Dustin the turkey

By Ronan Groome

Saturday, 19th June

After a hectic week of racing and having subjected myself to the most painful 90 minutes of football I had ever seen the night before, betting-wise, I was just not all that motivated. England were abysmal and it was all the more painful to watch given the fact that I had staked money on them winning convincingly. It is rather unpleasant, when you select something worth betting on and it turns out so badly you just want to give up everything and shamefully crawl into your bed to go to sleep as fast as you can to get away from the unnecessary stress and harm you brought upon yourself. I experienced the same feeling from backing France to win the World Cup, which really could not have turned out any worse. Nevertheless my quest to gamble myself into early retirement goes on, but that quest was taking a break for the day as I had decided to give myself a day-off from the concentrating on the couch and get out and about. The new Aviva stadium were having an open day for all their important customers and only generally very important people got invited, so I strolled up with a few of my ‘well-respected’ friends from college and we got in easily enough with VIP passes, nothing to do with one of my friends who is a tour guide there, he was just joining us coincidentally. I can’t remember the last time I spent a Saturday not at home betting and it was rather refreshing, even though walking through Dublin was proving quite a scary and difficult task. I can’t say I have much experience of our capital city and it was the equivalent of a bemused polar bear strolling around a rain forest. Luckily enough my ‘well-respected’ friends were really understanding!

Saturday nights at home are usually dominated by a number of my brother’s friends slouched all over our couches – how dare they – watching whatever golf tournament is in its penultimate stage. I usually react to this scene with a frown and get an early night but not this week, I had backed Dustin Johnson at 55/1, thanks to Racing Post golf tipster Steve Palmer and he was joint leader at Pebble Beach. So I sat down with the chaps and contributed to their self-made golf course atmosphere by joining in and shouting ‘Great Shot’, ‘Get down ball’, and ‘Bite’. Watching golf is great banter. It even got better as Johnson went to -6, three shots clear of the rest. Golf players don’t throw away those leads do they? No chance, and I couldn’t wait to watch the last eighteen holes.

Sunday, 20th June

A fairly quiet day. Sundays are so relaxing; everyone seems to just stroll around with more freedom than any other day. Why can’t every day be like Sunday? I got a bit of Wimbledon research done, it is that time of year again when about this time next week I will surely fancy myself as a tennis player again and hit the local courts to show-off my 10km/h serves. I remained un-decided about the men’s section but was set on the women’s side; I had €16 on Kim Clijsters at 10.5, €12 on Maria Sharapova at 12.5 and €12 on my own Caroline Wozniacki of course, at 28.

I got a few bets on the day’s football as well, €12 on Italy to win 1-0 against New Zealand, and €8 on Brazil to win 3-0 at 16.5 against Ivory Coast. I knew the Italy game would be tight but I just could not see the all-whites scoring, their goal was off-side but it was still fairly bad defending by the Italians and if they can’t defend they are a fairly rubbish team. Things were looking up when Brazil out-classed Ivory Coast and went into a comfortable 3-0 lead, but with only 10 minutes to go Ivory Coast got one of those pointless consolation goals, a sad goal that meant virtually nothing to most people but did me out of a 100 bucks.

Ah well, I had the golf, right? That’s all I was really thinking about all day, with a slight worry about how late I was going to have to stay up in order to go to bed with peace of mind that my 55/1 shot was safe as houses. Lay-off? Laying off is for pansies, I am a macho-gambler so the even money that he was being traded at on Betfair was no use to me. I drove home thinking about good things to spend my cash on, only to receive an alarming text from my brother, who was on Dustin Johnson too, saying that he was going to make us sweat for this. When I came in he had triple-bogied the second. That can not be good. He went on to double-bogey another hole and while all this sudden stress had hit me like a ton of bricks, I was clinging on to the reasonable hope that Johnson, who had been up there at the top of the leader-board from the start would actually decide to start playing. It didn’t happen. He carded a 10 over par to finish six shots off the leader. I mean seriously Dustin, at least give me a run for my money on the final day! The whole thing was just sad and it turned out I was in bed fairly early because it was all over after eight holes.

By Ronan Groome