Women's golf rankings a carousel at the top

Golf Betting Lines

08/23/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - As we prepare for yet another week of Phil Mickelson chasing Tiger Woods for the No. 1 world ranking, let's not forget what is happening this season in women's golf, where the top spot has changed hands seven times in the last 17 weeks.

While the Tiger vs. Phil storyline may flood galleries and boost TV ratings, until now it has been Capone's vault: all build-up and no payoff.

The real change is happening on the women's side of the game.

And it's happening on almost a weekly basis.

After Ai Miyazato captured the Safeway Classic on Sunday for her fifth LPGA Tour victory of the season, she assumed the No. 1 ranking for the third time since June.

The 25-year-old Japanese star is the winningest player on a major North American tour this year, and one of three players who have held the No. 1 ranking since Lorena Ochoa's retirement in May.

It's been passed back and forth more often than my Ping 1-iron the last time I threw the old lady in my bag for a round.

A timeline:

On May 3, a day after Ochoa stepped away, South Korea's Jiyai Shin became the No. 1 player following a victory in Japan. She was only the third player to hold the position since the rankings' inception on Feb. 21, 2006, following Annika Sorenstam and Ochoa.

A week later, Ochoa dropped out of the rankings altogether as she settled into retirement and Miyazato took her spot at No. 2.

The real rankings carousel didn't begin spinning until June. And it started with a medical emergency.

Shin missed two consecutive tournaments after having an appendectomy the Wednesday before the State Farm Classic. Miyazato won the second event, the ShopRite LPGA Classic on June 20, and assumed the top ranking the next day.

It was a short-lived stay.

Kerr's record-setting, 12-shot win at the LPGA Championship vaulted her four places to No. 1 on June 28 and she held the position for 21 days until Miyazato slipped past her during an off-week for the tour.

Miyazato's lead on July 19 was just .0006 points over Kerr -- a virtual tie. But it only lasted seven days. Shin regained the No. 1 spot by winning the lucrative Evian Masters in France over one of the best non-major fields in women's golf.

Shin's reign lasted through Yani Tseng's win at the British Women's Open, but Kerr passed her last Monday following another off-week. It was another brief reign, ended by Miyazato's win over the weekend.

So what's the big deal? And who cares about women's golf anyway?

Well, you should. The rankings back-and-forth is good for the women's game, adding the extra drama needed in the wake of Ochoa's departure. It was the second time in less than two years the LPGA lost its biggest star, leaving a vacuum that needed desperately to be filled.

Instead of one player stepping in to fill the void, however, many have risen.

In fact, the LPGA might want to try harder in hyping the battle for No. 1, particularly with so many viable contenders.

If the PGA Tour and its networks can have success in getting fans interested in the FedEx Cup race by keeping a running update of players' positions, why can't the LPGA do the same thing for the rankings?

Consider this: At one point Sunday, Miyazato and Kerr were tied for the lead, with No. 3 Shin one stroke back and No. 4 Suzann Pettersen two strokes behind. Any one of them would have been No. 1 with a victory.

If the same thing happened on the men's side, it would look like this: Woods and Mickelson tied for the lead, with Lee Westwood one back and Steve Stricker trailing by two. A race for the men's No. 1 on the line.

The outcome Sunday was up in the air until Kerr dunked her approach shot into the water on the 18th hole and made bogey. The stroke not only affected the outcome of the tournament, allowing Miyazato to win by two shots with a closing par, it affected the world rankings.

"Kerr-plunk," wrote the dutiful employee who updates the LPGA's Twitter feed. "Unless Ai does something disastrous, that might be the tournament."

And it was. The re-shuffled rankings looked like this on Monday: Miyazato trailed by Kerr, Pettersen, Shin and Tseng to round out the top five. Miyazato's lead for the moment is still only about a half-point over Kerr.

"I think it's going to be back and forth again, because all the top-five players are just playing so good this year," Miyazato said Sunday. "I don't really feel like I'm that far above everyone else, so that's why I think that the rankings will still keep on changing."

