Golf betting blog: Koepka breaks duck

Our weekly golf betting blog from Downthe18th reflects on the Turkish Airlines Open and OHL Classic at Mayakoba

Golf betting blog: Koepka breaks duck

We bid farewell to the PGA Tour for another calendar year last week as Charley Hoffman’s miraculous 66 clinched victory in Mexico. Whilst across the waters Brooks Koepka finally won his first European Tour event in the Turkish Airlines Open.

There hasn’t been a great deal of favorable prices to get stuck in with over recent tournaments, mainly because the top, top players haven’t been teeing it up.

There's no denying the final day had it’s excitement, but we were left with the scenario that one of Marcel Siem, Henrik Stenson, Sergio Garcia or Jamie Donaldson HAD to win in order to stand any slim chance of catching Rory McIlroy for the overall.

Siem started the 4^th day one shot behind leader Wade Ormsby and the 6/1 price seemed fair. Westwood and Poulter were both in hot pursuit at 4/1 and 5/1 respectively, whilst Koepka was at the massive price of 12s considering he was only two shots behind.

We have all seen how low the American can go at times, so the 65 was no great surprise. He just hadn’t done it on the final day before.

You could have got Koepka at 40/1 pre-tournament, which considering the market wasn’t awful, but we didn’t feel compelled. One of our big bets was Brendon De Jonge at 50s. One behind after the 1^st round and still close before the weather delay on Friday, only to come out and casually find four bogeys in five holes. Brilliant.

As for America, Hoffman (a massive 90/1 pre-tournament) started the final round three shots behind Jason Bohn. Put it this way, Bohn started at 2/1, drifting out to 4-figures. That’s how painful it would have been for all his backers.

You can imagine that Hoffman was getting plenty of backers throughout the final day and went to evens when he posted his score. We were left demoralised with our big outsider Alex Cejka (300/1) who, after starting the last day in T3, finished T16. Him and Bohn were the only players over par inside the top 50. Good stuff.

It’ll be goodbye to the European Tour next week in the DP World Tour Championship and McIlroy will be playing, so it should be an interesting affair, but as we know by now, there’s nothing to play for overall.