FOR THE LAST 18 years, Tiger Woods has almost always been the favourite whenever he has teed up at a golf tournament. Woods was so dominant for most of his career that he was regularly given very short odds normally reserved for team sports.
It basically wasn’t worth your while to back him. But today’s Tiger isn’t the prowling assassin of old who collected 14 majors – for one, he has fallen to 104 in the world rankings.
The bookies have him as the 17th favourite for the first major of the year – which is probably better than he deserves – at 45/1.
Considering he generally went off at about 5/1 in past majors, this is quite a shift.
You can also back him at evens to miss the cut and 8/11 to make it. You would imagine that many people will jump on the evens after the season Woods has had so far but even his presence at Augusta next weekend makes things a lot more interesting.
Tiger took a similar leave of absence in 2010 – albeit for DRASTICALLY different reasons – but returned to play his first event of the year at the Masters and finished fourth.
So does Tiger have any chance to do well next weekend?
If he ends up never winning another major – and that seems likely at this stage – where does his sex scandal rank among the all-time sporting scandals?
All Tiger needs to do is look at the Masters odds to see how far he has fallen
FOR THE LAST 18 years, Tiger Woods has almost always been the favourite whenever he has teed up at a golf tournament. Woods was so dominant for most of his career that he was regularly given very short odds normally reserved for team sports.
It basically wasn’t worth your while to back him. But today’s Tiger isn’t the prowling assassin of old who collected 14 majors – for one, he has fallen to 104 in the world rankings.
Last night, Woods announced that he is going to compete at the Masters next weekend, which will be his first event since taking an indefinite break from golf in February.
The bookies have him as the 17th favourite for the first major of the year – which is probably better than he deserves – at 45/1.
Considering he generally went off at about 5/1 in past majors, this is quite a shift.
You can also back him at evens to miss the cut and 8/11 to make it. You would imagine that many people will jump on the evens after the season Woods has had so far but even his presence at Augusta next weekend makes things a lot more interesting.
Tiger took a similar leave of absence in 2010 – albeit for DRASTICALLY different reasons – but returned to play his first event of the year at the Masters and finished fourth.
So does Tiger have any chance to do well next weekend?
If he ends up never winning another major – and that seems likely at this stage – where does his sex scandal rank among the all-time sporting scandals?
Probably second to Saipan, you would have to say.
Originally published at 10.16
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Any value? Masters Tiger Woods