Tiger Woods skips Disney; early favorite for Masters

Written by Shawn Sillinger

Wednesday, 18 October 2006

There will be a good consolation prize for golfers who miss the cut on this week’s PGA Tour stop – they’ll get to go hang out with Mickey Mouse.

The FUNAI Classic at the Walt Disney World Resort begins on Thursday and runs through the weekend, and features a purse of $4.6 million. Last year’s FUNAI Classic at Disney champion was Lucas Glover.

And Glover will be in the field again this weekend, as will 2004 champion Ryan Palmer and 2003 winner Vijay Singh. Others expected to participate include Stuart Appleby, Chris DiMarco, Brad Faxon, Mike Weir, Trevor Immelman, Mark O’Meara, Jesper Parnevik, Ben Curtis, Tom Lehman, Scott Verplank, Davis Love III, and Justin Leonard.

There’ll be no Tiger Woods at Disney World this weekend though. Woods won this tourney in both 1999 and 1996, but he missed the cut in last year’s event. That means Woods’ streak of six consecutive PGA Tour victories won’t be on the line this weekend.

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Bettors who’d like to support Woods in something right now have another option though – odds to win both the 2007 Masters and 2007 British Open tournaments have now been posted and (not surprisingly) Woods is favored to win both events by a big margin.

For The Masters, BetUS oddsmakers have Tiger as a +130 favorite, with Phil Mickelson (+700) and Ernie Els (+1600) next on the list, and each of Singh, Jim Furyk, Sergio Garcia, Retief Goosen, and Adam Scott back at +2500. Woods finished tied for third place at last year’s Masters tournament, but won the event in 2005, 2002, 2001, and 1997. His worst stretch at Augusta was from 2003 to 2004, when he finished T-15th and T-22nd.

Here are the currently posted odds to win a green jacket in 2007, from Woods on down:

Tiger Woods +130
Phil Mickelson +700
Ernie Els +1600
Jim Furyk +2500
Sergio Garcia +2500
Retief Goosen +2500
Adam Scott +2500
Vijay Singh +2500
Geoff Ogilvy +3000
Luke Donald +3500
Padraig Harrington +3500
Mike Weir +3500
Darren Clarke +4500
Trevor Immelman +4500
Stuart Appleby +6000
Angel Cabrera +6000
Paul Casey +6000
Stewart Cink +6000
Tim Clark +6000
Chris DiMarco +6000
Zach Johnson +6000
Davis Love III +6000
Ryan Moore +6000
Jose Maria Olazabal +6000
David Toms +6000

Woods has won the last two British Opens, and he’s a +250 favorite to make it three straight in 2007. Tiger’s other British Open championship came in 2000; he finished well back in 2001 and 2002, but managed Top-10 results in 2003 and 2004. Els is listed second at +1200, followed by Mickelson (+1600), Goosen (+2200), and Singh (+2200).

Here are the currently posted odds to win a major overseas in 2007, starting at Woods:

Tiger Woods +250
Ernie Els +1200
Phil Mickelson +1600
Retief Goosen +2200
Vijay Singh +2200
Sergio Garcia +2400
Luke Donald +2600
Jim Furyk +2600
Padraig Harrington +2600
Adam Scott +3000
Darren Clarke +3400
Trevor Immelman +3400
Colin Montgomerie +3400
Geoff Ogilvy +3400
Stuart Appleby +4500
Mike Weir +4500
Thomas Bjorn +6000
Angel Cabrera +6000
Michael Campbell +6000
Paul Casey +6000
Tim Clark +6000
Chris DiMarco +6000
David Howell +6000
Jose Maria Olazabal +6000
David Toms +6000

The FUNAI Classic is the third-last tournament of the PGA Tour’s 2006 Fall Finish – the Chrysler Championship (October 26-29) and The TOUR Championship (November 2-5) round out the schedule. Along with The TOUR Championship, Woods is expected to also play in the HSBC Champions Tournament (November 9-12), Dunlop Phoenix Tournament (November 16-19), PGA Grand Slam of Golf (November 21-22), and Target World Challenge (December 14-17) to finish out his 2006 slate of golf tourneys.

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