The Masters Betting: Is Tiger Woods value?

US Masters Switcher:

Tiger Woods playing off the 4th tee last year at Augusta

With the year's first major fast approaching, Steve Rawlings, a k a The Punter, plays devil's advocate. Should we be piling in to Tiger?

Back in 1997, at just 21 years, 3 months and 14 days, Tiger Woods became the youngest player to win the US Masters. It was the first of his four wins at Augusta to date and he did it in the most remarkable fashion. Having shot 40 on the front-nine on day one, he went on to win the title by an incredible 12 strokes - the widest margin in the history of the event.

Further Green Jackets were added to the Woods wardrobe in 2001, 2002 and 2005 but since then, he's drawn a blank.

His followers this week will no doubt all point to the fact that he's had his well-documented problems both on and off the fairways and that he's possibly not been at his stratospheric best since 2005. And even though he hasn't, he's still finished inside the top-6 in six of the seven years since but we punters are being asked to take no more than 5.04/1 about him this time around and we have to decide whether that's value.

It's a well known fact that Tiger bags nearly all of his wins at the same courses nowadays so let's take a look at his record at his favourite haunts since that last US Masters title back in 2005.

At his beloved Torrey Pines, including his US Open win with a broken leg, he's won five times. He's been successful four times at both Bay Hill and Firestone. He's added three more wins to his CV at Doral and Sherwood and he's also picked up a pair of wins at Muirfield Village, home of the Memorial.

I don't think you can justifiably use the form argument to defend his record over the last seven years at Augusta when you look at his record elsewhere over the same period. He has a great record at Augusta but it's not fantastic when compared to his record at the tracks mentioned above.

It's harder to dismiss his chances on current form, given he's won three of his last four stroke play events (at Torrey Pines, Doral and Bay Hill) and given that on each of those three occasions nobody putted better than him but there are niggles about the rest of his game.

He ranked 72nd for Driving Accuracy when he won at Bay Hill last time out, he's only once ranked inside the top-ten for Greens in Regulation this year, at Doral, and he's ranked outside the top-20 for Scrambling every week. All signs that, putting aside, his game isn't quite at its peerless best.

I may well be playing the devil's advocate role a bit here but if you're about to pile in on anyone to win a major at less than 5.004/1, a cautionary tap on the shoulder never does any harm. He's the best we've ever seen, he's in fair form and his record at Augusta in recent years is decent.

Is he a value bet at around 4.84/1 to win the US Masters? I don't think he is.

*You can follow me on Twitter @SteveThePunter