Scott has all the bullets in US Open top Australasian shoot out
Published:If the market is to be believed then the top Australasian market at the 2013 US Open boils down to a straight shoot-out between increasingly regular major championship top-10-botherers Adam Scott and Jason Day.
Both were seen to excellent effect on the biggest stage in the Masters at Augusta, when Scott earned his Green Jacket with Day taking a solo third. For both it was a third top-three finish in a major championship in as many seasons.
However Scott is the 11/8 favourite of the pair in the top Australasian market because of his immense consistency in the four ‘crown jewel’ tournaments in recent years.
The Adelaide native has missed the cut in just one of his last 10 majors, whereas Day has failed to make the cut twice in that period, missing one tournament and withdrawing from another.
Of the nine tournaments in which Scott made the cut he finished inside the top 10 on five occasions, only finishing outside the top 25 once. Day on the other hand had a run of five majors before his recent Augusta third in which T30 was his best finish.
Scott has been in marginally better form than the chasing Australasian pack recently, with top-20 finishes in his two post-Masters PGA Tour events. Potential rivals Day and Mark Leishman haven’t managed better than Day’s T27 finish in the HP Byron Nelson Championship in their last two outings.
Merion’s East Course may weigh in at total length of just 7000 yards, but it’s a course that golfing monolith Jack Nicklaus once described as “acre for acre…the best test of golf in the world”.
Its mixture of long and short par threes, fours and fives means that accuracy in approach play is likely to be key. The Masters champion boasts better PGA driving accuracy and greens in regulation stats than Day and Leishman this term and looks a solid 11/8 bet in the top Australasian market.
