Ryder Cup Betting: Opposing Tiger just has to be done!

Tiger has rarely shown his best in the Ryder Cup
Tiger has failed to perform so many times at the Ryder Cup that he simply has to be a lay in the top pointscorer markets, says Ralph Ellis
I remember boarding the plane for Valderrama in 1997 thinking there were two things to look forward to about my first trip to cover a Ryder Cup. The first would be the Costa Del Sol sunshine; the second the chance to see close up the brilliance of a young man called Tiger Woods.
In the event there was rain that would have made the height of the Indian monsoon season look like a gentle drizzle and the Tiger we'd been led to expect was little more than a fluffy pussy cat.
I walked all five rounds watching him, and the one victory he did chalk up, on the first morning, was thanks mostly to the performance of his partner Mark O'Meara. After that he got only half a point, and his singles defeat to Constantina Rocca on the final day was the tipping point that handed the trophy to Seve Ballesteros and his European team.
Since then we have gone into virtually every one of the half dozen times that Samuel Ryder's old trophy has been contested hearing about how Woods would finally bring his 'A' game, only to be disappointed. At the moment the 2012 version doesn't appear any different.
According to Davis Love this morning, this is the year that Tiger has finally worked out what it takes to be a team player.
"If he's asked me 50 questions this year, then 48 of them have been about the Ryder Cup," says America's captain.
"Believe me, he is focused on it and winning is right there on his list of things to get done."
Well sorry, but that only confirms my intention to lay Woods at around 2.526/4 in the top US points scorer top three market. The more daring could even take the risk of laying Tiger at 6.05/1 to be the Top US player in the event.
Tiger, of course, missed the 2008 competition in Valhalla, so he has only once, in 1999, been involved in a winning American team. And you could argue that even at Brookline he played more as an individual than a team member. In all he's been a loser in 14 of the 29 matches in which he has figured. Sometimes he hasn't looked as if he cared, and the irony is that if he is finally bothered then it might actually make it even harder for him to do any better this time.
Bernard Gallagher made a good point about Woods in last week's Betfair Big Interview - when he is under pressure, at the moment, he can't trust his own game. He didn't take his driver out on the last day of The Open. And on Sunday, when it mattered because ten million dollars were up for grabs at Oak Hill, he failed to find the fairway or green from the tee on six of the first nine holes.
The US are 1.84/5 favourites to be winners, but you suspect that price assumes that Tiger, after 15 years of talking about it, is finally ready to turn up to a Ryder Cup. Like the unbroken sunshine it didn't happen in 1997, it hasn't happened since, and I can't see a reason why it would happen now.