Creamer still three in front after third round

Golf Betting Lines

07/11/2010 - Oakmont, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Paula Creamer rolled in a four-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole Sunday to move three shots clear after the third round of the U.S. Women's Open.

Creamer finished the third round Sunday morning and posted an impressive, one- under 70 at a difficult Oakmont layout. She is the only player under par and got through 54 holes at one-under 212.

Wendy Ward also had a 70 in round three and is second at plus-two.

Suzann Pettersen (72), Christina Kim (72) and Amy Yang (71) are knotted in third place at three-over 216.

The third round was completed on Sunday morning after play was halted for darkness on Saturday.

The championship has played catch up after inclement weather halted action on Friday and forced the second round to be completed earlier Saturday.

Once the second round was completed, players went off the first and 10th tees in threesomes. More than half the field managed to complete round three before darkness fell at Oakmont Saturday night.

The players will go back out in threesomes off split tees for the final round, and with a bright forecast for Sunday, there should be no problem completing the final round.

Creamer was one-under for the championship after a missed short par putt on 13 Saturday night. The horn blew, but Creamer, well within her right, elected to putt out and missed a two-footer.

On Saturday, Creamer parred 14 and 15 and had a mere two feet left for par at the 16th. She missed that par putt to fall to even-par for the tournament, but the putter, and maybe nerves, got in the way again.

Creamer had three feet for birdie at the short, par-four 17th, but that putt never hit the hole. She was still at even, but hit a spectacular approach to four feet at the tough closing hole.

Creamer converted the birdie putt to build a three-stroke cushion with one round to go.

Creamer hasn't won a major, but has won several of the LPGA Tour's biggest events. She claimed the 2005 Evian Masters, the Tournament of Champions in 2007 and the 2008 Samsung World Championship.

The win at the Samsung stands as Creamer's last LPGA Tour victory as she has battled a thumb injury through most of last year and the earlier part of this season as well.

In fact, this is just Creamer's fifth start of the year and fourth since having surgery on her injured left thumb.

Lexi Thompson, 15, finished her third-round 70 on Saturday and is sixth at four-over 217.

World No. 1 Cristie Kerr, who romped to victory at the last major, the LPGA Championship, carded a four-over 75 and is tied for seventh place with Sophie Gustafson (74), In Kyung Kim (73), Natalie Gulbis (72), Sakura Yokomine (76) and first-round leader Brittany Lang (75). The group finished at plus-five.

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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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