Compton, Every share Greenbrier lead

Golf Betting Lines

07/29/2010 - White Sulphur Springs, WV (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Erik Compton, the two-time heart transplant recipient, fired a seven-under 63 Thursday to share the first-round lead with Matt Every at The Greenbrier Classic.

Playing on another sponsor's exemption and still battling stamina issues, Compton birdied nine of his last 15 holes for a career-best score on the PGA Tour.

Finishing his round after an 80-minute weather delay, Every matched his career low to tie Compton. He missed a 10-foot birdie putt on his last hole with a chance to take the lead by himself.

Jeff Overton, George McNeill and Pat Perez shared third place at six-under 64, while Brendon de Jonge, Charles Howell III, Aron Price, Matt Bettencourt and John Rollins all shot 65.

Compton's previous best score was a 67 in the first round of the Mayakoba Golf Classic in February.

"I'm not thinking about winning," he said. "I'm just thinking about one shot at a time and getting through the weekend."

Compton, of course, has had bigger things on his mind.

He was diagnosed as a child with cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, and received his first heart transplant when he was 12 years old. The second came in 2008.

Now 30, Compton is not just chasing his first win, he's grinding his way towards earning full-time playing privileges on the PGA or Nationwide Tour after losing so much time -- about four years in his late-20s -- to illness.

"In some aspect, I look at myself as an old guy," said Compton. "I also look at myself as a young guy in a career playing golf."

Compton has tried to make the best of his playing opportunities this season, which include six previous starts on the PGA Tour. He has also played two European Tour events in the Middle East and made one start on the Nationwide Tour.

He is playing this week for the third time since the U.S. Open, where his condition was thrust into the spotlight on one of golf's biggest stages. He shot 77-81 at Pebble Beach, the first of three straight missed cuts.

Compton likes to say that he knows he's supposed to shoot bad scores, but that isn't the way he feels things have been going for him recently.

"I was getting some bad breaks, and it was hard to take advantage of plugged lies and things like that," he said.

"Some guys miss six, seven cuts in a row and then win. I know I'm a good player, and I have a lot of the adversity in front of me with the game and health. But I always feel like if I stick in there and keep trying, something eventually good is gonna happen."

He found trouble early on The Old White Course with back-to-back bogeys at the second and third holes. But Compton made nine birdies and six pars the rest of the way.

"I hit some really close shots, a couple good putts, and I guess the round just kind of developed like that," he said.

Among his birdies was a 30-foot putt at No. 5 and "it was pretty much a blur after that," Compton said. "I was taking one shot at a time."

Compton knocked his second shot at the 572-yard 17th about 18 yards short of the green, pitched to three feet and rolled in the birdie putt to move atop the leaderboard by himself.

The round was delayed for 80 minutes because of threatening weather conditions, and when the second half of the draw returned to the course, Every made his move.

He finished off a birdie at the 17th -- his eighth hole -- with a four-foot putt to move within two shots of Compton's lead.

Every followed with a 14-footer at the 18th for his third straight birdie, polishing off a 30 on the back nine that also included a 15-foot eagle putt at the par-five 12th.

He followed that with five straight pars, then rolled in a 14-foot birdie putt at the sixth hole to tie Compton at seven-under.

"I drove it great and then made some putts," said Every. "My irons were pretty standard, but I ... was in play every hole. So it was nice."

Every earned his PGA Tour card by winning the season-ending Nationwide Tour Championship last October. He denied possessing marijuana after being arrested, along with two other people, at a hotel two days before the start of John Deere Classic earlier this month.

NOTES: This is the first year of this event...Compton and Every both earned their first 18-hole leads on the PGA Tour...Every also shot a 63 in the first round of the Phoenix Open in February...Justin Leonard (67), Jim Furyk (68), Sergio Garcia (68), John Daly (69) and David Toms (70) are some of the bigger names in the field.

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NFL Football Sports Betting

Two playoff teams from 2007 take center stage on the NFL Network Sunday night in a Week 2 NFL betting match-up when the (0-1) New England Patriots betting head south to Florida for a contest with the (1-0) Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

New England HC Bill Belichick couldn’t care less about the way his team plays in the preseason. With a chance to tie last week’s game with the Baltimore Ravens betting, He elected to go for the two-point conversion and outright victory. The conversion failed, and the Pats ended up falling to the Ravens by a 16-15 final count.

New England rolled off twelve unanswered points to give it a chance at securing the victory, but it never threatened to cover the 3.5-point spread. NFL bettors saw this one coming, as they bet the Ravens down from +6 to +3.5 as the week progressed. QB Tom Brady didn’t take part in the Patriots first preseason clash, but could see action this weekend.

His three replacements all put up embarrassing numbers. They went a combined 17 for 33, and threw three interceptions and no touchdowns. The New England defense was encouraging, as they held the Ravens to 2/12 third down conversions and surrendered just ten first downs. That ‘D’ should be bolstered with the addition of former Bucs and Denver Broncos betting safety John Lynch, who could make his Patriots debut on Sunday against his former mates.

HC Jon Gruden had to be impressed with the way his Bucs played on both sides of the ball in their dominating 17-6 victory over the Miami Dolphins in Week 1’s NFL pre-season betting action. Bucs bettors were quite happy with the effort, as they made a mockery of the fact that they were underdogs in the game.

