Ronan

Good fun running through the main Masters contenders, as well as some of the big Exchange prices alongside @Ginger_Bets for @TeamMatchbook 🎥 youtube.com/watch?v=5nL-bM…

@KylePorterNS Lots of European green ties 🇮🇪

DJ’s white teeth-black shirt combo is amusing. Sandy Lyle looks like he’s about to lecture for 90 minutes on applied mathematics. Jose Maria looks like he’s *ready* for Rory’s wine choices. Spieth needs an intervention with the purple on purple look. They jammed the winner of two of the last four in the corner like he’s at the kids table! Rahm looks dapper. Tie is a little bright for me. But he’s got some good aura going. Crenshaw looks like he’s fun as hell to have a great dinner with.

@HarryStewartMo1 Does that make you Mandela?!

Gambling’s answer to Bishop Desmond Tutu speaks…

It is nice to be back on the @UnabatedSports screen... @TeamMatchbook 💪

@chrisgambler247 Shhh!!

🤔

@Tombrownlee Davos :)

@djstevemcgrath The authenticator app is useless too. Lucky to hit a 20% strike rate on approving a transaction!

The year is 2026 & AIB still insist on using one of these to set up a simple standing order. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Only took an hour of searching the house to find it.

Sure to be some top class views and you can’t beat a LIVE recording! 🙊😂

@gfienberg17 @mr_peanutbettor No street football as kids most likely

@mr_peanutbettor I guess my question how is America so shit at soccer? Geez, that seems embarrassing

We get to see Canada compete vs USA in something that matters more than anything for Canada vs what is not in America's top-10 sports (I am talking participation, I understand NHL viewership is high). Hope Canada is able to win this one, they really need it.

I’m very chuffed that I’ve got a race named after my SimonNottRacing @YouTube channel at @punchestownrace on Wednesday. Thanks to @TeamMatchbook for giving me a race on their sponsored card- I’ll be there and very much looking forward to it.

This Wednesday we're going to take a look at racing from a different angle with the master @SimonNott Come join us....

@AlanShipnuck Thanks Alan

@irishro Amazon or your favorite bookseller! It’s being released on April 7 by Simon & Schuster UK, which covers Ireland.

