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WHAT a day it was with a Scot winning the Grand National. Ryan Mania was the Galashiels-born jockey on board surprise winner Auroras Encore.
He's the first Scots jockey to take the big prize at Aintree since 1896 – coincidentally the last time Scotland qualified for the World Cup!
Anyway here are today's racing tips as we all get down from the buzz of the National.
Hexham 3.45
SWATOW TYPHON
He has won two hurdle races and a NH flat race from 2m to 3m on soft and heavy ground. Won on his latest outing in a hurdle race when 8-11fav at Ayr over 3m (soft) last month, beating Kris Cross by 1 1/4l. Has won 3 times at Ayr this season.
Ascot 2.50
MOLOTOF
Winner of three hurdle races and two chases from 2m to 2m 4f on ground varying from good to heavy. Well beaten at 25-1 behind Benefficient when eighth of 13 on his latest outing in a Grade 2 chase in the Group 2 Jewson Novices' Chase at Cheltenham over 2m 4f (good to soft) last month. Has won at Warwick and Taunton this season.
Limerick 4.05
UPSIE
She has won a hurdle race and two NH flat races from 1m 4f to 2m on ground varying from good to soft – heavy. Won on her latest outing in a maiden hurdle race when 4-7 fav at Naas over 2m (soft – heavy) in February, beating Aerlite Supreme by 4l.
Curragh 3.20
YELLOW ROSEBUD
She has won three times from 7f to 1m on ground varying from good to heavy. Beaten 1 3/4l by Rehn's Nest when second of five at 8-11 fav on her latest outing here over 1m (heavy) last month.
Milesey
GambleAware
WIN and PLACE
————–
IVAN BORU in the 14:00 at Hexham.
This gelding finished fourth to Ready Token in a bumper at Southwell last month. He made good progress four furlongs from home but weakened in the testing conditions a furlong from home. He will appreciate the better ground on his hurdles debut and could run well at a big price.
At present he is trading at 9.6 on the exchange.
On Behalf of “” MILESEY “”
its a non runner swatow typhoon
“”””””””WIN and PLACE
————–
IVAN BORU in the 14:00 at Hexham.””””””””
2ND AT A BETFAIR SP OF 14.31 ;) ;)
Hexham 3.45
SWATOW TYPHON
Limerick 4.05
UPSIE
BOTH NON RUNNERS TODAY
Milesey, nice one. Right, off to work. Wonder how the boy Mania is after his bad fall at Hexham.
Grand National-winner Ryan Mania suffers injuries at Hexham
Grand National-winning jockey Ryan Mania has been detained in hospital after suffering serious neck and back injuries in a fall at Hexham.
The 23-year-old Scot – who steered Auroras Encore to a famous 66-1 success at Aintree on Saturday – fell in the 15:10 St John Lee Handicap Hurdle.
Mania, who was said to be “stable”, later tweeted: “Thanks so much for all the messages. I’m grand.
“Staying in hospital to get another scan tomorrow then should be home.”
Mania was riding for National-winning trainer Sue Smith on Stagecoach Jasper at Hexham just hours after posing for photographs with Auroras Encore at his stables in West Yorkshire.
He appeared to suffer a heavy kick between his shoulder blades after his horse fell, and was treated for more than half-an-hour at the track before being airlifted to hospital. He was conscious as he was put into the air ambulance on a spinal board.
His injuries were assessed as “severe/serious” at the course but he was later said to be in a stable condition on arrival at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.
Mania will undergo a precautionary MRI scan on Monday morning.
A spokesman for the Great North Air Ambulance said: “Mr Mania has received neck and back injuries. He came off the horse at high speed and may have been hit by another horse while he was on the ground.
“He has been given extensive painkillers and is currently in a stable condition.”
Clerk of the course James Armstrong later reported: “His agent and his partner are with him. I know that he’s had some scans and they are waiting for the results but there’s no news more than that at the moment.”
Paul Struthers, chief executive of the Professional Jockeys Association, tweeted: “@Mania450 is in hospital with friends and family. He’s awaiting scan results. Fingers crossed not as bad as first feared. He thanks everyone for their well wishes. Further updates when we have them. #getwellsoon.”