The logjam at the quarterback position didn’t get any easier to separate for Gruden, as all four of his QBs had positive experiences in the first exhibition of 2008. The four combined to complete 28 of their 40 passes for 204 yards and a touchdown, and that was without starting QB Jeff Garcia in the lineup.

RB Michael Bennett had 19 carries and four receptions, totaling 90 yards and a touchdown. Expect to see more of Bennett, Kenneth Darby, and Earnest Graham, as they all compete for playing time with Warrick Dunn in the backfield this season. Defensively, the Bucs recorded four sacks and held the Fins offense in check all day.

First round draft pick Aqib Talib was impressive in the secondary, recording a tackle and two pass defenses in his debut. Don’t be surprised to see Talib in the starting lineup opposite Ronde Barber for the Bucs in ’08.

The betting trends suggest that NFL bettors should be backing the Bucs in this intra-conference exhibition.

These two teams hooked up last year in Tampa Bay, with the Bucs winning that game 13-10. The Buccaneers have only lost one preseason game at home dating back to the beginning of the ’05 preseason. The Patriots have had a mixed bag of results in their recent exhibitions. They have gone 2-2 ATS and SU each of the last three years.

New England currently sits as modest 1-point favorites in this preseason showdown with the ‘total’ now sitting at 34.5.

You can find these lines and all of the NFL betting lines , so be sure to login and get your wagers down before kickoff!

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SPORTS BETTING: NFL Football Sportsbook Betting

NFL owners, already life's biggest winners, want to try their luck with the lottery.


That was the news out of their meetings last week, where team bosses voted unanimously to allow stamping state and local lottery tickets with franchise logos, if, ahem, any governments wanted to do a deal.

A shocker: Within days the Pats announced they'd be sponsoring the Massachusetts state lottery, the Skins said they'd slap their sticker on Virginia scratch-offs and the Ravens admitted they were talking to Maryland lottery bosses. In all likelihood, it won't be long before every team is a presenting sponsor of scratch-offs or just plain old pick fives. "The change in policy was approved 32-0," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. "So you can expect to see more deals soon."

It's a branding opportunity too big for the owners to ignore, and one a couple of dozen baseball franchises have enjoyed for years. The fact the NFL has been slower to act than those slack-brained Seligites is indicative of its complicated relationship with all forms of gambling. Consider this: Last Thursday, as the Pats and the Redskins finalized their new lottery deals, a lawyer representing the NFL argued before Delaware's Supreme Court that the state's newly signed sports betting law should be repealed.

The NFL betting is the face of opposition to sports gambling . And as much as it would like to share that responsibility with other leagues, that's not going to happen as long as more than 40% of all money legally wagered on games is bet on football. That's why the Brewers can do a multi-million dollar deal with a local casino, or the Celtics can make their own pact with the Mass lottery, and the response is, "Sweet, let's play." But when the NFL does it the stakes are higher, and everyone from NPR's Frank Deford to the Associated Press to the guys blogging at Deadspin will line up to play gotcha.

So I asked Aiello, who surely knew there'd be piling on, how the league can rail against being bait for sports bettors, then allow its franchises to be just that for lotteries, the most insidious and addictive form of gambling around. He emailed me this response: "We are not moral crusaders. NFL personnel are permitted to engage in legal forms of gambling, except for betting on NFL games. We are making a distinction here between the spread of gambling on the outcome of our games and supporting state lottery scratch-off games, that have nothing to do with the outcome of our games."

Here's where I should rip him. But, the thing is, he's right. Not to get Obama on you, but this is a complicated, nuanced issue. As much as lotteries are considered a tax on the poor, the NFL isn't a socially obligated government program -- it's just a business. Scratch-off's help the bottom line, sports betting doesn't. Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors … But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal.

Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors. And it's okay to mutter something obscene when the league pretends gambling doesn't help drive TV ratings and fan interest and put money in owners' pockets. But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal. The Bears should put an orange "C" on every deck of cards dealt at Harrah's in Joliet; the Eagles should slap their logo on roulette wheels at the Borgata in Atlantic City; the Dolphins should hold training camp at the El San Juan in Puerto Rico.

Seriously.

The NFL's problem, when it comes to the gambling world, isn't hypocrisy, it's worse: The bosses lack vision. That's why the league is picking unwinnable fights in Delaware and taking pot shots from critics after making smart sponsorship deals. Roger Goodell and his gang are acting and thinking locally rather than globally, which is rare for them, especially compared to their professional (and amateur) counterparts.

The NBA held its All Star game in Las Vegas and David Stern's kingdom didn't crumble (although the town did bring plenty of players to their knees.) I'd say it's 6 to 5 and pick 'em that Lebron will make a road swing through Sin City before his career is over.

Even the NCAA College Football Betting is more progressive on this issue than the NFL. Several years ago Rachel Newman Baker, college sports' gambling czar, opened a dialogue with Vegas bookmakers to learn about how they do business. She's visited Nevada sports books, studied their operations and listened to how they regulate action. Now she knows she can expect a call from bookmakers, who lose money when sports are fixed, if they think something sketchy is going on in NCAA games. She's not in favor of sports betting, but, as she once told me, "I know it's not going away, either."

The NFL can't seem to accept that. And until it can find peace with the idea, it'll get flack, even when it's right.

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