Stewart looking to master The Glen again

Autoracing Betting Lines

08/03/2010 - Watkins Glen, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Series: NASCAR Sprint Cup. Date: Sunday, August 8. Race: Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips at The Glen. Site: Watkins Glen International. Track: 2.45-mile road course. Start time: 1:00 p.m. (et). Laps: 90. Miles: 220.5. 2009 winner: Tony Stewart. Television: ESPN. Radio: Motor Racing Network (MRN)/SIRIUS NASCAR Radio.

The Sprint Cup Series will run its second and final road course race of the season this weekend at Watkins Glen International in Upstate New York. The series competed at the Sonoma, CA course in June.

Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon are the "road course aces" at Watkins Glen, with Stewart winning here a record five times and Gordon having four victories.

Stewart claimed his most recent victory at Watkins Glen one year ago, a race that was delayed one day due to inclement weather. He conserved enough fuel late in the race and easily held off Marcos Ambrose at the finish for the win.

"It's a race that we always look forward to," said Stewart, who has finished either first or second in that last six races at Watkins Glen. "We've had a lot of success there, and it's just fun. It's like taking Sonoma and just multiplying the speed times three. It's just a lot faster track. It still has the same elevation changes, but you're just running a lot quicker. Both Sonoma and Watkins Glen are two places on the schedule that we really enjoy coming to."

Gordon holds the series record for most career road course wins. Five of them have come at Sonoma.

The last several races at both Sonoma and Watkins Glen have been wild affairs.

Last year at Watkins Glen, a spectacular multi-car crash occurred on lap 62 when Kasey Kahne got loose in turn nine and bumped Sam Hornish Jr., who spun hard into the tire barrier. Hornish then bounced back on the track and slammed violently into Gordon, who hit the barrier head on. Gordon spent additional time inside the track's infield medical center for evaluation, as a precaution for his recent back problems.

"I think the road courses are always intense and challenging in its own way," Gordon said. "I don't know if [Watkins Glen] will be as wild as Sonoma. In Sonoma, you can run side-by-side for half a lap on those double-file restarts. It's a special place.

"Watkins Glen is a lot faster, and you can't really run side-by-side up through the 'S's.' I don't think you'll see the same type of racing you saw at Sonoma, but you'll see a great race."

Gordon's wife, Ingrid, is expected to have the couple's second child in the coming days. Scott Pruett, a two-time Grand-Am Rolex Series champion and former NASCAR driver, is standing by if Gordon needs to leave Watkins Glen during the weekend to be with his wife.

In June, Gordon was a marked man in the Sonoma garage. Several drivers, particularly Martin Truex Jr., were furious with Gordon's aggressive driving throughout the 110-lap race.

Following the second restart on lap 61, Truex was running among the top-10, but Gordon slammed into the back of him and turned him around.

Gordon also tangled with Elliott Sadler and Kurt Busch during the 110-lap race. Gordon's Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Jimmie Johnson, claimed his first road course victory in the series at Sonoma. Johnson benefited from Ambrose's costly mistake in the closing laps. Ambrose held the lead, but the Australian driver turned his engine off in an effort to conserve fuel. He slowed down on the track and lost the top position, as he fell to seventh. After the final restart, Johnson pulled ahead of Robby Gordon and then drove to his first road course win in 17 starts.

Can Johnson, the four-time defending series champion, establish himself as this year's "road course king?"

The Glen's been the better of the two tracks for me, so I feel real good about going back there," he said.

Ambrose, a road-course expert, certainly will be a favorite at Watkins Glen. He has yet to win his first Sprint Cup race, but he has finished second and third in the last two races here. Ambrose also has won the Nationwide race at The Glen in the past two seasons.

"Well it's the right course; that helps for me," Ambrose said. "The competition is fierce, and that track is high speed. It's got an old style feel to it. There's a lot of banking in the turns, and a lot of high-speed corners. It fits what I like in a racetrack. It fits my style pretty well."

Forty-six teams are on the preliminary entry list for the Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips at The Glen.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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