Patrick Jourdain
Telegraph bridge correspondent who played Bill Gates and featured in Wales teams for six decades
PATRICK JOURDAIN, who has died aged 73, was bridge correspondent of The Daily Telegraph from 1992 and Wales’s most-capped bridge player, with more than 70 appearances over six decades for the Principality in the Home Internationals.
For 20 years from 1982, Jourdain was also editor of the International Bridge Press Association’s monthly Bulletin, the source of many of the world’s bridge columns, which is read by many millions of players. In 2003 he was elected the IBPA’s President.
Patrick David Jourdain was born on November 1 1942 at Woking, Surrey, and educated at St Edward’s School, Oxford, where he founded the school bridge club in his last year.
He won a scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where, in theory, he read Physics and Natural Sciences, while actually spending much of his time playing bridge. He was Secretary of the University Bridge Club and played in the 1964 Varsity match.
His first job after graduation was in operational research for GKN in Cardiff, which was nationalised as British Steel shortly after he joined it. In 1965, on the morning the trials for the Welsh Bridge team were due to start, a player was taken ill. Jourdain was called in as a substitute, and after a few minutes’ preparation with his partner, Roy Griffin of Swansea, the pair went on to win the trials.
The selectors had promised the winners a match and so Wales fielded Jourdain, its youngest ever-player at 23, in a match against Northern Ireland in Belfast in early 1966. For six consecutive decades, Jourdain was a regular on Welsh teams.
In 1973, Jourdain was promoted by British Steel to run a team in Glasgow, designing computer systems. Jourdain played two matches for Scotland in 1977, helping the country win the Home Internationals for the Camrose Trophy. The trophy for the annual bridge match between Scotland and Wales now bears his name.
In 1976 Jourdain had won the Gold Cup, the British knockout Championships, and was already earning money as a writer and teacher of bridge. He therefore decided to switch to bridge full-time, something that came as a surprise to British Steel, which had him on a high-flier list for senior management.
Jourdain returned to Cardiff in 1977 as manager of the city’s main bridge club and bridge correspondent of the Western Mail. He also became the bridge journalist for Channel 4’s teletext section on bridge. After requalifying for Wales he became the squad’s most frequent member.
From 1982, when he became editor of the IBPA’s Bulletin, he also understudied GCH Fox, bridge correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, reporting for the newspaper from each World and European Championship. When “Foxy” retired in 1992, retaining the post of columnist, Jourdain took over as correspondent. On the rare occasions that bridge made the front page it was mostly owing to scandal.
In 1999 Jourdain was the key person in the exposure of a Welsh international bridge player as a cheat, for which he had spent months gathering evidence. At a Welsh National Championship, witnesses had observed the player exchanging shuffled packs for prepared decks where he knew every card. At the subsequent hearing, faced with the irrefutable evidence, the player confessed and was suspended for 10 years. The story made the front page of The Daily Telegraph and was picked up by the media throughout the world.
When a quirky story about a computer coming fifth in a field of the world’s top bridge players in solving bridge problems made the front page, Jourdain was exhilarated. “Today,” he told a friend, “my words have been read by more people than saw Shakespeare when he was alive!”
At the 2002 World Championships in Montreal, Jourdain competed against Bill Gates and, at the Press Awards, was declared Bridge Personality of the Year.
As a journalist there he achieved a world scoop. At the time bridge was trying to get into the Olympic Games and had adopted the same drug-testing procedures. On the grapevine he heard that a player had refused a drugs test. Though no name was given, at the prize-giving banquet he noticed that when the American women’s team went up to get their medals a player was missing. He located the missing player, who told him that she had been stripped of her medal for refusing to take the drugs test, asking him to make the matter public. The story made the front page of The Telegraph.
In 2010 Jourdain was organiser of the Buffett Cup bridge match between Europe and the US that preceded the Ryder Cup golf match. Two of the finest bridge teams ever to compete in Britain saw a win for the US.
In 2014 Jourdain was in the team that won the first Welsh Premier League. The team represented Wales in the Commonwealth Nations Bridge Championship and won the gold medal. The same team was selected for the 2015 Camrose Home Internationals, finishing a narrow second to the Republic of Ireland.
Jourdain was co-author with Terence Reese of Squeeze Play is Easy (1980) and on his own wrote Play the Game Bridge (1990), The Daily Telegraph Easy Guide to Acol Bridge (2005) and Patrick Jourdain’s Problem Corner (2009). At the Cardiff School of Bridge, where he was principal, he taught more than 1,000 people to play.
Jourdain was a social golfer, a tennis player and a strong Christian who had served as a “boat boy” when very young and continued all his life to sing (bass) in church at festivals and to attend the annual All Saints’ Day service on his birthday.
He was unmarried and is survived by two sisters. Patrick Jourdain, born November 1 1942, died July 28 2016