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Week-in-Review, 24-30 June 2008

Golf - Buick Open

Kenny Perry’s hot streak continued at Warwick Hills where he secured his second win in four tour starts. For us it was a straight choice between Perry and Jim Furyk amongst the favourites. Perry’s current form was easily the best in the field and he had won the event before, but we were just swayed by Furyk’s outstanding course form. It proved the wrong decision as ‘steady Jim’ became ‘wayward Jim’ and recorded his worst Buick finish (36th) since 1996, breaking a sequence of 10 successive top-16 results.

It was nevertheless another strong showing from the SOS Golf Ratings; Furyk topped the list but Perry naturally ranked second and runner-up Woody Austin ranked third. The performances of Bubba Watson and Matt Jones were less predictable but fourth-placed Bob Tway ranked 43rd in our ratings – 67 places higher than his official rank within the field. Only four players in the field had a greater positive discrepancy.

Our other picks for the week were Rocco Mediate (50/1), Brian Gay (80/1), Fred Funk (100/1) and John Rollins (80/1). Funk missed the cut but Gay finished one shot out of the money in seventh whilst Rollins was a stroke further back in ninth. Rocco was 28th.

Cricket - England v New Zealand ODIs

After a terrible start, when England trounced the Black Caps by 114 runs at Chester-le-street, this proved another hugely successful series for us. New Zealand won 3-1 and even the abandoned match at Edgbaston was heavily in the Kiwis’ favour at the time.

We made four recommendations and three were winners: Scott Styris to top-score for New Zealand at 7/1 (he led this market by 60 runs), New Zealand to win the series at 13/8 and a sell of England’s series supremacy at 35 which made up at minus 16 (51-points profit).

The only losing call was on Ian Bell (5/1) to top score for England but in fact Owais Shah led that market by 50 runs. Bell was third.