I’ve been looking forward to this week for a very long time.  It’s the 118^th playing of the US Open, at renowned Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island.  I had my first look at the course on Tuesday, guided round by my Sirius/XM colleague and friend, the experienced broadcaster Fred Albers, who has had the pleasure of playing here a number of times.  I liked it from the off despite having to listen to his detailed descriptions of the birdies he had the last time he played.

So much about it is reminiscent of the Irish/Scottish courses that populated my youthful amateur tournament play – the tall waving marram grasses and the glorious lack of really tall vegetation, in other words, trees, and of course, the ever present stiff-ish breeze that Dad would have scathingly labelled a mere zephyr.  Here is a course and set-up that looks to be testing but fair, examining every aspect of a player’s skill and asking a few questions also of their mental resilience and calmness under fire.

This is the fifth time the National Championship of the United States has been held at this venue and a good week is needed to erase the memories of the 2004 edition when the organising body, the US Golf Association, “lost” the greens, the 7th in particular, and had to resort to watering the putting surfaces in between pairings.  It was almost farcical but only one man was laughing at the end of the week and that was South African Retief Goosen who scooped his second US Open title in three years.

Retief is not here this week but his caddy from 2004, genial Irishman Colin Byrne, is back and I bumped into him as he was preparing to usher his current charge Rafa Cabrera Bello round the course.  He can recall every shot and every putt of 2004 – particularly on the final nine when Retief amazingly needed only 11 shots with the flat stick.  “How’s the course playing this year?,” I asked.  “It’s tough, very tough,” he said, and I realised yet again that it is not only the players who are tested to the limit – the caddies are too.  And that makes me wonder if you can, indeed, overcome a challenge such as this with simply your best buddy on the bag as opposed to a seasoned looper like Colin.  (Sorry Rory.)  If there’s nothing to choose between combatants coming down the stretch, the marginal gain that can make the difference can certainly be the caddy.  So, I like the chances of Rafa with Colin, Justin Rose with Mark Fulcher or Henrik Stenson with Gavin Lord.  This test requires a team – and they both need their “A” game.

As the crow flies we are about ninety miles from Quaker Ridge Golf Club, scene of last weekend’s terribly one-sided Curtis Cup match.  The final score was 17 points to 3 in favour of the Americans and that included a first ever whitewash in the singles.  As I was making my way round during my first recce of the course I was hailed by none other than Valerie Hassett, former president of the Irish Ladies’ Golf Union and former British Amateur Senior Champion and Scottish senior international Fiona de Vries, both of whom had been out to support the teams in the match.  They had caught the train from New York to the specially built Shinnecock station and were getting a feel of the place before flying home to catch the action on telly.  There seems to be much to ponder after this last contest, particularly the question as to whether the GB&I side should become Europe, as happened to the Ryder Cup back in 1979 at the suggestion of Jack Nicklaus.

I may be inclined to go along with that notion although I’m sure it’d meet with vehement opposition.  Time to revisit that suggestion after the post mortems are concluded, I think.

I am often asked for my tip for any major I am attending.  I have a 100% record in this – I am always wrong.  In fact, I’m wrong in most things, so the Curtis Cup will probably have a good chance of remaining purely a GB&I team and Rafa, Justin Rose and Henrik will all have poor weeks this week and not contend.  Ah, so maybe Rory with best buddy Harry on the bag will be striding up the 72nd to victory?  Well, I could live with THAT.  Couldn’t you?

 

It was a blustery, breezy day on a fast, hard-running golf course yesterday and my partners and I handled the conditions better than anyone else, to win the captains’ charity am/am by a single point.  So, well done to everyone who played, particularly for raising a couple of thousand pounds and more for Alzheimers, which is this year’s charity and coping manfully – and womanfully – with the conditions.

Admittedly, Whittington Heath is not Shinnecock Hills but it is probably more like this week’s US Open venue than most of the courses the pros play in their day to day life on tour.  It makes you think; it makes you have to trust your judgement, not just the yardage chart;  it makes you assess the camber, the roll, the breeze; and it often makes you hit shots you don’t really want to hit; it makes you mad because not every bounce will go your way; and sometimes it’ll seem positively unfair.  In short, it’s proper golf, golf at its most sporty, its most testing, its most irritating and if you get it right, its most exhilarating.

I’m not quite sure how I ended up in such exalted company but playing my sixth round in seven days (it was choir on Wednesday) I was easily the least inspired member of the four ball and just watched in awe, mixed with gratitude, as my partners produced the fireworks.  Jill Harris, playing off 21, represented England at table tennis in the Commonwealth Games and is starting to get to grips with golf.  She had two gross birdies and got on the card (two scores from the four to count) an impressive 13 times.  Team captain Susan Sims, a Scot with John Daly’s grip it and rip it mentality, hit some astounding shots and Sue Gartland, working her way back diligently from injury, is starting to look dangerous again as she adjusts to her new physical limitations (bit like Tiger, though think Sue’s putting is better at the moment).

We were, I admit, extra chuffed to win because we were the only all female team and, not having been able to go on any of the suffragette marches on Sunday – playing a match at Hinckley – I felt we were at least flying the flag!  Bit pathetic I know but every little helps.

We lost at Hinckley – good luck to them in the next round of the Taskers – but I’ve never arrived at a golf club in such enjoyable style.  The mini, even one of those modern super-sized mega minis, couldn’t cope with three of us plus golf clubs and trolleys, so the camper van it was.  Marvellous.  Might make a habit of it, it’s such a sedate way to travel – and you can see over most walls and hedges.  Thanks to Chris for doing the driving.

Although we lost, 4-3, we weren’t disgraced and it was disappointing to get home to discover that the GB&I Curtis Cup team was going down the tubes with barely a whimper.  The visitors lost all eight singles on the last day, so congrats to the USA on their victory and back to the drawing board (and the practice ground and the putting green) for the Brits and Irish in preparation for the next match, at Conwy in north Wales, in 2020.

Many moons ago now, at Prairie Dunes of blessed memory (give me half a chance and I’ll regale you yet again with the details of that glorious moment in Curtis Cup history), Trish Johnson was a fresh-faced amateur, sweeping all before her as she won four points out of four.  An invincible.  Thirty-two years later, she’s still competing and winning, this time on the Legends Tour, in the grandly named Suquamish Clearwater Legends Cup presented by Boeing at White Horse Golf Club in Kingston, Washington.  She won by five strokes from Lisa Grimes of Arizona, with Michelle McGann, the Floridian who was known for her hats, third, two shots further back.

Reluctantly – I like to keep you guessing – I’d better explain the wee picture of a green-painted building at the top of this post.  It’s there to remind me that I’m about to start so I’d better keep going.  Heaven help me, I’ve joined a gym!  I blame Sharon, my next-door neighbour, who was extolling the virtues of this place called Gymophobics and how it had helped her tone up and lose inches (in all the right places) in no time at all.  Feeling old and flabby despite, or perhaps because of, all the golf, I called in and with a huge amount of trepidation signed up.  My initial assessment is this afternoon and I’m not looking forward to the tale of the tape or the weigh-in.  I may or may not keep you posted…

Finally, here’s a photo of my favourite sign of the week, en route to the 1st tee at Hinckley.