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Golf Betting tip
Author: Ian Hudson 06/09/2011
Luke Donald is well placed to win the FedEx Cup Play-Offs on the US Tour after finishing joint third in the Deutsche Bank Championship, the second of four tournaments that make up the mega bucks schedule. There is a break in the schedule this week and then the leading players reconvene at the BMW Championship
Over the course of the regular season 125 players qualify for the play-offs. During each week more players are eliminated and the next cut-off leaves just 70 players to contest the third stage. The leading 30 players then qualify for the Tour Championship, with the leading player in the FedEx Cup standings receiving a massive 10 million dollar bonus.
Donald played the front nine in the final round of the Deutsche Bank Championship in just 30 shots. He led the field by one shot with seven holes to play and then had a double bogey on the 12th hole and dropped another shot on the 16th.
Despite those setbacks Donald produced another solid top 10 performance. He now has a realistic chance of winning the Order of Merit in Europe and Money list in the States and that has never been achieved before. Ernie Els came closest in 2004 when he was second in the Money List and won most money in Europe.
Donald is now second in the money won standings in the States and leads the Race to Dubai in Europe. He could well win that title without paying another event in Europe this season he has a lead of 1.8 million Euro lead over Rory McIlroy in second place.
The English player still has a chance to win the FedEx Cup and that huge bonus. Padraig Harrington and Graeme McDowell were eliminated after two events. Harrington was nowhere making the top 70 after a closing 75 in the Deutsche Bank Championship that did not contain a single birdie.
McDowell was agonisingly close to qualifying for the next event in the series. He bogeyed the 17th hole and missed a six-foot birdie putt on the last for a 71. If he had played his last round in one fewer shots he would have sneaked into the next tournament in the Play-Offs.
Webb Simpson leads the Money List and FedEx Cup standings after winning the Deutsche Bank Championship, his second win of the year. He looked is if he would be runner-up until holing a 30 foot putt on the par 5 18th hole for a 6 under par 65 and a place in the play-off.
Chez Reavie birdied the toughest hole on the back nine and made bogey on the easiest final hole when a par was good enough to win the second US Tour title of his career. He won last year's Canadian Open and came into the tournament in Boston on the back-off five top 30 efforts this year.
On the 18th hole in the play-off Reavie chipped to tap-in range for a birdie. However, Simpson holed a 15 foot put to keep the pay-off going and then won after holing from eight feet on the second play-off hole.
Simpson won his first Tour event last month at the Wyndham Championship and he is now in great shape to win the $10 million prize. Jim Furyk holed a putt to win the bonus on the final green of the last play-off event in 2011 and another player will face that challenge in this year's finals.
After the results of last week's tournaments once again Europe has the top four places in the World golf rankings. Martin Kaymer and Rory Mcilroy both moved up two places and the highest placed non-European is now Steve Stricker at fifth in the standings. There are still four Americans in the top 10 and the list is completed by two players from Australia, namely Jason Day and Adam Scott.
Second and joint third place finishes for Kaymer and Mcilroy respectively in the Omega European Masters meant the two Europeans went above Stricker and Dustin Johnson after the Americans finished well down the field at the Deutsche Bank Championship.
The European Tour equivalent of the FedEx is the Race to Dubai in which Donald has a commanding lead. The biggest move of the week came from Thomas Bjorn. After becoming only the 28th player in the history of the Tour to win in consecutive weeks the Dane moved up 31 places in the world rankings.
That move in the right direction represents remarkable progress from Bjorn who started the year at 124 in the world and was actually contemplating giving up the professional game. This season he has already won more money than in the previous three seasons combined.
Bjorn has now won both the first two qualifying events for the 2012 European Ryder Cup team. The leading five players on the Order of Merit after next year's Johnnie Walker Championship qualify for the team. Another five players are selected from a world points list and the captain has two wild card picks to allow participation from players with the pedigree to play the matches without good enough recent form to qualify automatically.