Features

Final stop on tour schedule

Author: John Harris
Date: 11/11/2009
Golf betting

The PGA Tour season finishes this week with the Children's Miracle Network Classic, rounding off a Fall Series which has been full of surprises.

The five tournament series, which gives players a final chance to earn automatic places for next year's tour and the 2010 PGA Championship, already has three unlikely winners, a six-hole play-off and a washed out event before the always-emotional finale has begun.

Matt Kucher's first tour win since 2002, after a play-off so lengthy the players were forced to resume on Monday morning due to bad light, began the series in style.

A debut title for Martin Laird in Las Vegas followed two weeks later before Troy Matteson clinched the Frys.com Open.

The cancellation of the Viking Classic in Mississippi due to rain and floods put a dampener on an exciting October, but this week's Florida-based event looks a suitable season ender.

Zach Johnson, winner of two PGA Tour events in 2009, heads a field that includes four other tournament title holders, but it is struggling golfers that provide the real story as the scramble begins for a 2010 tour card.

Will sportsbook favourite Johnson win this week? - Latest Golf Betting

Tour veterans David Duval and Rich Beem are currently in the top 125 but could drop out if they fail to make the cut and others perform well, while Peter Tomasulo and Derek Fathauer begin the tournament precariously just outside the top 200.

Some of the older players may even be playing the final rounds of their professional careers, though as is always the case in sport they will be sadly forgotten by next week when season reviews will be in vogue.

After all, three golfers won debut major titles this year and another, 60-year-old Tom Watson, was a single putt away from claiming his first for 26 years.

Perhaps more shocking was the lack of a Major for Tiger Woods, who for the first time lost an event that he was leading going into the final round.

Not only did he stumble at the PGA Championship but he was aided in his trip by eventual winner Y.E. Yang - ranked 480th in the world this time last year and 110th before that event began in mid-August.

Perhaps Yang's victory could also put the 2009 season on the map historically, after providing the first male Asian champion of a Major.

With only two players from that continent competing this week, fellow South Korean Charlie Wi and Indian Arjun Atwal, it is far from a convincing international breakthrough but few would argue that Yang will be the last Asian to achieve such a feat.

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