The race for the men's No. 1 ranking is exciting, yes, but it hasn't developed into anything more than a race at this point. Woods, despite all his recent struggles, has held the spot for 272 consecutive weeks.

Mickelson enters this week's Barclays only .26 average points behind -- .23 fewer points than last week and almost a half a point closer than he was heading into PGA Championship. But he has yet to step forward to answer the call with a performance befitting the No. 1 ranking.

On the women's side, meanwhile, players can smell blood in the water.

"I'm dying to get into that mix," No. 8 Paula Creamer, the U.S. Women's Open champion, said recently.

Jump right in. The water's warm.

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How to bet pro football

There is little doubt that the NFL is where the sportsbooks see the most action and also make the most loot. The NFL possesses betting friendly attributes that are unlike any of the other major sports. First off, there are relatively few teams to keep track of in comparison to college football betting or college basketball. And second, these teams play only once a week which makes staying on top of the results much easier than it is in the daily leagues such as the NBA, NHL, and MLB.

These dynamics, along with the sheer excitement of watching and wagering on football, brings more square action to the table than any of the other sports. Almost every Tom, Dick and Harry in America is an NFL expert in their own mind and that is precisely what the oddsmakers prey upon.

Understanding who bets the games is just as important as understanding which teams are playing the games. The market at times will dictate price, which in the betting world means the oddsmakers cater to the public rather than reality.

Knowing the market inside and out is the basis of our NFL handicapping model. That is, our approach to NFL handicapping is of the contrarian or value seeking variety. We will at times place a higher premium on public sentiment than on the fundamentals. This strategy dictates playing dogs and/or lesser competent teams, or teams the public wants nothing to do with. Or better yet, fading the teams the oddsmakers want you to bet on.

Along these same lines, we carry a similar notion that the first week of the NFL season presents one of the ripest opportunities for the astute gambler. This conflicts with conventional wisdom and/or handicapping lore, as most would say it is better to watch a few games and assess each team before jumping in with both feet. That’s all fine and dandy, but there are some interesting trends to exploit in Week 1 and we’d be remiss to ignore them. Let us quickly explain.

Gone are the days of dynasties, where the same core players stay intact and dominate the league year after year. Free agency and player movements can completely transform teams from one season to the next. In today’s parity-driven NFL, poor teams typically don’t stay poor for all that long and excellent teams must constantly reinvent themselves to stay on top.

The temptation might be to assume prior year results are the best indicator of who is going to cover in Week 1. To Joe Public, playoff teams from the prior season, home teams, favorites, and so one, look even more enticing than usual since there is no current season performance to judge them against. But the question begs: are the oddsmakers setting a trap?

To find the answer, we culled five years worth of Week 1 NFL data. As always, all of our analysis is done from an ATS perspective. The purpose here is to share the most important angles we unearthed and try to explain the logic behind them. So strap on your helmet, throw on your shoulder pads, and follow our lead as we expose some rare holes in the oddsmakers’ line of defense.

Home vs. Away Teams

Over the past five seasons, NFL home teams in Week 1 are just 31-42-7 ATS (42 percent). This of course implies that roadies are a 58 percent winning proposition during this time. The public at large has a tendency to overvalue home teams and this is especially true in Week 1 when there is no current season data to make predictions from. Consequently, the oddsmakers almost surely shade the home teams, by and large making road teams the choice for the value player.

Conclusion: Look long and hard at road teams first when handicapping the opening week.

Price ranges

Favorites are just 31-42-7 ATS (42 percent) in the opening week over the past five NFL seasons (Coincidentally, home teams hold the same ATS record as noted above). This means that underdogs bark at a 58 percent clip. Mid-range favorites performed the worst among our specified price ranges. In particular, favorites priced between –3 1/2 and –6 1/2 are only 8-15 ATS (35 percent) during this time.

