Phoenix betting preview

By Dave Tindall
www.golf365.com

Brian Gay did us two huge favours last year when winning at Hilton Head and TPC Southwind.

Sundays are normally stress-packed when you’ve got a player in contention but Gay turned those final rounds into victory parades after winning the Verizon Heritage by a ridiculous 10 shots and the St Jude Classic by five.

He’s more of a marked man than he was (he went off at 100/1 at Hilton Head) but the 35/1 available at this week’s Waste Management Phoenix Open is similar to his SP of 40s in Memphis.

The key with Gay last year was spotting when he was coming into form and then finding a course where he was likely to peak.

At Hilton Head he arrived at a course where he’d previously had a fine record on the back of some solid early season form and a T26 at Houston where the course was too long for him.

And before winning at Southwind he’d signed off at Colonial with a final round 64.

So far in 2010, Gay has made the top 25 in all four of his strokeplay starts and at the WGC Accenture Match Play he made it to the last 16 despite not liking the course.

Asked if it set up well for him, Gay responded: “Not really good at all. It’s a long way, brick hard. It’s just like throwing a math equation in the fairway, trying to figure out what is uphill, downhill, where to land it, where is it going to release to. So it was a lot of work.”

It was also the first time he’d played match play since an amateur.

But a strokeplay event at TPC Scottsdale will be much more in his comfort zone.

Gay plays here every year and also improves his performance every year.

Starting in 2005, Gay’s results read 71st, 33rd, 23rd, 17th, 6th so if that trend continues we’re in the money.

No-one hit more fairways at Scottsdale last year than Gay and on the 2010 Driving Accuracy stats he sits fifth.

Add in his second place ranking on both 2010 putting stats (Putting Average and Putts Per Round) and it could prove a pretty lethal combination.

Take that 35/1.

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