Sport produces winners and losers – and not in equal measure.  There are very few winners compared to losers, so it must be a very bitter pill to be firmly in the former camp only then to spend years and years unable to open that magic door into the winner’s circle again.

Last weekend two players rediscovered that magic key.  Caroline Hedwall, a 29-year old twin from Stockholm turned pro late in 2010 and won an incredible four times in Europe in her rookie year in 2011.  The following year she won again and twice in Australia in 2013, so in no time at all she had seven titles to her name.  The upward graph continued with three consecutive Solheim Cup appearances, the highlight undoubtedly coming in Colorado in 2013 where she became the first player in the history of the game to win five points out of five, a massive contribution to Europe winning the Cup on away soil for the first (and, at the moment, only) time.

And then?  Well, that’s the problem.  And then……..nothing.  Things were already beginning to unravel.  She sustained a hip injury in 2012, rumoured to be due to a change in her fitness and training programme.  It kept her out of action for much of that season but she appeared undaunted each time she returned to action.  Of course, her confidence was sky high.  Niggling injuries persisted, however, and slowly, insidiously, the game became more and more difficult.  Hedwall never slacked in her commitment but the golden touch was gone and every ounce of confidence built up by her previous stellar appearances ebbed away.  Last October she had a ganglion cyst “as big as a ping pong ball” on her wrist removed, restoring her flexibility and enabling her to begin to use driver again after twelve months of only hitting a 3 wood from the tee.  And then a week ago she teed it up in the Lacoste Ladies’ Open de France at Golf du Medoc.  An encouraging performance was transformed into so much more by a blistering record-breaking final round of 62 for a two-shot victory over Stacy Lee Bregman of South Africa, who had herself closed with a 66.  Let’s hope this win signals the end of a desperate five-year stretch for the likeable Swede and total justification of her self-belief, no matter how deeply it was buried at times.

Her joyful reaction was music to the ears of her family, friends and supporters.  “It was a long time ago since I won and it feels great to get another win under my belt. It’s been a struggle over the past years with quite a few injuries and it’s been tough on my confidence.  I haven’t felt good when I’m under pressure.  Today, I really pulled it off and enjoyed being back there and in contention.  I performed under pressure and that gives me a lot of confidence moving forward.”

Next stop is this week’s final major of the year, the Evian Championship.  A chance to build on that upward moving graph again and who knows, perhaps next year a fourth Solheim Cup call up?  I, for one, certainly hope so.

Switching continents now and gender…..  Keegan Bradley ultimately triumphed in the third of the four Fed-Ex Cup play-off events, winning the BMW Championship in a rain-delayed finish on a soggy, wet Monday in Pennsylvania.  His extra hole victory over Justin Rose ended a six-year wait since his last victory and a two-year stretch of misery during which he had to learn how to putt again post the anchoring ban in January 2016.  Starting in May 2011 Bradley had won three times in fifteen months – with a major and a WGC (World Golf Championship) event among his titles.  And then, a little like Hedwall, absolutely nothing and the slow inevitable erosion of confidence began.

“A lot has happened to me over these six years,” he said. “The belly putter was a tougher transition than I thought, and I kind of fell off the radar there for a little while.  It’s tough to go from being on Ryder Cup teams, being on Presidents Cup teams to outside the top 100 in the world.  That was difficult.”

As he got his long game back in shape the putting still eluded him.  “When I used the belly, I just putted,” Bradley said.  “There was no thought process.  And I had to really sit down and focus in on my putting stroke, which was something I had never done.”

And so he began the slow climb back up the mountain to success.  If he had thought it was difficult first time around, this was something else.

“It’s scary when I look back because I didn’t know I needed this much improvement,” Bradley said. “But to put it all together, especially with the putter the way it was this week and the way it’s becoming, is so gratifying, because for a little while, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get back to this spot, and today I did it.”

