Pound foolishness

While Americans tend to bet on golf while playing with friends or neighbors or that egotistical cheater from the legal department at work, golf-minded Britons tend to bet on golf while, well, breathing.

They bet on the British Open so reflexively and so enthusiastically that some of them this very week will wager not only on the winner or whether there will be a hole in one up the coast at Carnoustie, but on the daily color of Ian Poulter’s outfits.

“I’m guessing Mr. Poulter’s clothing will probably be looked at” as a betting concept, said Robin Hutchison of the wagering chain Ladbrokes.

Thereby does Mr. Poulter’s notorious fashion iridescence come to epitomize a national pastime of betting not as a way to make money but as a way to watch an event with an added dose of zeal.

The guy who just came into a Ladbrokes on Tuesday morning and bet $14,000 on Ernie Els probably wants to make some money, but most people just want to lord a successful bet over others in the pub.

It’s a matter of “my assessment of the situation versus your assessment of the situation,” said Mark Griffiths, a professor of gambling studies at Nottingham Trent University.

“I think the vast majority of people who have a bet in England fully expect to have lost that money,” said Rupert Adams, a spokesman at the William Hill betting agency. “The assumption is that it’s gone already, the money.”

That’s certainly the assumption of the people who have combined to wager a total of 31 pounds (about $63) through Ladbrokes on 63-year-old Tony Jacklin at odds of 10,000-1, and it’s certainly the assumption of Sheena Willoughby, who with husband Jack runs the Dunvegan Hotel pub at St. Andrews.

Absolutely everybody in the pub has put some pounds down on somebody, and absolutely everybody includes Willoughby. She has separate bets of 12.50 pounds (about $26) at 25-1 on Jim Furyk (a former customer she considers a decent soul), 20 pounds (about $41) at 100-1 on Charles Howell III (“He came in and ate nothing but chicken wings all week” during the 2005 Open) and 20 pounds at 200-1 on 48-year-old Tom Lehman (former guest at the hotel).

It’s sentiment laced with knowledge, it’s legion this time of year, it results in mass romantic bets on the Scot Colin Montgomerie, and it’s part of the reason the British Open reigns as “the biggest sporting event of the summer,” Hutchison said. He estimates Ladbrokes will take in 5 million pounds (about $10 million) this week, and that because Ladbrokes usually gobbles up 20% of the market, he can reckon that a national take of “25 million pounds to 30 million pounds for four days of golf isn’t bad.”

That trumps Wimbledon by about 20%, ranks alongside the Grand National steeplechase race of springtime and lures roughly as many wagerers -- if not the money -- as the FA Cup soccer final each May, Adams said. It also illustrates how gambling has made the trek “from sin to vice to socially accepted leisure activity,” Griffiths, the university professor, said.

For centuries, betting rustled underground, dating to the 17th century for cricket matches, to name just one sport. Then the government’s 1968 Gaming Act brought it into the daylight, and began to sprout the by-now-ubiquitous betting parlors sitting not just in this resort or that, but on the main -- or “high” -- street of most every village, town and city.

For landmark impact, though, Griffiths cites the government’s institution of a national lottery in 1994, whence has come “a real drip-drip-drip effect,” he said. He has found that it “de-masculinized” gambling, infusing female involvement, and more importantly “de-stigmatized” gambling.

Now, Britons bet on such matters as who will be voted off the “Big Brother” TV show and which country will win the all-the-rage Eurovision Song Contest, as well as golf and what-all, as businesses “fight for that gambling leisure pound.” They do so in a country decidedly more secular than the United States, so that any stated opposition from, say, the Methodists goes unnoticed.

“Here, religious groups are not taken particularly seriously,” Griffiths said, just after stating, “There’s not a particularly powerful lobbying group inside or outside of Parliament.”

Griffiths, who specializes in the psychology of gambling, has spent 20 years studying addictions while maintaining that they remain rare in British society. “You have to realize that gambling for most people is natural, normal and causes little or no problems,” he said.

With the British Open and other golf events, it even has a vivid parallel history.

Ladbrokes still reels from having decided that Tiger Woods wouldn’t win the 2006 Open at Royal Liverpool, offering him at 6-1 early on. “The thinking was he didn’t like links golf,” Hutchison said, and that thinking cost about 5 million pounds ($10 million). Ladbrokes also lost a significantly smaller amount on whether Woods would shake hands with Nick Faldo on the first day as they played in the same group.

Woods did, and naysayers lost.

Unlikely winner Todd Hamilton started the 2004 event at 500-1, said Adams of William Hill, while equally unlikely winner Ben Curtis began 2003 at 300-1, but only because, Adams recalled, “There was a very small article in a newspaper about Ben Curtis by somebody, just talking about how he was coming over from a small town in the States and how it was his first Open.”

Had Woods won the 2007 Masters, Adams said, William Hill would have lost 500,000 pounds (about $1 million), rather than the 1 million pounds ($2 million) it gained when Zach Johnson edged the runner-up Woods. And on the morning of the final round of the 1996 Masters, Britons ignored Faldo at 50-1 as he trailed 1-66 favorite Greg Norman by six strokes, before prevailing and hugging Norman in profound sympathy.

In the hundreds of agency histories lie thousands of personal histories, and so pub owner Willoughby can tell of having Thomas Bjorn at 100-1 in the 2003 British Open. Bjorn led by two shots with three holes left, and just before he took three shots to escape a bunker by No. 16, ushering Curtis to the fore, Willoughby said, “I was in the bar, practically buying everyone a drink.”

She pretty much spoke for a nation.

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Casting their lines

Betting chain Ladbrokes’ odds (with world rankings) for selected players to win the 136th British Open, which begins Thursday at Carnoustie:

*--* Player Odds WR Tiger Woods 3-1 1 Ernie Els 12-1 4 Phil Mickelson 14-1 2 Jim Furyk 20-1 3 Justin Rose 25-1 21 Luke Donald 25-1 9 Padraig Harrington 25-1 10 Vijay Singh 25-1 6 Adam Scott 33-1 5 Geoff Ogilvy 40-1 8 Retief Goosen 40-1 11 Paul Casey 40-1 18 Sergio Garcia 40-1 13 Henrik Stenson 40-1 7 Niclas Fasth 40-1 20 K.J. Choi 50-1 12 Ian Poulter 50-1 31 Angel Cabrera 50-1 17 Colin Montgomerie 50-1 33

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