If my wee Mum were still here with us, she would be wagging her finger at me and admonishing me to be very, very careful what I wished for!  There I was last week bemoaning the amount of golf on television and proclaiming myself largely bored with it all.  I even penned a heartfelt “Ugh!” at the thought of every shot of every one of the 156 competitors at The Players’ Championship being available to see on some form of media platform or other.  How quickly and how completely the landscape has changed.  Now we have nothing but hours and hours of reruns and repeats of tournaments, golf tips and magazine programmes.  Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to ditch the Sky Sports subscription.

A mere week ago the Players was cancelled along with three other tournaments on the PGA Tour schedule, up to, but, at that time, not including, The Masters.  Twenty-four hours later came the announcement that the Masters was postponed and three days after that Augusta National Golf Club informed us the club was to be closed completely.  This is not as unusual as it may sound because the club shuts each year a few weeks after the Masters tournament and opens again in the autumn.

So, if there is to be a 2020 edition of the Masters it would look like October to November time might be the preferred slot.  Miss that, for whatever reason, and I think we’ll move straight to the 2021 tournament.  My hunch is the latter will be the result.  The iconic colour and perfection of thousands of azaleas would be missing in October and November and no one at Augusta National Golf Cub will wish to unveil their course to the public in anything other than their idea of the perfect state – and I think that means April 2021.

Like many of you whose livelihoods depend upon sport my engagingly crowded diary has emptied faster than water down a plughole – the Masters, the PGA and the Madill Trophy, our annual match against the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, are all cancelled or postponed.  These events will soon be followed, I’m sure, by the US Open and the Curtis Cup, both June fixtures.  The Open at Royal St George’s in July is in jeopardy too.  I remember the construction of the stands at Portrush last year started in the first few days of April and we’re not far from that date now.  To proceed or not?  Tough questions, tough answers and tough decisions.  Every one of them affecting thousands of people and businesses.  This wretched virus is going to ruin far more people than it kills.

And my hopes of the Ryder Cup in September are also receding.  The qualifying period is likely to be decimated but it could still work if we gave the captains twelve picks.  I’m not sure 2020 European captain Padraig Harrington, who has reduced his number of picks from four to three, would be a big fan of that but needs must – and it’d be a great, and controversial, talking point.  And something to look forward to – we all need that.  Perhaps we’ll run a competition later in the year to see who gets all twelve picks correct!

One encouraging note in the midst of all this gloom is that golf courses are currently considered one of the safest places to be.  Social distancing is obligatory for large lumps of time anyway, simply in order to avoid having your brains beaten out by your playing partners’ whirling actions.  Perhaps clubs will partially close (as some have already done), leaving access to locker rooms available.  Sure, we’ll miss out on the 19th hole and a lot of the socialising aspect of the game but we’ll still be getting our fresh air and exercise and helping keep depression at bay.

As Dad used to say when we were coming up to serious exam times, “Time to put society on short ration.”

Finally, a bright note in the desert of professional golf.  The Ladies’ European Tour managed to complete the Investec South African Women’s Open last Sunday and English rookie Alice Hewson recorded her first victory.  It’s a dream start for the former Curtis Cup player.  Let’s just hope she doesn’t have too long to wait before she can tee it up as an LET tournament winner.

 

As you can see from the wee green picture above I haven’t the foggiest notion, not a baldy, how to take a selfie.  Just look at the eyes and the startled, bug-eyed expression.  When I asked Maureen to do her technical stuff and put it in the blog’s media library for me, her reaction was immediate and explosive:  “FFS! [whatever that means]  Noooooooooo!”

“Don’t worry,” I told her, via WhatsApp, “all will tie in.  How do you take selfies anyway?!”  That message took a while to write properly because I was crying with laughter and could hardly type.  My choice of photos is often the bane of Maureen’s blogging life and, being a big sister with a rather unedifying nasty streak, I was delighted she reacted in the expected fashion.  That’s one of the problems with big sisters:  having known you since the day you were born (if you’re lucky), they know all the buttons to press, no matter how old, mature, sophisticated and wised up you have become.

