How important is No. 1?

Golf Betting Lines

05/24/2010 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Phil Mickelson has another chance to become the No. 1 player in the world.

He had a below-average Players Championship, where he could've supplanted Tiger Woods. Now, Mickelson can once again lay claim to the top perch with a win this week at Colonial. A victory would get Mickelson into first.

The world rankings run on two-year cycles, which could be a bad thing if Mickelson can't get the duke this week. The points earned for his win at Colonial two years ago will be wiped away once Colonial starts, so a win for Mickelson would go a long way.

Mathematically, Mickelson can do it, but the question is, how important is it?

Any athlete should strive to be the best at his profession. The goal, especially in an individual sport such as golf, is to be at the top of your game, but Mickelson didn't even sound that impressed by doing it.

"It's every player's goal and intent to strive to be recognized as the No. 1 player in the world relative to the rankings," Mickelson said before the Players Championship. "It's certainly something that I have been striving for but have not achieved yet. And so it would mean a lot to me.

"But for me to accomplish that, I can't focus on that."

Yes, Mickelson wants to be No. 1, but he's not "focusing" on that.

A top ranking for Mickelson won't drastically alter his legacy. He's a four- time major champion with three green jackets and a PGA Championship. Mickelson has 38 PGA Tour titles and counting. He'll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and nothing can change that.

We can assume Mickelson is not yet done winning. He will turn 40 in a few short weeks and, barring injury, still has prime years left. Twenty-five of his tour wins came in this decade as well as all four majors, so there's plenty left in Mickelson's tank.

A safe bet is that Mickelson will win at least 10 more times. I will go out on a limb and say in the next six years, Mickelson will win a U.S. Open. (I'm actually thinking this year's at Pebble Beach.) He won't ever win the British Open. Sorry Mickelsons, but that appears to be reality. Mickelson's best finish in an Open Championship was a third in 2004, when he was nearly winning every major he saw.

In addition to a U.S. Open, it's probably wise to think he'll win another Masters. Augusta National is his course as much as Tiger's anymore. That's six majors in total for Mickelson and almost 50 PGA Tour wins.

Would anyone give up that career, even if it meant they couldn't be No. 1 in the world?

For some, reaching that plateau has been an albatross that has come close to crippling their careers. David Duval has never really been the same since he unseated Tiger in 1999. Sure, injuries have hampered his run, but Duval never loved that spot.

Mickelson could handle the spotlight better than Duval. Mickelson can handle the spotlight better than most politicians. That won't be a problem.

But Mickelson has never talked passionately about being the No. 1 player like Sergio Garcia or Ian Poulter have. Surely Mickelson wants to be the best, but it's not what has driven him.

Even Woods acknowledged that winning takes care of the rankings. Mickelson seems to believe the same thing.

When history writes the Mickelson story, being No. 1 in the world won't make or break him. Tom Lehman was first in the rankings...for a week. Lehman had a good career and a good run, but comparing his career to Mickelson's is a joke.

Mickelson is miles ahead of anyone other than Woods in this era. Speaking of eras, Mickelson has been the second-best player in the world in the Woods era. Woods will go down as the game's best player assuming his neck injury isn't dangerously bad or his personal life doesn't fall apart worse than it already has, and frankly, that's hard to imagine.

There's no shame in being the 1A to the greatest 1 of all time. Mickelson doesn't need this No. 1 ranking in the world as badly as someone else does. At 40, it would be a nice accomplishment, but Mickelson's career is already one of the best in history.

If a mathematical equation that would make John Nash blush doesn't say how great Mickelson is, I will. Being ranked No. 1 is not critical for Mickelson's career.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

- Youth has been served. A pair of 16-year-olds made the cut on both the PGA Tour and Nationwide Tour and Jason Day, the winner of the Byron Nelson, is a pup. I don't get too excited for things like this. Remember Ty Tryon? We all went cuckoo for our proverbial Coco Puffs when he made the tour, but now he's an afterthought in the golf world.