Milesey
Back in 1997, at just 21 years, 3 months and 14 days, Tiger Woods became the youngest player to win the US Masters. It was the first of his four wins at Augusta to date and he did it in the most remarkable fashion. Having shot 40 on the front-nine on day one, he went on to win the title by an incredible 12 strokes – the widest margin in the history of the event.
Further Green Jackets were added to the Woods wardrobe in 2001, 2002 and 2005 but since then, he’s drawn a blank.
His followers this week will no doubt all point to the fact that he’s had his well-documented problems both on and off the fairways and that he’s possibly not been at his stratospheric best since 2005. And even though he hasn’t, he’s still finished inside the top-6 in six of the seven years since but we punters are being asked to take no more than 5.0 about him this time around and we have to decide whether that’s value.
It’s a well known fact that Tiger bags nearly all of his wins at the same courses nowadays so let’s take a look at his record at his favourite haunts since that last US Masters title back in 2005.
At his beloved Torrey Pines, including his US Open win with a broken leg, he’s won five times. He’s been successful four times at both Bay Hill and Firestone. He’s added three more wins to his CV at Doral and Sherwood and he’s also picked up a pair of wins at Muirfield Village, home of the Memorial.
I don’t think you can justifiably use the form argument to defend his record over the last seven years at Augusta when you look at his record elsewhere over the same period. He has a great record at Augusta but it’s not fantastic when compared to his record at the tracks mentioned above.
It’s harder to dismiss his chances on current form, given he’s won three of his last four stroke play events (at Torrey Pines, Doral and Bay Hill) and given that on each of those three occasions nobody putted better than him but there are niggles about the rest of his game.
He ranked 72nd for Driving Accuracy when he won at Bay Hill last time out, he’s only once ranked inside the top-ten for Greens in Regulation this year, at Doral, and he’s ranked outside the top-20 for Scrambling every week. All signs that, putting aside, his game isn’t quite at its peerless best.
I may well be playing the devil’s advocate role a bit here but if you’re about to pile in on anyone to win a major at less than 5.00, a cautionary tap on the shoulder never does any harm. He’s the best we’ve ever seen, he’s in fair form and his record at Augusta in recent years is decent.
Is he a value bet at around 4.8 to win the US Masters? I don’t think he is.
some of the trends to follow and the pitfalls to avoid at the US Masters
It really doesn’t look like it form where I’m sitting, with snow still draping hill and vale alike and it certainly doesn’t feel like it whenever I venture outside either, with a persistent easterly wind biting hard, but spring must be on it’s way because the US Masters starts on Thursday.
Its position in the calendar isn’t the only reason I await the year’s first major so eagerly though. With its famous azaleas, dogwoods and perfectly manicured fairways, Augusta is very easy on the eye and I can’t be the only one that fondly remembers the pre-Sky Sports days when the US Masters was one of the few treats us golf fans got, but the real reason I’ve warmed to the event so much is that it’s a great tournament to bet on. Here’s a few pointers to get you started.
Do back an outsider if you fancy one. Four of the last six winners have started the week at triple-figure odds and last year’s winner, Bubba Watson, wasn’t a short price either at 60.0. With a superb Masters pedigree, Phil Mickelson surprised no one when he won here for the third time three years ago but very few picked out 2011 champion, Charl Schwartzel, nor the three that preceded Mickelson – Zach Johnson, Trevor Immelman and Angel Cabrera were all shock winners.
Don’t take any notice of the no Aussie winner stat. It’s true that no player from Down Under has triumphed yet but there’s absolutely no reason why. Greg Norman came closest, famously blowing a six shot lead with a round to go in 1996, and Adam Scott wasn’t far away two years ago either. Last year’s Open Championship wasn’t the first time he hit odds-on in a major – he traded at a low of 1.39 before Schwartzel’s birdie blitz and two fellow Aussies were also placed that year – Jason day and Geoff Ogilvy.
Do take plenty of notice of the South Africans. Aussies may have struggled but the South Africans have an incredible record, as Paul Krishnamurty highlights here.
