Bridgestone Invitational Round Four: How Stewart Cink's miss cost Tiger Woods layers dear

When I suggested the weather would rain on Stewart Cink’s parade in my previous blog I didn’t mean it THAT literally! I feel a bit sorry for him after the way he fought back, with a little help from Tiger Woods, after going three shots behind Sunday.

No amount of ill fortune seems to be able to block Tiger’s progress. But good fortune might. How much longer can he keep up this punishing schedule before serious cracks appear? My money is on the coming weekend at the Deutsche Bank.

No time for labradoodles - Woods has hopped straight from two winning tournaments in a row over to Ireland for some Ryder Cup bonding. He’ll be back over to America in time for this weekend’s tournament (don’t golfing gods suffer jet lag then?).

Lucky for him it’s a day later than usual, but even so I reckon this is the best chance Tiger layers will get in a while. And oh how much they must be praying for some relief. I’m no mathematics genius, but I reckon Stewart Cink’s errant 8ft putt on the third playoff hole left layers with a gross deficit of about £4m ($7.6m) in the Betfair winner market alone. They won’t actually have lost that much of course, because of trading, but it still suggests a big hole in someone’s pocket.

His luck can’t hold out forever, can it? Someone must eventually find the bottle to hole that vital putt mustn’t they? Or is there really something divine or devilish, depending on your viewpoint, about Tiger’s progress?

And did anyone notice that a former hammock salesman called Will MacKenzie won the Reno-Tahoe Open? Only just though: a bit like Cink, Bob Estes dropped makeable birdie attempts on the last two holes.

As predicted, there was a charge from the back, but even a course record 10 under could not get Joe Ogilvie close enough to the leading pair.

Quote of the week? Stewart Cink after his crushing defeat: “I can’t say enough good things about Tiger Woods.” How’s that for magnanimous?