Capelle On Golf

Obviously the schedule makers didn’t confide on this or didn’t care, but the result is that we viewers have three juicy events to watch on Sunday. The WGC Bridgestone takes center stage, consuming five hours on Sunday. During the first two hours we can flip over to ABC for the delayed final round of the Women’s British Open. Then during the final three hours we get to alternate with the US Senior Open. Here are the times, all ET.

Women’s British Open 1-3pm ABC
WGC - Bridgestone 1-6pm CBS
US Senior Open 3-6pm NBC

WGC Bridgestone
The leaderboard is about as good as it can get without Tiger Woods on the premises. We’ve got triple major winners Mickelson and Singh tied for the lead along with Westwood, who finished third at the US Open. The oddsmakers at Ladbrokes like Mickelson’s chances the best by far, perhaps because he’s already won twice this year while none of the others in the top five have posted a win this year.

Mickelson also has an edge in GIR, the last figure in the table. The rest of the pack, which trails by four or more, are at 50/1 or higher, which makes sense because the winner will almost certainly come from the Fab Five below.

-8 Phil Mickelson 13/8—72.2%
-8 Vijay Singh 11/4—70.4%
-8 Lee Westwood 11/4—68.5%
-7 Stuart Appleby 8/1—68.5%
-5 Retief Goosen 20/1—64.8%

The US Senior Open
The time for senior players to pile on the senior tour majors is before they turn 55, at which point the winning slows dramatically. The table shows some of the leading senior major winners, and the number they won before and after age 55.

Hale Irwin 5—2
Lee Trevino 4—0
Ray Floyd 3—1
Jack Nicklaus 6—2

The three leaders below have clearly separated themselves from the pack. Romero has won a senior major, the 2006 JELD WEN Tradition, so he has the monkey off his back. But, at age 54, he may be feeling the pressure of advancing age on his hopes to win the US Open, the seniors’ top prize. Funk, who’s won three of 21 senior starts, figures to be a factor at the Open due to his accurate driving. Cook finished second at last week’s Senior British Open, but is winless in 17 starts this year at age 50, when the best of the seniors tend to rake in their harvest.

-9 Eduardo Romero (54)
-7 Fred Funk (52)
-6 John Cook (50)

Women’s British Open – The Asian Invasion
It’s a good thing we don’t have a US-Asia Cup in women’s golf because, by the looks of the leaderboard at the Women’s British Open, we’d get creamed. Six of the top nine are from Asia. It is also interesting to note that five of the Asian players at the top are from 19-23 years of age, which indicates that these youngsters have been trained to show no fear of contending for golf’s biggest prizes.

Should these three majorless leaderless falter, Americans Inkster (7 majors), golf’’s ageless marvel, and Kerr, last year’s US Open winner, are in position to grab the title. If Inkster wins, her span from first to last major (1984-2008) would eclipse Jack Nicklaus’ (1962-1986) by about five months.

Yani Tseng would become a double major winner at age 19 if she won. Mi Hyun Kim will record a top 10 slam if she finishes in the top 10.

1 -13 Yuri Fudoh (21) Japan
2 -12 Ji-Yai Shin (20) South Korea
3 -11 Ai Miyazato (23) Japan
4t -10 Juli Inkster (48) USA
4t -10 Christie Kerr (29) USA
6t -9 Mi Hyun Kim (31) South Korea
6t -9 Yani Tseng (19) Taiwan
6t -9 Eun-Hee Ji (22) South Korea
6t -9 Natalie Gulbis (25) USA