Golf Betting: CA Championship

Prizes for originality may not be winding their way to Bettingchoice Towers this week, but those of you who lump on Tiger Woods to clinch the CA Championship (Thursday, Sky Sports 2, 6pm) at Centrebet's standout 19/20 may just want to send us Easter eggs this Sunday. Woods is simply the greatest sportsman of this generation, whose continued supremacy in his chosen field would be hailed as astounding if it wasn't so monotonously predictable. While most players who dominate their profession tail off after a few years, to be replaced by the next world No1, the gap between Woods and his peers continues to widen as his performances simply get better. The 30-year-old has now won six successive official tournaments, seven if you include his own tournament - The Target World Challenge. He is unbeaten in six months and is a very real prospect to clinch the Calendar Grand Slam this year - already recommended by this column in December at 33/1. He is now as short as 7/1 to win all four. Last week's win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational was all the more remarkable for the fact that he started so badly. At the start of play on Saturday he was fully seven shots off the lead. And yet he brought a whole new meaning to the phrase 'moving day' by bridging that gulf to lead the tournament by the end of the third round. Woods has won it all, is rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams and yet the hunger remains to keep producing excellence. He needed a birdie to win at Bay Hill on Sunday and he made it by sinking a 25-footer at the last- his only successful long-distance putt of the tournament. Quite simply, he is in a league of his own. The American had a stuttering season last year but that was partly due to him ironing out the 'faults' in his game as well as becoming a father for the first time. Now, though, he is ready to take his game to a new plane by winning this tournament for the fourth year in a row - and the seventh in all: take the Tiger line. For each-way punters Justin Leonard fits the bill as a well-priced long-shot. The Prince Andrew doppelganger has made 13 consecutive cuts, including eight top 10 finishes (one win, one runners-up finish) and is 80/1. At 66s Hunter Mahan, who came sixth at Bayhill, is also a worthy challenger but at the same price, Sean O'Hair's case makes the most appeal, the Texan having come first and third in his last two starts. Verdict: 5pts Tiger Woods to win @ 19/10 (Canbet); 2pts e/w Sean O'Hair @ 66/1 (Canbet); 1pt e/w Justin Leonard @ 80/1 (Canbet); 1pt e/w Hunter Mahan @ 66/1 (Canbet).