Trio on top at Toshiba Classic

Golf Betting Lines

03/05/2010 - Newport Beach, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Former PGA Champion Bob Tway, Mark Wiebe and Chien-Soon Lu each fired six-under 65s on Friday to share the first-round lead of the Toshiba Classic.

Fred Couples, already a winner after two Champions Tour starts and the leading money earner this year, Olin Browne, Lonnie Nielsen and Mike Goodes are knotted in fourth place at five-under 66.

Tway first broke into red figures with a short birdie putt at the par-five third. At the fifth, Tway hit a good seven-iron to 20 feet and poured in the birdie effort. He tapped in two more short birdie putts at six and seven to make three in a row.

Tway made another little birdie at the 10th, but dropped a shot at No. 11 when he missed a very short putt. Two holes later, Tway rolled in a 12-footer for birdie to get back to five-under par.

At the par-five 15th, Tway reached the green in two and two-putted for birdie. He had a good look at birdie at the 17th, but his nine-footer stayed above ground.

Tway missed the green at the par-five closing hole and "fluffed" his chip. He pitched his fourth to six feet and converted the par putt to stay atop the leaderboard.

"I played pretty well today," said Tway, an eight-time winner on the PGA Tour. "I hit my irons exceptionally well. I hit a few wayward drives. I was able to kind of recover from those and get them on the green and take advantage of the good iron shots I had."

Wiebe, a Champions Tour winner in 2007 and 2008, started on the 10th tee Friday and promptly birdied his first two holes, both from around 15 feet. He rattled off back-to-back birdies at 14 and 15 and the one at the par-five 15th was amazing.

He drove into a fairway bunker and had to choke down to the metal on a five- iron. Wiebe's ball was at waist-level and he punched it down the fairway. He hit an eight-iron to 10 feet and cashed in on the birdie putt.

"It was not looking very well," admitted Wiebe of the 15th hole.

Wiebe made a short birdie putt at the 18th and his lone birdie of the front side came from 25 feet at the third. He parred his last six for his share of the lead.

"I'm extremely happy," said Wiebe, who played sick with a sore throat on Friday. "I'm real, real happy to be bogey-free on this golf course. I kind of kept my game plan and kept it in the fairway and get it on the green."

Lu, a Champions Tour rookie who tied for ninth at the Allianz Championship, tallied five birdies and a bogey through his first 10 holes. He birdied the par-three 13th and par-five 18th for his piece of first.

Defending champion Eduardo Romero, Wayne Levi, Ronnie Black, Loren Roberts, Tom Lehman, D.A. Weibring, Bobby Wadkins and Gary Hallberg are knotted in eighth place at four-under 67.

NOTES: Bernhard Langer, who holed out for eagle to defeat John Cook in a playoff at the Allianz Championship, shot a one-under 70 and is tied for 26th place...Tom Watson, who won the season-opener in Hawaii, posted a two-under 69 and shares 20th.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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