Golf Betting Guide

The sport of golf is incredibly popular, not only with spectators, but also with people who have no interest in the game apart from a betting interest. Why? For several good reasons:

• Golf is a year-round sport. Hardly a week goes by without a tournament being held in some part of the world, and this gives bettors an enormous amount of action to choose from.

• It's an individual sport. You don't need to worry about how team members will play together or whether the manager will play a good formation. In golf, you're betting on the proven ability of just one man against the field.

• Information is widely accessible. Not only can you many golfing events live on television, you can access a wealth of statistical information that can help you analyse trends and patterns and thereby make more logical betting decisions about future events.

When betting on golf the two most common wagers are putting money on the golfer that you think will win (Betting to Win) or wagering on match-ups (Match-up Betting). Various sportsbooks offer different variations and choices when it comes to these types of wagers and golf betting in general.

Betting to Win

This is the most common golf betting opportunity with the PGA tournament schedule running almost every week throughout the year. That means you'll have around 50 wagering opportunities from January through December.

Top golfers, anywhere from two to 10, are usually listed somewhere from 5/1 to 14/1. An additional three dozen will carry odds ranging from 15/1 to 200/1. That leaves approximately 40 or more who are not listed individually but rather found under the category of the field. These are lesser-known and less accomplished pros. You can wager on everyone else-- the field-at odds of around 10/1.

Some sports betting sites also offer futures PGA tour betting & wagering on the four major tournaments - the Masters, the PGA Championship, the US Open and the British Open. As with any futures wagering (the term "futures" refers to placing a bet on an event weeks or months before it occurs), you'll usually get higher odds even on favorites because this type of bet is more risky due to the fact that it's tough to tell how a particular player will perform that far ahead of time. Four months before the Masters is played, who knows if Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson or Vijay Singh will be at the top of their game? You could see these leading pros listed at 10/1 or maybe even 12/1 in futures betting and at 5/1 or 6/1 the week of the tournament.

Match-up Betting

With this type of wager in golf betting, sportsbooks will pit one golfer against another in head-to-head competition. Because oddsmakers create these match-ups, they vary from site to site. It's a good idea to check out numerous online wagering sites to see which one offers what you determine to be a good mismatch.