These are the dog days of summer, and a lot of times it seems like the only sports going are baseball and the WNBA (and the ladies even had their All-Star Break this weekend), so it's pretty quiet here in the sports books compared to other times of the year. Heck, even ESPN knew it was a slow week and hosted the ESPY Awards on Wednesday night and showed it in prime time on Sunday.
   But say what you will about the lack of action, there were still dogs barking during the dogs days.
* On Saturday night at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J., Alfonso Gomez ended the career of Arturo Gatti with a seventh-round knockout in their welterweight fight. Here in Las Vegas, Gatti opened around a -200 favorite and was bet as high as -260 at the MGM Mirage properties, but Gomez, who made a name for himself on "The Contender" reality series, came through as the +210 underdog.
* Jonathan Byrd hadn't won on the PGA Tour since 2004, but he rallied Sunday to win the John Deere Classic in Silvis, Ill., as a 50-1 longshot. For a golf tournament, that's not that huge of a price, but it kinda is when you consider that all of the top players weren't in the event as they were heading to Scotland to prepare for this week's British Open (the Las Vegas Hilton had Zach Johnson and Kenny Perry as 12-1 co-favorites) and yet Byrd was 50-1 against this less-than-stellar field. For a preview of the British Open, see the "Looking Ahead" section below.
* Like Byrd, Tony Stewart was on a losing streak as he hadn't won a Nextel Cup race in his last 20 starts, but oddsmakers weren't fooled as he was the third betting choice around town in Sunday's USG Sheetrock 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. Station Casinos had him at 8-1, which was the same odds that Kevin Harvick was when the won the Busch race on Saturday.
* The Columbus Destroyers, who were only 7-9 during the Arena Football League regular season and barely made the playoffs, have won their last two games as double-digit underdogs. They beat No. 1 seeded Dallas 66-59 last week as 13-point dogs and then upset Georgia 66-56 this past Saturday as 11 1/2-point dogs to advance to the ArenaBowl. The Destroyers' opponent will be the San Jose SaberCats, who beat the defending champion Chicago Rush 61-49 as 3-point favorites. Las Vegas Sports Consultants has installed San Jose as a 7-point favorite in the ArenaBowl, to be played July 29 in New Orleans, with a total at 120, though the Caesars/Harrah's books here in Vegas have shaded the number down to 118 1/2.

WSOP Final table set for Tuesday

   Another sign that it's a quiet time in the sports world is that every time you turn on ESPN, they seem to be showing the World Series of Poker.
   This year's Main Event — officially titled the $10,000 World Championship No-Limit Hold'em event — is down to its final table of nine players to be contested Tuesday, starting at noon local time and 3 p.m. EDT.
   Pay-per-view is available for $19.95 (contact your local cable company) but won't include the camera that shows each player's hole cards. It'll be just like being at the Rio where fans are watching the action but don't see the player's cards during play, and certainly not if a losing player mucks a hand.
   Philip Hilm, a 31-year-old online poker player from England, is the chip leader heading into the final table with $23.1 million. The rest of the final table is Tuan Lam ($20.3 million), Jon Kalmer ($20.2 million), Raymond Rahme ($16 million), Lee Childs ($13.3 million), Lee Watkinson ($12.1 million), Hevad Kahn ($9.2 million), Jerry Yang ($8.5 million) and Alex Kravchenko ($6.6 million).
   Casual poker fans won't recognize any of those names, and even serious players will be busy reading biographies on them, as 1998 world champion Scott Nguyen was the last "name" player eliminated in 11th place early Monday morning.
   Tuesday's action will start with blinds at $120,000/$240,000 and a $30,000 ante. It's hard to call those small, but they are in relation to chip stacks at this final table, so players will be able to wait for good spots and it could take a long time until a champion is crowned. They'll be hard-pressed, however, to match the marathon held two years ago when Australian Joe Hachem won the title at 6:40 a.m. the following morning.

Looking ahead . . .

   The British Open is this Thursday through Sunday at Carnoustie Golf Club in Scotland. As expected, the Las Vegas Hilton has Tiger Woods as the heavy favorite at 3-1 with Phil Mickelson, who bogeyed away a victory Sunday in the Scottish Open, a distant second choice at 12-1. Other top qualifiers include Ernie Els and Jim Furyk at 15-1; Vijay Singh at 20-1; Padraig Harrington, Justin Rose and Luke Donald at 25-1; and Retief Goosen, Adam Scott and Sergio Garcia at 30-1.
* The British Open should be enough to make this upcoming weekend seem a little more active in the race & sports books here (as well as the first weekend of the popular Del Mar horse racing meet), but then things will also get a boost on Saturday night with the Bernard Hopkins-Winky Wright bout at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. Wright is a slight -135 favorite with the "will go/won't go" prop — boxing's version of the over/under since you really can't go "over" 12 rounds so they word it differently — set at 12 rounds with the will go as a heavy -600 favorite as a knockout isn't expected between these two warriors.
* The Tuley the Tout page will start breaking down NFL over/under season win totals this week.