2008 - Week 27 Winners

A great performance by Golf Predictor on our first day live! We successfully predicted our second winner since we started running predictions a few short weeks ago. OK, it wasn't rocket science to pick him, but well done to Phil Mickleson, who played a brilliant shot on the 18th from the sort of position I usually find myself in on the golf course! I've yet to hit it to 8 feet and sink the birdie from there, but at least I know now it can be done! We also got Stephen Ames and Ben Crane in the top 10, so not a bad performance at all from us at the Colonial.

It looked like another Irish man was going to win the flagship European PGA Championship after 2 rounds. Paul McGinley played brilliantly over the first 2 days but fell away badly in round 3. Robert Karlsson took control in round 3 and then "did a McGinley" in round 4, throwing away his lead. Well done to Miguel Angel Jimenez for coming through strongly, even acing the par 3 5th. He really likes any tournament sponsored by BMW, so that's my expert tip for the next one! Our top pick to win, Vijay Singh, pulled out at the last minute, so excluding him, we had 2 out of the top 4, thanks to Luke Donald's late surge up the leaderboard. Our top pick, Ernie Els, tanked on what practically is his course!

Golf Predictor goes live!

It's a momentous day here at Golf Predictor; after much testing, we are finally live and ready for business! We have put a lot of work into developing an informative and easy to use golfing statistics/prediction system.

It has been tested using Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9. It should also work pretty well in other modern browsers, but the aforementioned ones are recommended. At the moment, we have all the results from this season and predictions (and historical results) for all tournaments from this year's Masters on. We also have covered The Honda Classic and the WGC-CA Championship events. We hope to backfill the historical data for the earlier tournaments this year in due course.

We hope that you enjoy using our new service. All suggestions and feedback welcome.

2008 - Week 26 Winners

This week, we had high hopes of a home winner in the Irish Open, given the great performances of the Irish contingent on tour so far this season. However, most of them buckled under the pressure of performing before the adoring home crowd! Notable exceptions were my old mate Gary Murphy (long story!) who had a great final round to finish tied 3rd and young Rory McIlroy who played steadily all week. There was even a player from my small town in the field - something I never thought would never happen. Despite being a prodigious hitter of a golf ball, he tanked unfortunately, but I'm sure the experience will stand him in good stead.

Miraculously, the weather held up this time except for an hour or 2 on Sunday. Well done to Richard Finch for his victory and a solid performance on the last day. He should consider wearing flippers and a wet suit next year though!! As far as I an aware, he became the first person to throw himself into a river during a tournament!

O-medetou (congrats!) to Ryuji Imada for going one better this year in the AT&T Classic and winning in a play-off. His opponent, Kenny Perry, was very unlucky to find the water on the playoff hole after his shot ricocheted off a tree. Still, Imada-san obviously likes the course and the area, having gone to college there and deserved his victory with a brilliant putting display all week.

2008 - Week 25 Winners

Well done to Hennie Otto for finally winning on the European tour last week. It must have hard for Hennie for 2 reasons:

• He's not Irish ("we've" been winning everything lately!).
• He has a history of throwing away 5 shot leads!

He tried his best to do it again last Sunday, but happily for him, he stumbled over the line.

Although a South African won on the European tour, we Europeans got our winner on the US PGA tour instead! Congrats to Sergio Garcia for a welcome return to form, winning the Players Championship (shouldn't that be the Players' Championship?! Lynn Truss, if you're reading this, please advise!!). Having overcome his putting problems (for now anyway), Sergio hit a nerveless tee shot on the famous 17th at Sawgrass to 4 feet in the play-off to seal victory. OK, so his opponent (Paul Goydos) was unfortunate, but Sergio still joins Sandie Lyle as the only European winners of golf's unofficial fifth major.

Looks like we'll have to send the Irish boys from the European tour over there en masse next year to improve that statistic. Harrington wasn't much good this year on his own!

2008 - Week 24 Winners

Well, the Irish domination of the European tour continues with Peter Lawrie's great maiden win in Spain. We even won this week's Challenge Tour event for good measure (well done Michael Hoey). We're obviously the best golfers in Europe - that's 4 tournament wins in the last 3 weeks!

Well done to Anthony Kim for also breaking his duck on the US PGA Tour in the Wachovia Championship with a comprehensive victory.