It’s the culmination of the 2014 PGA Tour as the 30 remaining points scorers in the FedEx Cup fight it out at the Tour Championships for the US$10 million first prize. Because of the complicated points system that determined who finishes top, it is quite possible that the winner of the Tour Championships and its US$1.5 million prize is not the winner of the FedEx Cup, although to make it simple the maths shows that if any of the current top five in the standing wins in Atlanta they will also score the US$10 million.
As it stands, those five are Chris Kirk, Billy Horschel, Bubba Watson, Rory McIlroy and Hunter Mahan. Others would also need to rely on players currently above them finishing in a certain position or lower although the popular prediction among many experts seems to be a shoot-out over the final round between McIlroy and Adam Scott. We’ll stick with McIlroy to take the prize pool given his recent run of results.
The EPL returns this weekend for the first time since the summer transfer window closed and we’ll finally get to see each team with their final rosters in-tact. The biggest game of the round sees Manchester City travel to Arsenal in what is a crucial game for both sides given neither won in their last outing. It will also be interesting to see what Manchester United can offer following the arrival of Marcos Rojo, Daley Blind and Radamel Falco in recent weeks.
The Shanghai Masters will reach its conclusion on Sunday as our early pick – defending champion Ding Junhui – continues his quest for another title on home soil. Although he hasn’t enjoyed a great season so far, Ding easily accounted for Jack Lisowski 5-1 in his first match of this year’s event and saw a number of his main rivals unexpectedly eliminated including Ronnie O’Sullivan, Judd Trump, Barry Hawkins and John Higgins.
And it’s finals time in Australia’s NRL and AFL competitions with some huge matches on offer this weekend. In the rugby league, we like South Sydney to beat Manly, the Sydney Roosters to beat Penrith, North Queensland to down Brisbane and Melbourne to beat Canterbury – all at the line.
The AFL sees just two games on offer with Geelong to cover the line and beat North Melbourne, while we’ll take Fremantle for the win in the game of the weekend against Port Adelaide.
Good luck and good punting.
