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__“If you’re afraid of losing too much money, bet both match and stroke play. You hardly ever lose both.”

--Lee Trevino.__

Masters pools and bets (who doesn’t have an English friend who’s put a few bob on Tiger) are almost as much fun as NCAA pools, especially if you have, say, Justin Rose today, who came in at, we're told, 125-1. I know, I know, there's a long way to go. My friend Mike Orr called this week to execute our usual bet. Orr is an retired golf industry exec who, at various points in his career ran the golf divisions Spalding, Maxfli and and Browning, which made hybrid clubs back when you didn’t call them that. They just looked odd. Our bet, which we’ve been doing for 13 years is this: One person takes either Americans or Internationals. The second person then sets an over-and-under number in relation to par. We used to use minus-10, but this year I chose minus-8. Mike then took under. So here is our $20 bet: Mike took the Internationals (suprisingly, until this afternoon) and less than -8, i.e., -7, -6, -5. Given the leaders and the scores today, he's sitting pretty. I have the Americans and -9, -10, -11…. If the score is -8, that part of the bet is a wash. In the years we’ve been doing this, I think, all but three years have resulted in ties.  When that happens we send an ugly brown tie back and forth. In some way I don't understand, it’s like that Trevino’s match/stroke play bet: It’s rare that you lose both ways. Perfect Masters bet for those of us with no money in our pockets.

-- Bob Carney