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Tournament History
The Bridgestone Invitational is the third of four World Golf Championship events staged throughout the year. First staged in 1976, the tournament was originally called the World Series of Golf. It became a WGC event in 1999.

The qualifying criteria are quite extensive but it's basically an event for the top-50 in the world rankings plus this year's tournament winners and a few others. In short, it's a 78 strong top-class field with only US Open champ, Webb Simpson, a notable absentee.

Venue
Firestone Country Club (South Course), Akron, Ohio

Course Details
Par 70 - 7,400 yards
Stroke Index in 2011 - 69.56

Originally designed by Bert Wray in 1928, Robert Trent Jones completely remodelled the course in 1960 before Jack Nicklaus did some touch-up work in 1986.

Firestone is the longest par 70 encountered on the PGA Tour, with seven par 4's measuring at least 464 yards. Following a period of hot weather, the rough is far from brutal, the course is running fast and so are the average-sized greens.

Although the course's signature hole, the par 5 16th, measures fully 667 yards at its longest, it's actually the only respite the players get on a very tough finishing stretch. Last year, holes 13-18 ranked 5th, 2nd, 7th, 14th, 6th and 3rd hardest, so if you're trading in-running, bear that in mind. Once through the 12th, it's more a case of holding onto your score than looking to improve on it.

TV Coverage
Live on Sky at 7.00pm on Thursday and Friday, 5.00pm on Saturday and 5.30pm on Sunday.

Last Five Winners
2011 - Adam Scott -17
2010 - Hunter Mahan -12
2009 - Tiger Woods -12
2008 - Vijay Singh -10
2007 - Tiger Woods -8

What will it take to win at Firestone?
Although a long course, you can't just bomb-it off the tee and expect to figure. It can be a long and draining week if you're continually trying to find the greens from the rough but it's not so brutal that finding fairway after fairway is crucial - and possibly less so this year after the dry weather. Fairly long and fairly straight is about what you need though, so a good place to start is the Total Driving stats.

Whether you hit it long or short, straight or wide, you have to find the greens. Although there have been 13 WGC Bridgestone's in total, there have only been 12 at Firestone as Sahalee was used in 2002 and of the dozen tournaments here, the winner ranked inside the top-ten for Greens In Regulation ten times. The last seven winners have all ranked in the top-ten for GIR for the week, so an analysis of those stats won't go amiss either.

Market leaders
Tiger Woods' record in this event is quite simply superb. He's already won it seven times and given his record so far in 2012, at courses he has fared well at in the past, the layers could really be up against it this week.

His detractors will point to his reluctance to use the driver at Lytham but that was on a course he had very little experience of and where a missed fairway could spell disaster. He knows Firestone intimately and he'll know where and when the Big Chief can be safely given an airing. He heads the market at a very fair price of 6.0.

Second favourite, Luke Donald, finished runner-up to Adam Scott twelve months ago and that was his best effort in seven attempts. He's neither particularly long nor especially straight off the tee though and if he performs averagely in that department, his short game will need to be at its very best for him to contend again this year.

Third best is the defending champ and he'll have plenty of moral support this week. You'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel for Scotty after his meltdown at the Open Championship but how's he going to react? The pressure of defending, coupled with the obvious letdown he's experienced after Lytham, mean it would take a monumental effort to double-up and he makes no appeal whatsoever.

Selections
I was always going to back Tiger Woods at a reasonable price in this event and I fancy 6.6 was far better than reasonable. A clear pattern has emerged in 2012 and I'm hoping it will continue this week. Take a look at his wins to date and it's quite obvious, he's at his best when playing at a venue he's fared well at before.

His first win this season came at Bay Hill in March, when he won his seventh Arnold Palmer Invitational. He went off the boil after that but bounced back in June with a win at Muirfield Village, taking his fifth Memorial Tournament title, and that was quickly followed by his second win from three starts in his own event, the AT & T National, at Congressional.

His game may not be quite at its glorious best nowadays and maybe it never will be again, but it's clearly in good enough nick for him to prevail at venues he feels comfortable at and Firestone certainly falls into that category.

Having had a fair bet on Tiger, I didn't want to add too many other picks but I was very tempted by a couple of players I backed last year. Zach Johnson has always played well here and he's in terrific form and ever since he shot 64 in his first round at Firestone, I've always fancied Bubba Watson could win at the venue but they've been reluctantly left out from the start and I've backed just one other player...Kyle Stanley.

I've been keeping a close eye on Stanley for a while now and he's been showing a bit of form of late. He ranks inside the top-20 for both Greens In Regulation and Total Driving, suggesting Firestone might just suit. It's never ideal backing anyone making their course debut, but at 180.0 I felt he was worth chancing from the start.

Selections:
Tiger Woods @ 6.6
Kyle Stanley @ 180.0

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