Journeyman's easiest chance to make a few mill?

Friends. We may not have any money left after the last few weeks, but we're looking forward to the Houston Open, surely?

There's no relief for punters as we turn up to another completely new layout, this one being a 7,400 yard plus monster. It's a pay as you play course that David Toms had a hand in designing and not, repeat NOT the same track that Vijay has won on three times in the last four years.

It'll be another punters graveyeard as a whole heap of tour pros look forward to one of those weeks with no Tiger, Els, Sergio, Phil etc. In fact, the field this week is so thin that Freddie Jacobsen and Vaughan Taylor both feature in the top ten of betting although they are playing for a staggering $4.4 million in prize money.

Still fancy a punt? Still bonkers? OK, here goes...

Once again tipsters say we need to look for people who can smack the ball a long way. So inevitably they are putting up Daly, Glover and Bubba Watson. Others are taking the rather obvious step of making Vijay favourite. The UK bookmakers are apparently taking money at 4/1. If that seems like a good idea, stop reading this and go for it. But all those choices are based on form on a different course and none of them have shown a likelihood to win recently. We're especially worried that Vijay won on a different course last year and still nervous about that putting stroke. He's the stand out player on class alone but 8 bogeys and 3 doubles during the last three rounds at the Masters isn't a great form line. We'll give him a miss this week.

It was good to see Stephen Leaney finish strong last week, with one of the best closing rounds of 68 netting him a $103,000 paycheck. On a difficult day for scoring, one shot worse would have seen him blow 26 grand, so perhaps he's starting to find some form. His driving stats show that he's by no means the longest but he's in the top drawer in terms of accuracy and we reckon you'd be expecting at least 33/1 a place, so go find some value.

Another of our wild card small field favourites Rich Beem tees it up this week. A very respectable Masters performance suggests he's on top of his form. You can never risk anything other than small stakes on the ex telephone salesman, but he does whack it a long way and unlike the majority of this field, he's got three tour wins under his belt. Once again, we're looking for three figure odds here and have everything crossed.