Senior Players Championship: free tips and betting preview

Starts 12.45pm Thursday

Steve Stricker hasn’t just won two Champions Tour Majors this year, he’s bolted up by six shots each time. So he is entitled to be a strong favourite for the Senior Players Championship in Akron, Ohio. But 3-1?

The layers clearly want to keep Stricker on their side but if they really are going to play Firestone, the former home of the WGC Bridgestone Invitational, at its main-tour length of 7,400 yards, as the website says, then you need a player with a bit more poke.

Second to Keegan Bradley in 2012 was the closest Stricker came to winning there in his heyday but one who did chalk up a course victory was long-hitting Vijay Singh 11 years ago and he’s ten times Stricker’s price.

Singh also happens to be the defending champion, one of two senior victories last year. His big price reflects a mediocre 2019 campaign although he did manage a main-tour sixth in the Honda at the end of March.

Just a month away from his 62nd birthday, Bernhard Langer continues to astound. Even so, he is not quite the player he was when winning this three times in a row from 2014.

If a European is to win, English bulldog Paul Broadhurst is preferred. A double Major champion, he was on target for a third at the Senior PGA but, uncharacteristically for this big-occasion player, he folded in the home straight.

Even so, he’s 6-3-11 for 2019 Majors and, like Brooks Koepka on the main tour, plays them better than run-of-the-mill tournaments.

Retief Goosen is on the verge of opening his account. Poor final rounds cost him the last two Majors because he had lost the knack of contending - it’s ten years since he last won anywhere - but the more he’s in the mix the sooner he’ll conquer Sundays.

Jerry Kelly (top seven on last five starts), Scott McCarron (top money-winner with three wins and two seconds) and David Toms (runner-up in Stricker’s two Majors) have obvious credentials but are priced accordingly.

At 60, Tom Lehman had three rounds in the 60s at the 3M on the main tour last week. Classy Fred Couples makes a rare appearance and could spring a surprise.

Recommendations
Vijay Singh
1.5pt each-way 28-1 Coral, Ladbrokes
Paul Broadhurst
1pt each-way 50-1 general
Retief Goosen
1pt each-way 20-1 general
David Toms
1pt each-way 12-1 general
Tom Lehman
0.5pt each-way 35-1 Coral, Ladbrokes, Sky Bet

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