US PGA Championship 2011 picks

The WGC Bridgestone Invitational golf tournament last week left me -£6 worse off. I read a lot of column inches in the lead up to the tournament and was certain of achieving some profit. At one point I was 26 notes in the red but some good trading during days 2 and 3 helped me reduce the liability. At this point in my fledgling golf trading career, I'm happy to just get back to 0.

Golf trading is something I've been wanting to get my head around for quite a bit. I'm not a follower of the game by any means, and didn't see a single ball hit at Bridgestone, yet it doesn't mean I shouldn't get involved. The way a 4-day tournament plays out usually sees the lead change hands many times, and there are lots of scalping opportunities. Unlike in-running horse trading, the golf has a nice slow pace to it and i'm happy just to get some back bets matched and lay my stakes at lower prices, leaving the profit on the player if the lays are matched.

I'm not going Billy Big Stakes on the golf until I've got some decent stats together in my database, which I've been busy importing this week. I was hoping get done before the start of the PGA Championship but, despite burning the midnight oil last night, I don't have enough data enable me to make solid predictions yet. So at this point, I'm just going to guess!


Actually, it's more like educated guessing, since I've been keeping an eye on the golf markets for a whopping two whole tournaments now, and have noticed a few trends. Day 1 is more guessy than 2 & 3 anyway because you can't really get an idea of a player's chances until they've completed at least a round. Most of the value has been sucked out of the market by Day 4 and you have to use decent sized stakes to get anything back.

We'll see what happens :)