Ryder Cup: USA land first blow post-picks at BMW Championship
Published:USA Ryder Cup captain Tom Watson is batting off flack from all sides after wild card picks Hunter Mahan, Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley all bombed at the BMW championship, although the impending Gleneagles visitors’ automatic qualifiers more than made up for such mishaps.
Four of Watson’s Scotland-bound tourists, in two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson, Jim Furyk, Rickie Fowler and Jordan Speith, finished in the top 10 at Cherry Hills, compared to just Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy for Europe.
However, Watson may be somewhat perturbed by the performances of unlucky miss-outs Ryan Palmer and Bill Haas in Colorado, with the former finishing tied for fourth and the latter beating each member of Team USA, bar the aforementioned quartet and Jimmy Walker.
Of the four other Europeans who will play under captain Paul McGinley in Scotland later this month, where the hosts are 2/5 to win, only Martin Kaymer and Henrik Stenson broke par, while resident statesiders Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter failed to make it this far in the FedExCup series.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Jamie Donaldson put up a good fight to finish seventh in the Omega European Masters, but Victor Dubuisson and Thomas Bjorn, who was defending a title he’d won twice in the past three years, were 10 and 12 shots back by Sunday’s close of play.
However, much of this form has to be swallowed with a large measure of salt when making betting calculations for later on in the month.
Europe have won seven of the last nine Ryder Cups and each of the last four on home soil, although the last two have only been one-point victories.
A third European 14-and-a-half points to 13-and-a-half-points victory in a row is currently priced up at 9/1.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.
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