Golf Central

A Tiger-less tour event makes Phil Mickelson the clear favourite to win the FBR Open this weekend at around 6/1. Rory Sabbatini and Steve Stricker are at 14/1, with likely lads Aaron Baddeley, KJ Choi, Vijay Singh and Stewart Cink also in the hunt. My money goes on a trio of players at wider odds:

Mike Weir @ 40/1: It’s just a hunch (so dismiss it at your leisure), but I keep thinking he’ll win big again after a decent 12 months for the other Lefty.

Trevor Immelman @ 60/1: Still struggling to find his A game after a long illness last year interrupted his rise up the world rankings. Will come good eventually, which is why we’ll stick with him this season.

Daniel Chopra @ 70/1: Not his course, but we think the big ol’ Swede will be gunning for more glory in his search for a Ryder Cup place.

Let’s face it he has been a bit quiet of late. And while the word ‘nice’ is probably not the one you’d use seeing Ian Poulter starkers on the cover of UK golf mag Golf World (we’d rather not upset you by showing it), his modesty was just as poorly hidden in the accompanying interview: “I haven’t played to my full potential and when that happens, it will be just me and Tiger,”

Poulter can be very engaging as long as you accept it’s all about him. He’s supremely professional at the meet-and-greet end of the operation and the influence he’s had on every aspiring teenage golfer can be seen by the number of Poulter-tribute hairstyles that are on show among junior members of Britain's golf clubs.

Poulter has shown remarkable determination in graduating from club pro to multiple tour winner. His fellow pros always qualify their admiration for his achievements with off-the-record comments of disbelief. They think he’s a nothing-special golfer, but then again many of them will end up lower on the leaderboard most weeks.

Of course his comments about Tiger are laughable. But as ESPN’s Jason Sobel points out in his excellent comment piece, neither does he criticise Tiger’s game, not does he display the arrogance of Rory Sabbatini or Stephen Ames, two of the PGA Tour’s least popular characters. People can help liking Poults, even with his tackle out.

This is the stuff. The Dubai Desert Classic drags the world’s best golfer half-way across the world and an orderly queue for second place forms at a discrete distance. Or that’s what the bookies would have you believe. Tiger is at evens, so forget about it, until he’s three shots clear on the last morning and you’ve got a spare ten grand burning a hole in your back pocket.

Then again, he didn’t win last year, Henrik Stenson did. One of the many backyard boys from the European Tour who live in Dubai, Stenson is available at around 10/1, with Ernie Els and Lee Westwood at 14/1.

My picks are a little further out, though:-

Sergio Garcia @ 28/1: I never back him and I hardly ever regret it. Wouldn’t it just be rich if the twitchy Spaniard really got his groove back this week?

Nick Dougherty @ 35/1: I almost always back him and he often comes in. Nick showed good form in Qatar, is desperate for a Ryder Cup spot and that’s good enough for me.

Graeme McDowell @ 100-1: Another InGolfWeTrust fave, he showed an almost uncharacteristic level of consistency last week. And if he needs to go low, low he can go…

On this day and two years apart, two of the most dominating golfers of the 1980s and 1990s were born, and between them they own four US Open championships and 28 PGA Tour titles combined: Curtis Strange and Payne Stewart.

Strange was born on this day in 1955 in Norfolk, Virginia. Ill-fated in Ryder Cups as a player in 1995 and as captain in 2001, Strange was much more successful when US Open time came around. In fact, he won twice in golf's toughest major, and in back-to-back years to boot, in 1988 and 1989. In '88, Strange also was the first player to transcend the $1 million mark in year on the PGA Tour. Not only that, but Strange's 17 tour victories secure his legacy.

Stewart, born this day in 1957 in Springfield, Missouri, won more majors than Strange: he nabbed the 1989 PGA Championship as well as the '91 and '99 US Opens. During his 11-victory PGA Tour career, Stewart was known for his kind demeanor and shoot-from-the-lip manner, as well as his habit of wearing outrageous combinations of colour-coordinated plus-fours. But what a player he was, and Stewart's 1999 US Open win is remembered bittersweetly as his last: He died on October 25 of that year in strange circumstances in an out-of-control charter jet ...