Tom English: 'Harrington is a wounded animal – and a dangerous one'

Published on Saturday 11 July 2009 21:18

YOU'RE GOING to have a bet on the Open, right? Ah hell, why not? The Grand National and the Open championship – the two sporting events in the calendar where you've gotta have a flutter. Well, lucky you. Because I've done all the groundwork already.

Look here. You know golf's a stats game. Driving distance, driving accuracy, greens in regulation, birdie average, sand saves. Everything has a % on the end of it.

I can tell you that David Toms leads the driving accuracy stats in America and Bernhard Langer is on top in Europe. I know that for greens in regulation, John Senden's the man over there and Retief Goosen is the guy over here. For putts, it's Brad Faxon on the PGA tour and Roope Kakko in this part of the world. Roope Kakko, I swear to you.

But you can't just look at a player's record on the regular tour. Oh no, that would be fatal. You have to pay attention to how he's done in the majors to determine what his bottle is like. No good backing Kenny Perry, now is there? He wins every second week in America but come the Masters it's a choke-a-rama. The fella throws up all over himself. Can't be trusted.

You need to be forensic. You must look at trends. And value. No point in backing Tiger at 9-4. He's just not value for money at that price, not when you see what's been happening in majors over the last year.

Lucas Glover, Angel Cabrera, Padraig Harrington (twice) and Tiger have won the last five. There's a message to punters in each victory.

Take Glover. He was ranked 71st in the world before his win at Bethpage. His form going into the US Open was desperate. His three events leading up to it: 45th at the Memorial, 41st at Colonial, missed cut at the Players. Cabrera, the same. He was 69th in the world. The weeks before the Masters: missed cut at the Houston Open, missed cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

How were we supposed to see those guys coming?

But that's not all. When Harrington won the PGA at Oakland Hills he damn near put the whole of the press gang into a depression on Thursday and Friday with all his talk of his hopeless form, his absent mind and his weary desire to just get the hell off the golf course as fast as possible. Anybody who'd backed him would have ripped up their docket. He was talking like a beaten man. And then he went and won.

Punters, I ask you: What chance have we got?

At Birkdale he was saying he wasn't even going to compete. You'll recall the saga of the supposedly dodgy wrist and his claims on the Wednesday that he was only 50-50 to turn up the next day. How could you back him under those circumstances? He was a train wreck. And Tiger at Torrey Pines? He wins with a torn anterior cruciate! You take a healthy field against Tiger's one good leg and Tiger wins. When that kind of thing starts to happen you either give up betting or you come up with a new method.

And it's a new method for me. Or The Method as it is known. We're looking for a guy whose world ranking is on the slide, whose form is wretched, whose head is a total mess. It would be great if there was some medical problem as well, either real or imagined. And never mind all those top-fives in recent tournaments, we're looking for lots of lowly finishes and missed cuts. Bring on the dark horses.

Key to this, though, is some decent history on links. Nobody knows what the weather is going to be doing at Turnberry. It can't stay benign all week, surely? There's got to be some wind worthy of the name. Even in the famous Turnberry Open of '77 when Watson and Nicklaus went at it on the Sunday under bright blue skies there was a suspension of play on the Saturday because of lightning strikes. If the weather gets mean you don't want to be on some fella who's never experienced foulness on a links before.

Okay, so we're whittling. We've got it down to two men. The first is Ernie Els. He's ticking boxes all over the place. He's missed the cut in his last two majors. Elsewhere he's finished 8th, 21st and 45th in his other recent tournaments. The Method is liking those numbers.

He hasn't won in over a year and his world ranking has collapsed to 23. Ernie's looking good for a comeback. He's always up for the Open, no matter what else is going on. He was seventh at Birkdale despite shooting 80 in the worst of the weather in the opening round. He was fourth at Carnoustie in 2007, third at Hoylake in 2006. He's 33-1 with the main bookmaking chains and a whopping 67-1 on the exchanges.

He'll go close, but he won't win. Not quite. We have it worked out, you see. We know who's going to win. The Method has factored in all the elements.

Our pick's recent stats are just too bad to ignore: missed cut, missed cut, missed cut, missed cut, missed cut, T49th, missed cut. Based on the Cabrera-Glover example, that's a run of form you just have to consider.

Now, this player's world ranking has plummeted as well. His confidence is shot to bits, although there's a suggestion over the last few days that he's beginning to get it together again. That's good and timely. All this fella needs is a little encouragement and he's flying. We'd be thrilled if we heard he'd gone over on his ankle at the weekend. Or maybe hurt a finger. A little accident on the stairs, perhaps. Nothing serious. Just something to take his mind off the Open.

It worked for him last time and the time before that he was complaining about some ailment as well, the details of which are forgotten now. For this is Harrington we're talking about. His game is in crisis, his spirit is at rock bottom, his world ranking has fallen to 12. He is a wounded animal – and a dangerous one.

Directly before his first Open championship victory his form-line read like this: T54th, missed cut, missed cut, T52nd, T43rd.

He's 33-1 with the bookies. The Method says plunge.