The second round of the US Open takes place out in New York on Friday when the competitors go out on the Winged Foot track once again not really knowing what to expect after a surprisingly low scoring day on Thursday.
21 players finished the opening round under par which is almost unheard of around this golf course as the USGA shocked everyone by having the course very scorable. It remains to be seen if we get more of the same or if a shift in difficulty presents itself.
Round 1 Recap
Such was the good scoring that it actually needed five under to hold the lead. It was Justin Thomas who carded that and it is he who will go into the second round leading by one from Patrick Reed, Thomas Pieters and Matthew Wolff with an experienced and top class trio another shot back on three under of Louis Oosthuizen, Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood. Joaquin Niemann and Xander Schauffele are among those on two under but it wasn’t such a good day for the likes of Dustin Johnson who carded +3 for his round or Phil Mickelson who was terrible in firing 79. Tiger Woods, Daniel Berger and Jordan Spieth all have work to do from +3.
It was a positive day for us betting wise but a pretty frustrating one at the same time. The frustration came in the first round leader market where Brendon Todd shot two under which before the round you’d have said would have had a chance to win but as it was it wasn’t even good enough for the top seven. Better news came in the form of the three ball bets though, both of which came in nicely enough to give us profit from the first day.
Friday Betting
With this being a major championship we do have a second round leader market but it is one I’m a little reluctant to bet on for a couple of reasons. The first one is that there is a lot of quality at the top of the leaderboard, many of whom have a restricted price to lead after 36 holes, while those who could be considered value have plenty of quality to get the better of. The other reason why I’m loathe to get involved in this market is we don’t actually know what we’re going to get from the golf course. Logic and history would tell you it will be tougher but with the first round not getting completed due to light there are rumours it will remain comfortable for the players to get as many of them around as possible. I’ll leave the second round leader market alone and head for the three balls.
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Friday 3 Balls
The field go out in three balls again on Friday and they are in the same groups they were in on the opening day. As ever the only thing that has changed if this who had a morning tee time on Thursday are out later on Friday and vice versa. That means the headline groups early in the day will be the ones featuring Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Tony Finau at 12.56 BST with Jon Rahm, Paul Casey and Phil Mickelson off 11 minutes later. The later groups get so much more coverage on Friday and that is because we have Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas and Collin Morikawa who go out at 18.27 BST while Rory McIlroy, Adam Scott and Justin Rose go off at the same time. After two winning bets on Thursday we are going with a couple more on Friday.
Martin Kaymer/Jimmy Walker/John Augenstein
Match tees off at 17.43 BST
Our opening bet comes in the group which we won from on the first day when the former champion Martin Kaymer goes out alongside a previous USPGA Championship winner in Jimmy Walker and the amateur John Augenstein.
Kaymer won this group on Thursday despite an absolutely terrible long game and that will give him a bit of confidence that he can come out in front again. Despite barely hitting a fairway and not faring much better into the greens, the German shot +1 so if he can get back to driving the ball solidly, which is usually the backdrop of his game, then he should be able to score well. You got the feeling that Jimmy Walker was hanging on across Thursday as he too rarely played from the fairways while as we suspected going into that first round Augenstein struggled a bit more. I don’t really see a lot changing but assuming Kaymer has his long game in better touch he should comfortably win this group once again.
Sebastian Munoz/Chun-an Yu/Justin Harding
Match tees off at 19.00 BST
The second bet for us over the course of Friday comes from the penultimate group off the first tee as the Colombian player Sebastian Munoz goes out alongside the Asian amateur Chun-an Yu and the South African player who had such a good UK Swing in Justin Harding.
It was actually Yu who won this group with a wonderful level par on Thursday, fighting back well from +3 in the early stages but helped massively by a fortunate hole out on the sixth for eagle. He can’t be relying on those moments of fortune very often. Harding had an absolute mare and shot +7 on Thursday courtesy of hitting just two fairways. Driving isn’t the strength of his game so there is little reason why that would improve to the amount needed to be competitive here. He might have lost by a shot on Thursday but I like Munoz here. His iron play was a bit sloppy on Thursday but the rest of his game looked in great touch and if he can just tighten up on the approaches he should be too good for these two.
Tips
Back M.Kaymer to beat J.Walker & J.Augenstein for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with BetVictor
WON – Back S.Munoz to beat C.Yu & J.Harding for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with BetVictor
Back them here:
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