Brian Viner: Does Tiger burn too bright to keep up with Jones?
Our betting correspondent, Mr Hey, with whom I am privileged to share this page, knows as well as I do that every gambler, like every fisherman, has a story about the one that got away. And while I hesitate to call myself a gambler, lest I give the wrong impression to my mother, who reads this column and was married for 24 years to a compulsive gambler in the form of my late father, I have been known to press into the palms of Mr Ladbroke the odd tenner, one of which accompanied a betting slip marked “double: Durham Edition to win the Grand National, Nick Faldo to win the US Masters”. That was in 1990 and my tenner would have yielded £900 – a fortune to me then; indeed, a fortune to me now – had Durham Edition, closing rapidly on Mr Frisk, not failed by three-quarters of a length to win at Aintree. The following day at the Augusta National Faldo successfully defended his Masters title. I was inconsolable. Major tournament golf in those days was worth betting on. The favourite, usually