The same basic pattern holds true when looking at home favorites (road favorites gravitate towards a 50 percent mean). Home favorites indeed are just 21-32-3 ATS (40 percent) in the first week of NFL action since 1999. Again, mid-range favorites are similarly the poorest performers when we look at home teams. Consider that home teams priced between –3 1/2 and –6 1/2 have stumbled to a 6-13 ATS (32 percent) mark in Week 1 games the past five seasons.

Conclusion: Like home teams, favorites and particularly mid-range favorites are generally overvalued in Week 1.

Playoff teams

It might surprise you to learn that playoff teams from the prior year versus non-playoff teams from the prior year are a mere 16-23-3 (41 percent) ATS in NFL Week 1 games over the past five seasons. Home teams which made the playoffs versus teams which did not make the playoffs from the prior season drop to a meager 7-14-1 ATS (33 percent) during this time.

Why are playoff teams, and in particular those at home, such bad bets the past five openers? Just as the case with home teams and with favorites, oddsmakers intentionally overprice playoff teams in the opening week to compensate for the public’s propensity to over bet them.

This theory holds true just looking at straight-up records from the past season as well. That is, home teams with winning records from the prior season vs. road teams with losing records from the prior season are just 8-13 ATS in Week 1 NFL games since 1999.

Conclusion: Playoff teams from the prior year and in particular, home playoff teams, are overvalued in Week 1 NFL games.

Scoring defense and scoring offense

Do good defenses and for that matter good offenses from the prior season fare better against the number the following year in Week 1 games? Well, sort of. Generally speaking, teams with a solid offense or defense from the prior season tend to do well in the opening week so long as they are on the road. As a host, however, the best offenses and best defenses from the prior year tend to be overvalued in Week 1.

Consider that the top five scoring defenses (i.e. points allowed) from the prior season are a nice 8-4 ATS (66 percent) on the road in NFL openers the past five seasons. Meanwhile, the top five scoring defenses from the prior season are just 3-8-2 ATS (27 percent) as a host in Week 1 during the same time period.

There is no discernable advantage or disadvantage for teams with a top five scoring offense (i.e. points scored) in Week 1 games. However, when we look at scoring offenses from the bottom up (isolating the five worst offenses from the prior season), the results are rather interesting. In particular, teams ranked in the bottom five in scoring offense from the prior season are 9-4-1 ATS (69 percent) when on the road in Week 1.

The logic is simply that the public perception is a poor scoring offensive unit from the year prior will have little chance of winning on the road in Week 1. In turn, the oddsmakers compensate for this perception and these poor offensive teams from the year prior carry extra line value on the Week 1 trail.

Conclusion: Teams with top-ranked defenses from the previous season are good bets when playing on the road, but poor bets when playing at home. Also, teams ranked among the bottom five in scoring offense from the prior season are generally a good value in their Week 1 openers, provided they are playing on the road.

Scoring margin

An exceedingly straightforward way of measuring scoring offense and scoring defense together as a whole is to look at a team's “margin." Margin is simply scoring offense minus scoring defense, which is a fairly clear-cut measure of how a team does on both sides of the ball. Typically, the higher the margin, the better the team.

In this regard, it might seem counterintuitive that teams carrying the higher margin from the prior season in week one matchups are merely 31-42-7 ATS (42 percent). Furthermore, road teams with the higher margin are 14-20-6 ATS (41 percent), while home teams with the higher margin are 17-22-1 ATS (44 percent). Once again, these results line up with the theory that better teams from the prior year are overvalued come opening day of the following season.

Conclusion: “Better” teams, which often boast a higher margin than their opponent, are overvalued the following season in NFL openers.

In sum

Oddsmakers cater NFL betting lines to match public perception and also to bait the public into poor bets. The temptation to use the prior year’s success as a buy sign for how a team will perform against the spread in Week 1 of the following season is an enormous trap.

The fact is, isolating road teams, road dogs, non-playoff teams vs. playoff teams, teams with a losing record or low margin vs. playoff teams or ones with a high margin from the previous year is where the line value resides. Quite simply, taking the road less traveled is your surest path to NFL betting profits.

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