Two Groups A.m. Host Name Against Tee

Golf Betting Lines

St. Andrews, Scotland (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - World No. 1 and defending champion Tiger Woods will play with three-time Open champion Nick Faldo in the opening round of the 135th British Open Championship that tees off Thursday at Royal Liverpool Golf Club. Woods, whose two British Open crowns have come at St. Andrews, will be playing for just the third time since the Masters and the death of his father, Earl, earlier this spring.

 

Sweden's Peter Hedblom will have the honor of hitting the first tee shot at 6:30 a.m. local time.

 

Ernie Els, the 2002 Open champion, will play with Luke Donald and U.S. Amateur champion Edoardo Molinari at 2:58 a.m. Former U.S. Open winner Jim Furyk will follow Els and is grouped with Rod Pampling and Greg Owen.

 

Eight-time Order of Merit winner Colin Montgomerie, who finished second to Woods at St. Andrews last year, is grouped with Stuart Appleby and former Open champion John Daly.

 

Two groups later, reigning Masters and U.S. PGA champion Phil Mickelson will play with Yasuharu Imano and Darren Clarke.

 

Following Woods' group will be Hideto Tanihara, Paul McGinley and David Duval. Duval, who is having a solid season, is still looking for his first win since claiming the 2001 British Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes.

 

Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - A year after graduating from European Tour qualifying school, Sweden's Johan Edfors is making a name for himself. Edfors won his third title of the season Sunday at the Scottish Open, closing with a final-round 63 to beat a trio of players by two shots. His latest victory vaulted him 42 places to No. 46 in this week's Official World Golf Rankings.

 

Ahead of this week's British Open, little changed in the top 20.

 

Luke Donald moved up a spot to 11th, dropping David Toms to 12th. They were trailed by Colin Montgomerie, Jose Maria Olazabal, Trevor Immelman, Henrik Stenson, Tim Clark and Padraig Harrington.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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