWhen it\u2019s going like now, people think, \u2018You don\u2019t see Tiger at these odds, let me take it. If he can put something together like Tiger used to do, maybe I could score.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\tWoods, 39, last played competitively two months ago, when he withdrew from the U.S. PGA Tour\u2019s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines on Feb. 5 with back pain. In addition to physical woes, Woods struggled with his chipping and with swing changes in his most recent events, shooting an 11-over-par 82 in his last full tournament round at the Phoenix Open on Jan. 30.<\/p>\n
\tWoods, who won the most recent of his four Masters titles 10 years ago, announced he\u2019d be in this year\u2019s field after flying into Augusta, Georgia, last week for a practice round. Woods spent time Monday working on his chips and pitches at the practice facility at Augusta National Golf Club before playing 11 holes in preparation for the tournament, which starts Thursday. Woods played the first nine holes with Mark O\u2019Meara, the 1998 Masters champion, and the 10th and 18th holes solo.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI felt like I had to get my game into a spot where I could compete to win a golf tournament, and it\u2019s finally there,\u201d Woods told reporters after his partial practice round.<\/p>\n
\tWoods ranks sixth in the number of wagers at the SuperBook, where Jordan Spieth has a sizable lead in total tickets over defending champion Bubba Watson.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cHe\u2019s definitely the people\u2019s choice this week,\u201d Sherman said of the 21-year-old Spieth, who\u2019s had a win and two runner- up finishes in his last three tournaments.<\/p>\n
\tJohnny Avello, the executive director of the Wynn Las Vegas Race and Sports Book, said Woods is an exception when it comes to golf, as most bettors look at recent performance.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cGolf is a fickle betting sport,\u201d Avello said by phone. \u201cPeople like to bet who\u2019s going well at this time. Did they win last week? Are they playing good coming into this tournament, did they win this event before? It\u2019s who\u2019s hot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tMcIlroy Favorite<\/p>\n
\tSpieth\u2019s 8-1 odds of winning trail only Rory McIlroy, who is listed at 6-1 and needs a victory to complete the career Grand Slam of wins in all four majors. Watson is 10-1, followed by Dustin Johnson and Jason Day at 12-1. Johnson, Rickie Fowler (30-1) and Patrick Reed (20-1) have also been more popular among bettors than Woods, though the wagers continue to come in on the 14-time major champion.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cEvery time I go to 50-1, they take it and I have to go back to 40,\u201d Sherman said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of accumulation \u2014 $20, $50 bets, stuff like that. No real big ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe SuperBook has also offered odds on whether Woods will make the cut for weekend play and whether he\u2019ll finish in the top 20, with a money line that puts his chances at 22 percent, according to handicapping information website Pregame.com.<\/p>\n
\tWoods hasn\u2019t won a tournament since the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational in August 2013. Yet Avello said bettors are taking a chance on Woods because of his experience and his odds. At 50-1, a winning $20 bet on Woods would return a $1,000 profit.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cYou\u2019d never get anything close to that in the past,\u201d Avello said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if anyone really, truly feels that he\u2019s going to win it. But I have a lot of tickets on him \u2014 a lot of small stuff with people just taking a chance because they\u2019ve never seen Tiger\u2019s odds that high before.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Erik Matuszewski, Bloomberg \u00b7 April 7, 2015 at 11:32 am (Bloomberg) \u2014 Tiger Woods last won a golf tournament 20 months ago and has plummeted to 111st in the world rankings, the lowest he\u2019s ever been in his professional career….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}