Even at my lowly level it’s important to try and concentrate on the course.  “Have you ever played this game before?” my sister, exasperated, said.  I think I’d asked her to remind me of her tip on marking the ball properly, having forgotten to check it out again before our game at Delamere Forest, in Cheshire, yesterday.  She automatically assumes that I’m trying to wind her up but it was a genuine request.  In any case, there’s no need for me to make any effort to wind Mo up on the golf course; put her out with anyone else and she’ll be Zen-like calmness personified; put her out with me and I only have to breathe to deeve the life out of her.

We’ve both been playing golf for more than 50 years but at Delamere we were introduced to a format that we’d never played before and, appropriately, given that it was three old birds playing, it’s called the perch.  To get on the perch, you have to win a hole outright and since I had a par 5, nett 4 at the 1st, I was first on the perch.  Once on the perch, if you win another hole outright, you win a point but that’s not as easy as it sounds because the trick is staying there, with two other people trying their damnedest to knock you off.

Pam Valentine, who introduced us to the format, was the overall winner with a sole, solitary point.   Un point.  She ascended the perch (for the first time) thanks to a birdie 3 at the 14th, gained her point with another birdie 3 at the 15th (where she had a shot anyway) and was knocked off by my par 3 at the 16th.  That didn’t put me on the perch, it just knocked Pam off and when the 17th was halved, she couldn’t be overtaken.

It may sound confusing but it was great fun, kept us all interested and involved and if you’re playing for a penny a point, doesn’t cost you too much.

Delamere was my fourth course in four days and I confess I won’t be touching the clubs today, except, perhaps, to give them a proper scrub.  On Monday morning I played, in undistinguished fashion, in the Charles Heeley (stableford) at Maxstoke Park in Warwickshire (the course is in the grounds of the grand castle at the top of the blog} and did something that I can’t recall ever doing before:  I teed up outside the markers – not in front of them but in line, on the tee,  beyond the second marker.  As my partner put her ball down, in between the markers, I realised what I’d done.  Ah.  What’s the penalty for that?

Draconian, that’s what.

I was penalised two shots and had to play another ball from the correct area.  Not surprisingly I blobbed.  If it had been matchplay, I wouldn’t have lost the hole or been docked even a single shot.  I’d have been allowed to carry on, unless my opponent recalled the shot and made me tee a ball up again in the right place.  Huh.

On Tuesday I was playing at home in Staffordshire in our open day Texas scramble.  There were three of us and my main concern – I, heaven help us, was in charge of the card – was to ensure that we had five drives each, including a short hole.  It was an opinionated threesome and there was the occasional frank discussion as to whose shot we should take but our downfall was that we hit too many poor shots at the same time and didn’t hole enough putts.  Our nett 71 was a mere ELEVEN shots behind the winners, who obviously holed plenty of putts and, presumably, had at least one person hitting a good shot every time.

Oh yes, and there was yet another dozy Davies faux pas, this time on the green at the 7th hole, where I had to putt first and forgot to put a marker down so the others knew where to putt from…..I putted past the hole, realised what I’d done – or not done – and called a summit meeting.  In the end, texas scramble or not, we decided approximation was not good enough and continued with my ball.

Sometimes it’s just too much to golf and think at the same time, especially if you’ve been trying to do it for more than half a century.

On Wednesday, at Little Aston, Staffs, one of my favourite venues, it was a 3-ball alliance, two scores to count, stableford, shotgun start.  We started at the 16th, a tough hole, where I had what I think was my first ever par 4 there.  That was my highlight, though our hostess played beautifully and we struggled womanfully to support her as best we could.  The good thing about starting where we did is that you get the devilish 17th and difficult 18th out of the way early on and it’s not too far to walk back in and change from golfers to ladies-who-lunchers.

There were so many of us that we were allocated the (men’s) visitors’ locker room to change in and I was gratified to see that, although it was on the spartan side, there were a couple of hairdryers installed.  Tommy Fleetwood would no doubt be pleased.

And, on reflection, the utilitarian austerity makes sense.  Who needs colour and comfort in the locker room when the bar and the dining room beckon?

I was going to mention the Evian Championship, the last major of the season but when I tried to find the website to study the scores, this is what I came up with…….