With no European Tour event this week, my attention is turned to the US where we have the St Jude Classic taking place in Texas.  Defending champion Justin Leonard is second in the betting behind Phil Mickelson and despite Leonard’s impeccable record here (twice winner); I am going to look further down the field when it comes to picking a winner. 

Top of the pile is Germany’s Alex Cejka around the 80/1 mark.  T4 here last year and a respectable T23 last week Cejka is a man in form who like the course.  Backers of Cejka in recent weeks will be still recovering from his defeat in the Players Championship, where he shot a closing round 79 to finish in T9 after leading for most of the tournament.  This might be off-putting for some people, but his price around the 80/1 mark is enough to justify him being my big bet of the week, bearing in mind that he has won on tour before.  His 6 top 25 finishes this year are a further comfort for those who would be happy if he snuck into a place.

One player who has yet to win on tour but is certainly capable is American Michael Letzig and is definitely worth a punt around the 80/1 mark.  T14 here last year and T14 last week he is a player who has shown he can go close and it is probably the fact that he has yet to win that his price is so big.  He could have went really close last week bar his closing 75 and I would be very surprised to see him finish outside the top 20 this time round.  If he holds his form over the 4 days he may very well find himself around the top of the leaderboard and at 80/1 I will gladly take that.

To finish off the trio, I shall also have a go at Will MacKenzie around the 100/1 mark.  8th here in 07 and a top 10 finish are stats far too good to ignore when they are associated with a 3-figure price.  MacKenzie already has 2 top tens to his name this year and with any luck he can find himself there or there abouts come Sunday evening.

Hopefully we can go close again this week, and although Europe proved to be unsuccessful last week, Woods’ victory in America has yet again given us a return on our selections.  Let’s hope we can repeat this with a nice big-priced winner this week.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Hacketts bet tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.