Don’t back the winner of Wednesday’s Par 3 Contest in the event itself. In existence since 1960, no winner of the Par 3 Contest has gone on to win the main event in the same year. If ever there was a competition nobody wants to win, it’s this one.
Do back a hole-in-one on day four. There have been nine aces in the last nine years and eight of them have come on the 16th hole on Sunday. I see no reason for the organisers to end the practice of placing the pin in a favourable spot there and if you wait until the end of play on Saturday before backing Yes in the Hole-In-One market you may well get rewarded handsomely.
Don’t back a debutant. Jason Day’s 276 total two years ago was the lowest for a first-timer (finished tied 2nd) and a magnificent effort but other than the first two champs (Horton Smith in 1934 and Gene Sarazen a year later), Fuzzy Zoeller, back in 1979, is still the only other player to win on debut.
Do get involved in-running and do concentrate on the leaders. Schwartzel was tied 7th after round one two years ago and that’s the furthest back any winner’s been over the last seven years after day one. Masters legends, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, are the only winners this century to win having been outside the top-ten after round one. Augusta is NOT a catch-up course.
Don’t back defending champ, Bubba Watson, unless you think he’s a player out of the very top drawer. The only players to successfully defend so far are Jack Nicklaus (1965/66), Nick Faldo (1989/90), and Tiger Woods (2001/02).
Do put the radio on if you’re serious about trading. It can drive you bonkers trying to watch the event on TV whilst listening to it on the radio at that same time but if you’re serious about making it a profitable week, it may just be worth it.
Don’t back anyone outside the final pairing on Sunday. The last two winners, Watson and Schwartzel didn’t play in the final group and a Stuart Appleby stumble let in Zach Johnson in 2007 but they’re the only three winners not to have started day four in the final two-ball in over 20 years.
Gore Vidal once said: “every time a friend succeeds, I die a little. It’s an ugly truth about the human condition and its tendency towards the self-involved. But it’s also to deny the more salient reality that if we are to make it as a race, from an evolutionary perspective, we must all acknowledge that we are a common project whose survival and progress is actually predicated on the success of our peers.
South African golfers appear to have grasped this greener-pastures philosophy better than most. Especially on the lush fairways of Augusta National. Rather than viewing one another’s achievements through the prism of jealousy, they instead saw them through the mirror of imitation.
Gary Player, The Black Knight, was the first to get the ball rolling for Saffer fans, all the way back his first Masters victory in 1961. But it was this lone warrior’s heroics in 1978 (his ninth and final major) which appear to have inspired two mini-generations of junior golfers in his homeland, who grew up desperate to mimic even a fraction of his fame and fortune.
Those two production lines are now at an intersection, with one waning and the other still emerging. Ernie Els and Retief Goosen led the charge of the older brigade in the 1990s. The pair had flourished together in amateur golf, profiting along the way from Player’s guidance and example.
Neither man was tailor-made for the Green Jacket, however, repeatedly winding up a wafer shy of greatness. Records combined, they were four times the bridesmaid, recording countless other Top 10 finishes around Amen Corner. Still, six majors between them – with Big Ernie’s emotional Open triumph at Lytham last year the climax – isn’t a bad haul. And while Goosen is absent from the line-up after persistent back problems, Els returns plagued by hip issues and a new short putter.
The affable Tim Clark may be younger but is himself barely clinging to his 30s. I’m not about to knock that but this pint-sized player has been taken out of his comfort zone by the continuous lengthening of this mammoth par-72. So, in short, it’s all set up for South Africa’s generation next, many of whom have been blossoming in tandem with the April azaleas in recent years.
Trevor Immelman shed his majorless skin here in 2008 when even an in-form Tiger Woods proved no match for him on the back nine. Immelman has finally recovered from the spate of wrist injuries he subsequently suffered and despite some missed cuts, even hinting at a return to form. He has only once been outside the Top 20 (and never MC-ed) since his landmark win and could rate a livewire outsider at a course that clearly engenders many warm and fuzzies.
But the two towering and in-form talents are best friends Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel. Oosthuizen, of course, lost out to Bubba Watson’s flair for dramatics from the trees in last year’s play-off. But at least he finally put in a positive performance around a course which suits his eye. In truth, there aren’t many tracks which don’t, so technically proficient and effortless is King Louis’ swing. He closed strongly for a top ten at his warm-up event in Houston and must be respected in his attempt to go one better.
