A monster day of sport with the Ebor and the start of the England v Pakistan test match at the Oval. I’ve backed Overturn and Life and Soul at York and sold £8 of Cook’s match runs at 68 and Collingwood’s at 63… fingers crossed!

The opening day of York’s Ebor meeting got off to a disappointing start when Damien (£10 buy at 12 on the index) finished out with the washing in the opener. However, I made those losses back and more when Rewilding bolted up in the Great Voltigeur (£10 buy at 28). Yet, a £10 sell of Rip Van Winkle at 22 cost me £280 and meant I ended up behind on day one.

However, the real problem came after racing when I decided to buy £150 of Spurs against Young Boys at 0.95. Well, it turned out that the Young Boys were actually men and they raced into a 3-0 lead inside the first 30 minutes. I was staring at monster losses and was relieved to see Spurs pull two back. The final loss of £292.50 seemed like a win under the circumstances!

I didn’t have an opinion on the Manchester United v Newcastle game and as I wasn’t driving back from Cornwall, didn’t feel the need to have a bet. That said, I decided to sell £150 of goals at 2.0 in-play after around 25 minutes as Newcastle looked well organised at the back. Sadly, they lost that organisation almost straight away and conceded the first of three goals. The eventual 3-0 win cost me £150, but it could have been worse!

The last time I drove back from Cornwall, I had a child-free car and 4 hours of live Open golf commentary. Sadly, this time around, we left well before the start of the final round of the US PGA and I had to make do with Liverpool v Arsenal instead.

I had no opinion on the game, but was determined to have a bet on the game for boredom reasons. I opted to sell £200 of Liverpool goal supremacy at 0.1 as I couldn’t see Arsenal losing the game. Well, in short, I was losing £180 for most of the game until Arsenal popped up an equalised (via the keeper) in the last minute. It was all pretty stressful for a poultry profit of £20… a breakaway Liverpool second goal would have been expensive. My luck was in.

Well, it was in for a few hours at least. Choi only managed to shoot a final round 74, but it was one better than Mahan who struggled to a 75. It meant that they both finished tied for 39th (43rd) which meant no profit or loss on the former and a loss of £40 on the latter. My £10 sell of Retief Goosen at 37 cost me another £200 to take my US PGA losses to £480. Ernie Els finished tied for 18th which took my running losses to £650!

However, Johnson and Mcilroy did the business at the front end and even though he was penalised two shots at the death, Johnson still finished in a tie for 5th and won me back £330. As for Mcilroy, he finished tied for 3rd and won me another £360. That meant winnings of £690 against losses of £650… all that hard work for £40 profit! I’ll have to get fish and chips to celebrate!

I failed to mention earlier that we (that’s me and the family, rather than Johnson and Mcilroy) had spent what seemed like most of the previous day in the car driving to Cornwall to stay with friends for the weekend. I went mackerel fishing at 8am with my host and my six-year-old daughter and it was choppy… really choppy. We caught three mackerel in 40 minutes and I was thrilled when the trip was finally abandoned. I felt so sea sick and I think the only thing that prevented me from actually being sick was how comfortable my daughter was. In fact, she was gutted when we headed back home.

It was a great feeling being back on dry land. However, it wasn’t such a great feeling watching Richard Hills ride Ouqba in the Hungerford Stakes. He gave Frankie Dettori the softest of leads and limped home in third place… costing me £90 in the process. Tajneed then failed by a neck to win the Great St Wilfrid handicap and a £230 profit became a £30 one in the dying strides. Anyway, a £60 loss on the day’s racing wasn’t a disaster… it cost the same as takeaway fish and chips at Rick Stein’s café in Padstow!

I left the opening day of the Premiership alone as we were in Padstow and my mind was on the US PGA (and fish and chips) rather than football. Well, they say that Saturday is moving day, but sadly Retief Goosen (74) was heading in the wrong direction. Ernie Els annoyingly bounced back into contention with a 69, but so did Mcilroy and Johnson who both shot 67’s. Mahan shot a 68 to climb up a few places, while Choi’s 71 meant he stayed where he was. All in all, things were looking good… and the fish and chips were awesome

Unlucky for some… yes, but as long as that wasn’t going to be Choi, Mahan or Goosen, I didn’t care. The reality was that some of my prayers were answered as all three did make the cut… Goosen shot a 68, Choi a 69 and Mahan beat the magic +2 mark by one shot. All three had guaranteed themselves two more days of golf and more importantly for me, a make-up of better than 70!

However, it wasn’t all good news as Oosthuizen’s 75 meant he finished on +2 and missed the cut. My £10 sell of 46 cost me £240 and the first bit of damage had been done. However, the positive news was that Els’s 74 had seen him slip back a bit, whilst Johnson and Mcilroy were bang in contention.

The opening round of the US PGA Championship was delayed by fog so it gave me a little more time to add a few more trades to the ones I already had on Els, Mahan, Johnson and Goosen. I decided to sell £10 of Louis Oosthuizen’s finishing position at 46, £10 of KJ Choi at 43 and £10 of Mcilroy’s unlimited finishing position at 40. It all meant that when the fog suddenly disappeared, I went into the 92nd PGA Championship with more positions than the Kama Sutra!

Unfortunately, the only one of the seven players I had opposed got off to a stormer - Ernie Els fired an opening round of 68 which was enough to see him finish just one off the eventual first round lead. Mcilroy, Johnson and Oosthuizen all shot more than encouraging opening rounds of 71. However, I had major concerns about Choi (74), Mahan (74) and Goosen (76) all making the weekend.

It was suddenly clear once the fog had cleared that I had what can only be described as a terrible bunch of open positions. Even more annoying was that as so many players hadn’t completed their first rounds, there was no updated prices… the plane was crashing and I had no parachute!