- Ernie Els redesigned Wentworth, the site of last week's BMW PGA Championship. He got slaughtered by other players for his work and was steamed. He thought the players could go to him to complain, but do people actually speak to the man they have problems with anymore, or do they just bellyache to others?

- This is the end of the Vijay Singh era. He is the best post-40 player of the last 30 years.

- Movie moment - If "Sex and the City" movies can make buckets of money, why wouldn't producers make movies out of all recent successful shows? Imagine if some of them were actually good? Saw the first Sex and the City (girlfriend) and later that night a plastic chair I sat on broke and I slammed my head into a house. That probable concussion was a much better experience than sitting through the movie.

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Betting the NFL preseason

Rule No. 1 in the gamblers' handbook states, "Avoid sports betting on meaningless games."

When you're drowning in a sea of baseball monotony, however, things change. Even a hint of pro football betting can persuade the most disciplined bettor to break a few rules. 

The NFL preseason is around the corner, with a tempting Hall of Fame match kicking off on Sunday. But bettors must stay vigilant. Wagering on NFL exhibition games is an entirely different beast than the regular season. Most fans don't recognize the players on the field because starters get as much action in August as Warcraft fans get on Prom night.

The only certainty about the NFL this time of year is uncertainty – and yet there are some who say betting in August can be a gold mine.

“I actually feel the NFL preseason presents solid profit opportunities for sharp bettors and handicappers,” Sports Expert Steve Merril explains. “My experience has been that the sportsbooks fear the preseason, which is evident by lower limits and massive moves.”

The line moves are attributed to the limited knowledge available regarding playing-time distribution. One team’s top unit out on the field for one more series has an impact on the pointspread. Setting lines in the preseason often is a shot in the dark.

“We base the betting lines mostly on public perception,” Pete Korner, founder of the Sports Club in Las Vegas, says. “It’s very tough to predict, almost a guessing game.”

The preseason is all about figuring out who’s in and for how long.

“It becomes a race between bettors and oddsmakers to find out how long the quarterbacks are going to stay in,” Korner admits. “If a sharp gets the information first, he could exploit an early line. I’m a full believer in moving the line in the preseason if the books find out something late in the week.”

Determining what each team’s motive is can help bettors handicap. To do this you must pay close attention to the philosophies head coaches employ in exhibition play.

“You need to know what a coach is trying to accomplish,” says Covers Expert Bryan Leonard. “Sometimes a new coach will want to instill a winning attitude. Others just want to make sure their starters don’t get hurt."

So how do you distinguish who’s playing scared and who’s playing for keeps?

“Head coaches on the hot seat or new coaches trying to implement a winning attitude usually try harder to win in the preseason,” Merril says.

Cleveland Browns head coach Romeo Crennel fits this criteria. He’s entering his third season as the sideline boss and has yet to lead the Browns to more than six wins.

Cleveland is an enticing bet as well because of the unresolved quarterback situation. General manager Phil Savage sacrificed the Browns’ first-round pick in next year’s draft for Brady Quinn, but the former Notre Dame quarterback hasn’t signed or reported to training camp yet.

Charlie Frye and Derek Anderson split time at QB last season and it looks like either player (or even Quinn) could be the opening-day starter.

“If a team has quarterback depth and the pecking order hasn’t been decided, it’s a big advantage,” Leonard says.

Even in the third week of the preseason when starters generally play the most, the final outcome of the game is in the hands of fringe players. A team's talent, all the way down to the last man on the roster, is something to consider.

The New England Patriots have long been considered one of the deeper teams in the NFL and coach Bill Belichick has said in the past he’s unafraid of stars getting hurt in games with nothing on the line. He shocked his colleagues in 2003 by playing some of his starters on special teams in the preseason.

“We want to have the team ready to play a tough, physical game and preparation has to go into that and I imagine a certain amount of injuries go with it,” Belichick told the Providence Journal in August 2003.

Bettors can only hope to find more teams that share the Pats' business-like approach to the preseason (New England is 17-9-3 against the spread since 2000) and take advantage of teams who detest the exhibition schedule.

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