“I’m NOT putting that in !!”

Eight minutes later.

“It’s in!”

Thanks sis.

St Patrick’s Day having been cancelled (something stirring vaguely at the back of my brain cell tells me that that’s a Latin construction:  Rome having been stormed, that sort of thing; Boris would know and so would Fanny G, our small but formidable Latin teacher….)  To continue, a friend, Irish, was in self-isolation, so I thought I’d go round and cheer her up with a bit of greenery and an approximation of an Irish jig.  Luckily for her – and her neighbours – it was dark by the time I got there, so there was no jig and no one could see that I was wearing my Rugby World Cup 2015 tee shirt and hat plus a very aged ILGU scarf as my bandit’s mask.

Just as a by the way, there being no sport on offer now and certainly not a contact sport like rugby, do you think Johnny Sexton might have the yips?  The kicker supreme had two successive shockers in his last international, not just mistimed but butchered, so…..?  The yips can affect all sorts of people doing all sorts of things, not just people trying to putt, or drive, or play the violin, or serve, or hit the dartboard, or whatever, from a standing start.

Most golf, like everything else, is at a standstill at the moment – though I think the women are still playing on the Cactus Tour in Arizona – and Mike Whan, the commissioner of the LPGA Tour, who continues to impress his members and the rest of us with his calm, clear-eyed, open approach, gave his reasons for calling off tournaments from a very early stage.  Talking to Rich Lerner on the Golf Channel, Whan said, “I think we probably cancelled [the Asian events] more out of uncertainty than certainty….because we didn’t know what we were dealing with, we decided to make that decision.  In hindsight, thank God we did.  But it wasn’t because we had all the information……”

Things had got a lot worse – global catastrophe anyone? – and people were better informed by the time the LPGA announced that they were postponing the Volvik Founders Cup in Phoenix, Arizona, the Kia Classic in Carlsbad, California and the first major of the season, the ANA Inspiration in Rancho Mirage, California.  Perhaps the first two events could have gone ahead, with precautions and without fans, Whan said but, crucially:  “Can I live with it if I’m wrong?  If I’m wrong, I live with that for the rest of my life.

“If it’s a decision that’s wrong the other way and we should have played, I feel terrible about it but I can live with that.  This is a decision that I might not like but I don’t think I’ll ever regret.”

Put like that, putting golf on hold for the time being, however agonising, has been a no-brainer for every commissioner or chief executive of every tour.

In a video recently, Whan, relaxed and casual, sitting outside as though at a family gathering (no one else in shot though), not behind a desk in a suit and tie, said that the LPGA’s greatest ever season (from the point of view of prize money, events, television coverage) was “on a break for all the right reasons.

“We needed to do what we could to make sure that we weren’t part of any kind of spread of this virus…….We’ll use golf to pull us together not pull us apart…….We’ll work through this together…….Hang in there, live together, love together…..”

Social distancing permitting, of course.

The good thing about golf at the most basic level is that you can play it on your own or if you’re with friends, operate at the advised distance of two metres apart.  You’re outside, in the fresh air, getting exercise and company, all the elements essential to your health and wellbeing.  No handshakes afterwards though and certainly no hugging or kissing and you can forget the drink in the clubhouse.

At Whittington our clubhouse will be closed for the foreseeable future after today, which might be inconvenient for us members but is a darned sight more worrying for the staff whose livelihoods are at risk.  The knock-on effects of this virus are amazing and the chaos it’s caused is mind-blowing.  It’s like a war someone said, so why bother with nuclear weapons when you can cause mayhem and panic for virtually nothing?

We’ll need billions to sort this all out, so that’s good:  we can cancel our nuclear programme; ditch the ill-conceived (yes, I’m biased) HS2 project; and lo, there’ll be billions billowing towards regeneration, rehabilitation and resurrection.

And there’s one immediate, very minor benefit from this whole thing, something that’s very dear to my heart, the abolition of one of golf’s most laughable, ridiculous and pompous edicts:  “NO CHANGING SHOES IN THE CAR PARK”.

They may think it’s only temporary but, rest assured, there’ll be no going back……..