Similar to any form of sports betting, you can only gain an edge if you know more about your selections than than the people who shape the prices, (the bookmakers and the other bettors). To this end I have maintained a round by round database of all golf events from the start of 1996.

The database includes the Asian, South African, Australian, Nationwide, Challenge, US Seniors, European Seniors, LPGA, Ladies European Tour, European Tour and the US PGA Tour.

If the bookmakers and other bettors can get the same information, how do I get an edge?

The Players
The top 50 players in the world attract the vast majority of betting money whenever they appear. Their form is well understood by the bookmakers and prices rarely offer any value.

I focus on the 2nd and 3rd tier players who have a lower profile, less celebrity appeal, or are unknowns in a given environment.

The Environment
Players often appear on more than one tour. Putting results from events on any given tour into a global context is a key element to gaining an edge. If any Challenge Tour player turned up for your Saturday medal he would be probably be the rightful favourite, but where should he rank when he moves up to the European Tour? My algorithm re-assesses the relative strength of every field in our database, based on the new information presented by the latest results.

Each week I find out more about players who appeared in an event in the past. The importance of a player's scores decays with the passage of time and as new results are known. Accurately giving each round or event a ranking in a global context is where I gain a significant edge.

Quite often a player will move up from the Nationwide or Challenge Tour to the main tours. Alternatively he may have form in Asia, Australia or South Africa, but be less well known on the main European or US Tours. When this happens bookmakers vary in their opinions of how that player will perform in his new environment, depending on how much they know about him and the context he has performed in the past. Prices can and do vary as much as from 33/1 to 200/1. Marcus Fraser, the Russian Open winner, and Zach Johnson are good examples from the 2003 betting year.

Past Performance
The major tours are covered by most bookmakers, giving everyone the opportunity to place decent sized bets at value odds. Since 1997 I have achieved a profit on turnover of between 33% and 50% each year.

Selections are proofed to the Racing Post in the UK, SystemSearch and football-data.co.uk and my company consistently leads their league tables.

As long as we continue to bet at 80/1 on a player with true chances of 60/1, or 33/1 with true chances of 25/1, we will continue to return a long term profit on turnover of 33%.

Note: This package requires some betting at very long odds, often in the range 25/1 to 150/1. This is a long-term betting strategy requiring strict discipline in staking. We suggest a betting bank of 200 units so that 1 unit represents 0.5% of your golf betting bank.

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