Nick Faldo reckons the only swing in better shape than Oosthuizen’s is that of his compatriot and peer, Schwartzel. That’s some boast, but the 28-year-old’s form this year has been as consistent as it has been impressive – sure sign of a textbook swinger in high gear (one win, four top tens and no worse than 16th in his strokeplay events on either side of the pond). Inspired by Oosty’s seven-shot romp at St Andrews three years ago, Schwartzel became the first player to birdie the final four holes in the last round when he broke his major duck here in 2011. He accordingly has a strong favourite’s chance of taking leading honours among his countrymen.
Another South African with some course form is Richard Sterne, who finished in a share of 25th on his bow here in 2008. He has battled a dodgy back ever since, but is managing his game and niggles better this term and could surprise a few. Although for my money, Sterne remains an outsider more likely to be usurped by a pair of promising debutants in Branden Grace and George Coetzee.
Grace has qualified courtesy of a breakout season which came from nowhere. While his dead-eye putting could be made for these treacherous greens where only the confident survive, he is already showing signs of the stress at being asked to back up a career year.
By contrast, Coetzee is still to win on tour. Yet he has endured a string of near-misses and will surely fall over the line eventually. First-time out in the Masters would surely be a bridge too far, but this bull of a golfer has readily adapted to the stringent demands of the US circuit (no weekends off). Coetzee could surprise some of his more esteemed colleagues around a lay-out that will suit his power game and is also one to watch out for in the Top Debutant betting bracket.
All these men will be trying to fearlessly joust like The Black Knight, and run another triumphant lance up Magnolia Drive. Player’s deeds have instilled a legacy of fearlessness and fellowship among his compatriots.
And every time one of them succeeds, another assuredly follows.
Top South African
Back Charl Schwartzel
Back George Coetzee
Top Debutant
Back George Coetzee
It really won’t affect most people’s golf if they ban the belly putter. Ban the belly itself from the greens of the local course and quite a few amateurs might have a problem, but the putter? No issue at all.
One of the most mystifying aspects of the debate that has raged about the broom handle since Ernie Els used it to win last year’s Open is this – if it really makes so much difference, why don’t we see all weekend golfers using it? They spend fortunes on drivers that are supposed to hit the ball an extra 20 yards, pounds more on having the best irons or trying out hybrid clubs to recover from the rough. So if a long-handled putter really guarantees saving shots all the way round, why haven’t they taken over?
The answer, of course, is that in the end it is down to the man using the stick and not the putter itself. Just as wearing Cristiano Ronaldo’s boots can’t make you twizzle your way past four defenders before clipping it over the keeper on a Sunday morning, so borrowing a putter off Ernie Els won’t help you shoot a 69 on the local links.
The essence of the art of putting surely remains the ability to read the way the ball will break, and judge the pace it will run at. If like me you regularly decide its right-to-left, and then roll the ball towards the hole and watch it go left-to-right, it would really make no difference if you were to use a broom head as well as a handle.
That has been Els’s standpoint since the debate gathered momentum as he conquered Royal Lytham last summer. Golf’s traditionalists have never liked the long handle since Bernhard Langer first resorted to it. The fact that three of the last five Major winners have used one – Keegan Bradley and Webb Simpson were the others – has merely fuelled the argument.
Els had made impassioned pleas about being forced to change. And Langer, now playing the Seniors tour, has also thrown his weight into the argument. “I have been using it for 35 years. If you are talking that long putters are not part of the history of the game, what about big metal drivers, two-piece balls or hybrids?” is his standpoint.
Meanwhile The Big Easy gets one last chance to make a stand at Augusta next week when he’s announced he plans to bring out his belly putter for its last Major outing. He used it for the last of four rounds at the Chiangmai Golf Classic in Thailand last week, and took just 29 putts for a two-under par 70. I know you’d be impressed if it wasn’t for the fact he’d shot 66 using a short putter the day before, but it does suggest he’s running into form at the right time.