For Rory McIlroy, the march to the green jacket began a year ago at Pebble Beach. Here’s a little teaser from my forthcoming biography RORY (which can be pre-ordered here bit.ly/4rfrC4K … but no pressure!). In his decade-long quest to complete the Grand Slam, Rory McIlroy had tried everything to peak for the Masters: play the week before, rest the week before; arrive in Augusta early, arrive in Augusta late; play the course weeks ahead of time, skip the extra preparation. The one thing he had never done was treat November and December as if the Masters were imminent. “Rory’s plan for Augusta started in the offseason,” says Bob Rotella, his sports psychologist. “He won four times in 2024; he was playing at such a high level, the plan for the offseason was to treat it like it wasn’t the offseason. He stayed very active, playing and practicing and working on targeted things.” Most of all, McIlroy dedicated himself to becoming more effective with his short irons and wedges. Both Tiger Woods and Butch Harmon had harped on McIlroy to address this long-standing weakness in the preceding two years, but now, finally, he was ready to hear it. “That’s just how I am: I have to make things my own idea,” he says knowingly. So, as 2024 turned into 2025, McIlroy grinded on different shot shapes and trajectories with his shortest clubs, allowing him to lower the height and spin rate of his shots and giving himself a more varied arsenal, including a baby cut that would serve him well off the hook lies at Augusta National. “Rory is a golf swing nerd, and we have talked swing a lot,” says Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee. “I showed him some old videos from 2012 and ’14 and said, ‘Can you not get down the line with a cupped left wrist like you had back then?’ That guy was winning majors by eight shots. He had gotten too deep on the backswing and across the line at the top, with a flat left wrist. Where he was a decade ago was a qualitatively better spot to play iron shots from. The numbers don’t lie, he was a better iron player then. He was not going to beat Scottie [Scheffler] if he didn’t hit his irons better.” Throughout the offseason, Chamblee could see McIlroy’s swing going back to the future. “At the end of 2024, he was posting swing videos online and the technical improvement was obvious,” says Chamblee. “At the top [of his swing], he looked more like the Rory of old. Once he got his swing in a better place, he could let go of every mechanical thought. That gave him the clarity to come out and play with more grit, more mettle, more determination.” All of this was on display at McIlroy’s 2025 PGA Tour debut at the Crosby Clambake. He arrived at Pebble Beach looking rested and refreshed, a much different energy from his pinched, puckered visage throughout the preceding season’s marital drama. McIlroy is a golf romantic; he stirred his soul the day before the Clambake began by playing Cypress Point for the first time. (He shot 67.) McIlroy began the tournament proper on the back nine at Spyglass Hill. The fifteenth hole is a short, steeply downhill par-3 that demands precise distance control. All McIlroy did was fly his ball straight into the hole for a slam-dunk ace, keying his bogeyless round of 66. Nothing like some positive feedback to validate all the hard work. An ensuing 70 left McIlroy in eleventh place, five strokes behind Sepp Straka. Some vintage Crosby weather blew in on Saturday, and McIlroy rose to the challenge with a dazzling display of shotmaking into Pebble’s tiny greens. He set up birdies with a three-quarter wedge on fifteen and then an off-speed 9-iron at sixteen, to say nothing of a 346-yard drive on eighteen. His 65 was his second bogey-free round in the span of three days, and it shot McIlroy into the lead. “This is as complete as I’ve seen Rory look, tee through the green, around the green, on the green,” enthused CBS’s Trevor Immelman. On Sunday, having fought his way to a two-stroke lead through thirteen holes, McIlroy launched from the fourteenth tee one of the more memorable drives in the recent history of Pebble Beach, a 339-yard moon shot that touched 190 miles per hour of ball speed and 168 feet at its apex. He followed with a towering 7-iron from 201 yards that left him twenty-seven feet for eagle. He gutted the putt. Game over. Sixteen years earlier, McIlroy had defeated Justin Rose in Dubai for his first professional victory. They were paired again on Sunday at Pebble Beach, and Rose was impressed that McIlroy continued to evolve at age thirty-five. “He did all the right things,” said Rose, who tied for third. “He had control of his wedges. He was controlling all of his distances quite nicely. It was a very professional round of golf.” Rose’s smirk betrayed that McIlroy had, in the past, been prone to schoolboy errors. Rory didn’t exactly disagree. “I finally feel my game can travel to any sort of golf course in any conditions in any setup, really,” he said after his first victory in California. “I feel like I’m now a very well-rounded golfer and can adapt to whatever I need to adapt to.” When I asked him to clarify when he had finally arrived, he turned philosophical. “Maybe not finally,” McIlroy said. “I don’t know if any of us should define ourselves as complete because that means there’s nowhere left to go, no improvement left, and that’s certainly not the case.” It’s admirable that McIlroy was still looking ahead, given all that he had already accomplished: his twenty-seventh Tour victory moved him within one of Paul “Little Poison” Runyan and Leo Diegel for twentieth on the all-time list. Within striking distance were legends Lee Trevino (29 wins), Horton Smith (30), and Jimmy Demaret (31). Getting to thirty-one victories would make McIlroy among the fifteen most prolific winners in the history of the PGA Tour, to say nothing of his victories on the Euro Tour (ten and counting circa Pebble Beach, not including the major championships and WGCs, which were already included in his PGA Tour total). Yet McIlroy noted that the Pebble win was so special because it came on one of golf ’s “cathedrals.” Only Augusta National and the Old Course can match Pebble’s grandeur. “And I had a big fat zero on all of those going in here,” McIlroy said. “So to knock one off [at] Pebble is very cool.” Rotella loved hearing McIlroy talk that way. “I thought that was brilliant on his part,” he says. “He embraced the bigness of the moment. What a great word—‘cathedral.’ ” McIlroy didn’t mention it, but Augusta National has long carried an overwrought nickname: “the Cathedral in the Pines"...

@sporttrade_app Boom!

BREAKING: Sporttrade unveils REKT, a best-in-class insider trading prevention platform on its exchange. Restrict listing Events that are Known from Trading

@betdaqsports @DonaldClarke63 Monday club in the Roselawn

@DonaldClarke63 Disgruntled Yanks expecting this in every Irish pub a 5 pm will be hilarious !

@SemioticRivalry You could just not offer these markets!

Currently at Kalshi, Lady Gaga is trading at 90c to attend the super bowl despite zero public information, but they put out a PR press release so I guess the insider trading problem is gone. The fact is, anyone who seriously trades on Kalshi still has to be very worried about insiders and the problem is harder to deal with than on Polymarket, where you can see all counterparties. Even if Lady Gaga ultimately doesn't attend, the fact that everyone is completely terrified to buy No shares at 10c shows that the insider problem is not solved.

The Matchbook Brokerage team have been busy recently with some headline trades! 🏈 Indiana to beat Oregon (NCAA Football) @ 1.55 risking $160,113 ✅ 🏈 SEA Seahawks to beat SF 49ers @ 1.83 risking $338,798 ✅ ⚽️ Ipswich To Win Championship 2025/26 @ 3.75 to win £20k ⏳ 🏇 Sir Gino To win 15:00 Cheltenham @ 1.50 Risking £60k ❌ 🏇 Abando To Win 14:39 Kempton @ 13.0 to win £50k ❌ Matchbook Brokerage can offer very competitive prices, for large stakes, on all major sports. DM our team for more information ✍️

Amongst all the gloom, a ray of light!

@AKBets Very Brexity poll pal!

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