Langer, Freeman share Senior PGA lead

Golf Betting Lines

05/27/2010 - Denver, CO (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - World Golf Hall of Famer Bernhard Langer fired a six-under 66 Thursday to join Robin Freeman in the lead after the opening round of the Senior PGA Championship.

Langer, who has topped the Champions Tour money list the last two years, collected his ninth and 10th Champions Tour wins earlier this season. Freeman hasn't won anywhere since 1998, when he collected two titles on the Nationwide Tour.

Tom Lehman got within one of the lead as he went birdie-eagle-birdie from the 15th, but he bogeyed the last to shoot 68. He was joined in third place at minus-four by Brad Bryant, the 2007 U.S. Senior Open champion.

Fred Couples, who has already won three times on the Champions Tour this season, posted a three-under 69 at Colorado Golf Club. He was joined in fifth place by Tom Kite, Bill Glasson and Bill Loeffler.

Langer played the back nine first on Thursday and posted his first birdie on the 11th. He made it two in a row as he birdied the l2th from inside six feet.

The two-time Masters champion holed a wedge shot from 92 yards out on 14 to jump to four-under. He followed with a birdie on the par-five 15th, where he got up and down from just short of the green, to move to minus-five.

Langer found a fairway bunker off the tee at the 18th, his ninth, and played a seven-iron out of the bunker. He came up short with that shot and was unable to save par.

Around the turn, Langer erased that mistake with a 15-footer for birdie on the par-five first. He faltered to another bogey on the par-four fifth to dip back to minus-four.

Langer two-putted for birdie on the par-five seventh and made it two straight with a kick-in birdie on the eighth. That gave him a share of the lead and he ended alongside Freeman after a par at the last.

"I was very happy with my putting. I putted better than I had been the last few weeks and I was pretty pleased," Langer admitted. "I had good pace all day long. I had about two other putts that looked like they could have gone in, but just stayed on the lip, so I was pretty pleased with my stroke today."

Freeman also started on the back nine and got going with a 25-foot birdie putt on the 10th. After tripping to a bogey on the 13th, Freeman responded with a 12-foot birdie putt on 14.

The 51-year-old made a six-footer for birdie on 15 and converted his third straight birdie on the 16th, where he sank a 16-foot birdie putt.

Freeman parred three straight around the turn then poured in a 15-footer for birdie on two. He moved to five-under with a birdie on the par-three sixth and closed his round with a 30-foot birdie effort at the ninth.

"I got off to a good start. I made about a 25-footer on 10 and that kind of got me off," said Freeman. "That was probably the best putting round I had in maybe, ever. It was great."

Nick Price carded a two-under 70 and he shares ninth place with Chien Soon Lu and Dan Forsman.

NOTES: Defending champion Michael Allen shot one-under 71 and he is tied for 12th...Course-designer Ben Crenshaw managed an even-par 72...Jay Haas, who has won this title twice, shares 29th at plus-one...Four-time champion Hale Irwin shares 71st at plus-four...Paul Azinger, Peter Jacobsen and Hal Sutton were among several players that withdrew at prior to the start of the round, while Rod Spittle withdrew after carding a 74.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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FOOTBALL BETTING : Crabtree's base deal: six years, $32 million

Football Betting

In the wake of the news that the 49ers have signed receiver Michael Crabtree after an extended holdout, there has been not a hint of the dollars to be paid to Crabtree.

And since this means that his agent hasn't leaked the numbers, it means that his agent feels no specific motivation to do so.

Possibly because his agent isn't all that thrilled to have his name on the deal.

So the numbers will come from sources other than Crabtree's agent. And we've gotten our mitts into them.

Per a league source, Crabtree has signed a six-year, $32 million contract. (The total includes guaranteed money, base salaries, and the one-time incentive based on achieving minimum playing time.)

The deal also includes $17 million in guaranteed money.

As reported elsewhere, the deal can void to five years based on performance triggers, wiping out a final year base salary of $4 million. But they won't be easily reached.

The source tells us that, in his first four seasons (including 2009), Crabtree must either qualify for two Pro Bowls, or he must qualify for one Pro Bowl in one year and he must participate in 80 percent of the offensive snaps in a separate year in which the team makes the playoffs.

In other words, if in 2010 he qualifies for the Pro Bowl and the team makes the playoffs and he participates in 80 percent of the snaps, he'll still need to make it to the Pro Bowl or achieve the 80-percent/playoffs in another season.

Since the chances of Crabtree making the Pro Bowl or participating in 80 percent of the offensive snaps this year is roughly zero percent, he'll have three years to get it done.

And it won't be easy. Frankly, he'll be hard pressed to make it to one Pro Bowl in three years with the likes of Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks, DeSean Jackson, Johnny Knox, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings, Roddy White, T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the same conference for sportsbook betting.

So, by all appearances, it's a six-year deal. And at $17 million in guaranteed money, the per-year guarantee is a tepid $2.83 million per year.

There's another problem with the deal -- it has no mid-tier incentive package. Instead, the additional $8 million that Crabtree can earn (pushing the max value to six years, $40 million) requires the kind of unrealistic, mega-star performances that no rookie is likely to ever achieve.

So while the contract paid to Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji covers five years and pays $22.5 million, he has the ability (if he's a solid player) to make up the difference between his base deal and Crabtree's five-year, $28 million haul via the mid-tier incentive package in Raji's deal.

And unless Crabtree meets the performance thresholds necessary to void the sixth year, he'll be stuck under contract for another year at a base salary of only $4 million.

There's one other area of concern with the deal. Crabtree, per the source, received no option bonus. Instead, he has significant money tied to a fairly new device known as a "discretionary salary advance," which unlike an opition bonus is subject to forfeiture if Crabtree decides in a year or two that he wants to hold out for a better deal. (We're also told that the 49ers have included language that would make certain escalators subject to forfeiture, too.)

Meanwhile, the deal falls well short of the mark for which Crabtree and agent Eugene Parker were aiming -- the five-year, $38.25 million contract paid by the Raiders to receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick in the draft.

Even if Crabtree successfully voids the final year, he'll make more than $2 million per year less on average than Heyward-Bey.

Thus, as we explained earlier in the day, this is a deal that Crabtree could have done in July, which would have given him a much better chance of making a contribution to the 49ers during his rookie year.

So while the final outcome can be described as win-win, the broader view suggests that it's really a lose-lose situation.

NFL Betting Lines

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