The reigning Open champion is a remarkable price of 170.0 to win the Masters, and in the early market anywhere up to 16.5 just to get in the top 20. They are both generous prices – he has the big game mentality and experience, that beautiful swing was looking as good as ever in Thailand, and he’s got one last chance to use his long handle before it is consigned to history.
Monotheistic belief systems may be ascendant among the world’s religions these days, but there was a time when polytheisms dominated the landscape. The Ancient Greeks, for example, shunned the idea of one all-powerful benevolent god, opting instead for a series of lesser deities who weren’t quite so enamoured of men and mice.
Sure, these gods had their favourite mortals whom they might save or reward if they were on a going day. But for the most part, they seemed to delight in testing mankind, tripping it up, or condemning it to eternal torment in Hades. Less consistent and loving, more temperamental and vindictive.
Sacked from their Mt Olympus residence and hounded from the temples and churches, it appears these fallen idols have since set up shop as golfing gods, trying to rebuild their shattered divine status.
Where better, one might ask? After all, golf is the sport of the cruel and the capricious, where you always lose more than you win. Just ask the British contenders headed for Augusta National this year, all of whom have been saying their prayers around Amen Corner for years. Only trouble is: no-one’s got back to them since 1996.
Heaven, of course, wasn’t always so heedless of the UK contingent. After a series of milestone victories from Blighty’s greatest players in the late Eighties to early Nineties, it seemed that there would always be some green of Augusta’s foreign field that would remain forever Britain.
First came Sandy Lyle’s highland jig in 1988. Then Nick Faldo donned back-to-back green jackets. Before the pocket Welsh dragon, Ian Woosnam, reinforced his World No.1 ranking with a win in 1991. It was too easy.
Remember, though, that the gods of golf are cruel and capricious. And while Faldo benefitted from Greg Norman’s defining collapse five years later, no British golfer has followed in his Footjoys subsequently. Colin Montgomerie, Lee Westwood, Darren Clarke, Paul Casey, Ian Poulter, Graeme McDowell, Luke Donald, Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell, Justin Rose… pick your favourite name, each has been barred from the Butler Cabin.
The modern UK army, despite prominent challenges and even more prominent world rankings, just can’t seem to get it done like their forefathers. Granted, you might counter that their deficiency isn’t restricted to The Masters. In fact, those Northern Irish lads aside, none of the aforementioned has ever won a major.
So will history continue to weigh heavily on the British challenge at Augusta this year? With American players carrying all before them on the PGA Tour this term, the odds certainly appear stacked against our raiding party from across the pond.
McIlroy is a few new clubs short of a full set. McDowell is sidetracked by his restaurant business. Donald is back basking in the shade of Tiger Woods. Poults is all mouth and loud trousers away from the Ryder Cup. While Westwood is now 0-for-59 in major championships.
Which really just leaves Justin Rose as our likeliest lad. Rose himself knows the pain of major championship underachievement better than most. Ever since announcing himself on the Open’s grandest stage as a wide-eyed 17-year-old with fourth position in 1998, Rose has lived with a burden of expectation that has grown heavier with the mounting seasons.
That fourth place at Birkdale remains his highest finish in a major. But Rose has been a sure and steady improver over the years, now at a career-high number three in the world. Multiple tour wins, money lists, even a WGC mean that cracking one of golf’s big four is the only frontier left.
Augusta could well prove the safest bridge to crossing that final frontier. Rose is deceptively long and blessed of a beautiful putting stroke which is the key component to demystifying the rapid reads of these unique greens. He has finished in the top 11 here three times in the past six years, while he has clocked up five runner-up finishes in top-tier events in the last year.
Naturally, the one salient negative is Rose’s failure to win during that period. Coupled to his 0-36 record in the majors. Losing to Tiger Woods is fine. Being closed at by a Jamie Donaldson three-putt, as happened at Abu Dhabi in January, is less forgivable. So if Rose does get himself into position to dislodge that monkey on his back nine, he must view it as a great chance to break through and not another opportunity to break down.
That’s a comment which also applies to his fellow island-dwellers in Masters week. Britain holds three of the globe’s top four players – and six of the top 17. It’s a current crop long overdue an Augusta harvest.
