What a fantastic week for sport it is this week. The Premier League Darts is finally underway, as are the quarterfinals of the Champions League and starting Thursday we have the first Golf Major of the new season, The Masters, taking place at Augusta. Then at the weekend, there is the small matter of the Grand National being run at Aintree.
It’s a fantastic week for sports betting fans but also a very busy one for them too with so many big events to bet on available. No wonder bookmakers are expecting this to be a bumper week of betting across the UK and around the world, with so many top quality events to come within a short space of time.
With two outstanding sporting events still to come this week, I have decided to split my attention in this article on both events and give you a quick preview of each as well as my tips for both, in the hope that they come in! If you are looking for a betting site that offers excellent betting on both The Masters and Grand National as well as a host of other sports, then check out the latest bet365 Welcome Bonus as the perfect starting point.
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It is also worth remembering that customers in the United States will be eagerly following the action certainly for The Masters and there will be a few horse racing fans too who are keen to see how the events turn out in the Grand National. If you want all the latest sports betting news and tips and need a site to get the best information from, then check out the excellent bestbetusa.com.
Let’s now tee things off nicely by taking a look at what we think will happen on the well-manicured fairways at Augusta National from Thursday with our preview of The Masters.
The Masters
The first golf Major of the new season is always one of the highlights of the sporting calendar. No
tournament has quite the sense of occasion, prestige and tradition as The Masters and the 88-invited golfers will be competing not just for the first Major of the season, but the Green Jacket and a place on golfing history.
This event is packed with tradition from the Champions Dinner, to the par-3 tournament held before the main event (which unfortunately has been postponed once again this year). We will see the tournament tee off early on Thursday morning with the first black golfer to compete in The Masters, Lee Elder, joining Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus in taking the first ceremonial tee shot to kick off the tournament.
Brooks Koepka will play in the tournament after returning through injury, but Tiger Woods will miss out after his car crash a few weeks back. Dustin Johnson is the defending champion, having won the delayed Masters tournament back in November 2020 and the World Number 1 starts as the 9/1 favourite to win the event here.
Three more American players, Bryson DeChambeau, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas are rated as 11/1 shots to win the event, with Jon Rahm at 12/1 and the out of form Rory McIlroy drifting a little in the market out to 18/1.
However, The Masters is capable of throwing up an occasional longer odds winner, as in the year Danny Willetts landed the trophy. And there are a number of enticing prospects at between 20/1 and 100/1 in odds including the likes of:
- Xander Schauffele – 22/1
- Brooks Koepka – 25/1
- Patrick Reed & Viktor Hovland – 33/1
- Tony Finau & Paul Casey – 35/1
- Lee Westwood – 40/1
- Sergio Garcia, Scottie Scheffler, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tyrrell Hatton, Jason Day and Tommy Fleetwood – 50/1
- Adam Scott – 66/1
- Bubba Watson – 75/1
- Justin Rose – 80/1
- Matthew Wolff – 90/1
Picking a winner just from the golfers mentioned above, let alone any of the other in the 88-strong field is a very tough task, but given that I managed to pick Justin Thomas to win The Players Championship last month, I am confident I can do similar here.
My pick to win the event is going to be the man who tried to overpower the course in November, but fell short. Bryson DeChambeau has been in great form this season and he will have learned a valuable lesson from what happened in November. I think he will be the man to beat here on Sunday afternoon at Augusta.
On the Third Round day of The Masters (Saturday), we will also have another massive sporting event in the UK, the Grand National and we have brought you detail of that race, and of our top tips for it, below.
The Grand National
Unfortunately, this year’s Grand National will be one remembered for a number of horses that are not
running at the event and one of them is the winner of the last two races run at Aintree, Tiger Roll. Withdrawn from the race by owner Michael Ryan after a disagreement with the weight he would carry, it is such a shame he won’t be able to go for immortality with a third win in the race to match Red Rum. Especially after a superb win at the Cheltenham Festival a few weeks back.
A number of other top prospects have also been withdrawn from the race including Santini, Easysland and Ajas which means that this year sees Cloth Cap as the clear favourite for the race with most bookmakers. The horse is currently the 4/1 favourite with bet365, which is very short for this particular race.
After wins at Newbury and Kelso, the horse is 14lb lower in handicap than his official mark and that has had punters loading onto the Jonjo O’Neill trained horse, which will likely be ridden by Tom Scudamore.
Burrows Saint (8/1), Any Second Now (10/1), Kimberlite Candy (12/1), Minella Times (12/1), Secret Reprieve (14/1), Magic Of Light (16/1) and Discorama (18/1) are the other horses that are rated at odds below 20/1.
Cloth Cap owner Trevor Hemmings has won the race three times previously with Hedgehunter in 2005, Ballabriggs in 2011 and Many Clouds in 2015.
Cloth Cap is certainly the fashionable pick for the race, but in truth, those odds are not that appealing to me. My tip here is Kimberlite Candy, which has excellent form but who has finished second in the Bechers Chase at Aintee in 2019 and 2020 and so it is a horse that can get over the big Aintree fences. At 12/1, I think Kimberlite Candy offers good value compared to Cloth Cap, although I do expect the favourite to feature strongly in the race too.