Perhaps they just need those fickle golfing gods to smile on them. Like any faith, that’s a matter of belief trumping the available evidence.
Top UK and Ireland
Back Justin Rose
Fingers crossed, the sun’s going to be around for a while. However, that asteroid which recently crash-landed in the Russian backwater of Chelyabinsk has already had its light extinguished from the universe.
In golfing terms, if Tiger Woods is the ever-present solar force holding the game in his thrall, Brandt Snedeker is perhaps the meteor which lit up the sky for a while only to fade to black.
Suggestions of Snedeker’s demise would naturally seem greatly exaggerated. Especially as he’s the current world number five and was arguably the best golfer on the planet until the a few weeks ago. But a few weeks ago, the world did rather flip on its axis.
For not only has Woods reasserted his stance at the helm of the game with back-to-back victories in big events, but Snedeker has also fallen victim to a rib injury on his lower-left side. Torso damage is de rigeur in golf, you might retort, yet the wound could not have come at a worse time for Sneds with major season fast-approaching.
Further, in a sport where trusting your swing is paramount, the likeable American has suffered a hit to his self-belief potentially more damaging than any strike to his solar plexus. After all, confidence allied to perhaps the most consistent putting stoke on tour propelled Snedeker to the Fedex Cup and a spot on Davis Love’s Ryder Cup team at the back-end of 2012.
It was as impressive as it was impromptu. The 32-year-old posted two wins and four more top-three finishes in nine successive PGA-sanctioned tournaments (33 of his 36 rounds were under par). But as soon as he had arrived, his ribs derailed him and he took four weeks out on the treatment table. Since his return, despite some redemptive putting near the top of the stats, Snedeker has failed to make an impact with back-to-back missed cuts at Bay Hill and Houston.
A knee-jerk diagnosis of terminal decline would seem premature in the extreme, especially when you consider he was also suffering from a bout of food poisoning the week before his official return. However, golf is littered with tales of players who flourished when the muse was with them before receding back into the halls of obscurity from which they came. Snedeker may appear to hold the cornerstone of long-term durability (on tour, that’s more commonly referred to as a brilliant short game) but his iron-play is decidedly second-rate when compared to his first-rate rivals.
In short, he appears America’s answer to Ian Poulter – a man making the most of his limited ball-striking talents in a sport increasingly prioritising his trump card: the flat-stick. Like Poults, though, Sneds has flirted with major contention (third at the 2008 Masters and the 36-hole leader at the Open last year) only to fall short in the province of the precise iron.
Despite his lacklustre recent efforts, he remains popular in the outright market for The Masters, tenth-in at 38 to back. To my mind, he is well short on the assurance and ability required to win at Augusta and may struggle to rediscover his form over the remaining course of the campaign. In a wildly fluctuating market, now is the time to sell his stock.
Snedeker’s gossamer-like touch will see him pop up on tour now and again. However, his world-beating form may prove the proverbial comet which burnt itself out, having dazzled for a brief yet spectacular moment. After a display of the sublime and the ridiculous at Augusta in 2008, he famously broke down on TV discussing his implosion to Trevor Immelman during that final round. And there may be more tears than joy to come this year.
In fact, Snedeker may already have had his days in the sun.
Recommended Bet
Lay Snedeker @ 4.0 to finish in the top 10
Will look at golf more closely during week. At the mo I thinking Oosthuizen, Mickelson, McIlroy n Schwartzel. Dont see Tiggggerrrrr winning/too erratic off the tee. Unless he can get that sorted he wont win. Inclined to throw a few duck hooks in. His opening drive at one of his Ryder Cup matches last year was the work of an 18hcper..horrendous..180 yard vicious duck hook 60 yards left…he wont get away with that at any of the majors, particularly US Open where you would require a sythe or a petrol strimmer to enable you to locate your ball far less play it and our Open at Muirfield is a brutal course with a little wind. He wont be able to play irons off the tee like he tried to do at last years Open at Lytham…hitting 200 yard second shots into rock hard British links green doesn’t work. Masters prob his best chance, if he dunt do it next week id reckon another 0 against his name for majors this season
Ryan Mania eh?..just shows ya how unpredictable life is :-(