The week did not start well, not well at all, in fact.

I was looking forward to a game of golf at glorious Hollinwell, or Notts Golf Club, to give it its rightful title, on Monday.  Patricia and I were to be guests of one of the members and the date had been in the diary for months.  Alas a couple of days beforehand, an Olympic-sized tumble on the conservatory floor had resulted in a swollen kneecap the size of a football and ensuing compensations set off my temperamental back issues.  By the Sunday night I was a bit of a mess and reluctantly had to withdraw from a great day out at one of England’s finest courses.

Fortunately, I have played at Hollinwell before but a very long time ago indeed.  It was the occasion of my first British Amateur Championship, now known as the Women’s Amateur and I remember in one of the practice rounds with Irish colleagues that we called through a lone figure on one of the par 3s.  This turned out to be my first sighting of the Swedish-born French international Cecilia Mourgue-d’Algue.  Her swing was as effortlessly elegant as she was and my mouth dropped open in awe.  The realisation that I was playing in the same tournament as this person, who could have stepped out of the pages of Vogue, was thrilling, if not a little daunting.

That was the start of many years of competing with and against Cecilia and a few years later, when I was nearing the end of my time on the pro tour, Cecilia’s daughter Kristen was making a name for herself on the same tour.  But I digress….

In those days there were only 32 players who made it into the matchplay draw after 36 holes of qualifying.  If there was a tie for the final placings, the player with the best second 18 went through – no such thing as earning your spot through a play-off.  I can’t remember now what my 36-hole total was but I knew it would be touch and go as to whether it would stand up through the day.  I stationed myself at the big window in the clubhouse from which you could see almost the whole of the 18th hole.  I had marked on my drawsheet those players who were a threat to me not making the matchplay stages.  Over the course of three hours I sat there and was still secure in my hopes of teeing it up the next day when the final group arrived on the last green.  One of the threeball was qualifying easily, one was missing the cut and the other was borderline.  Mrs Borderline holed a birdie putt across the final green to cement her place in the matchplay, relegating me to joint 32nd place with one other player, who, of course, had had a better second 18 than me.  When the final standings came out there I was – 33rd, done and dusted.  The agonies of scoreboard watching!

I did stay and watch the matches and learned so much from watching the finalists plot their way round a first-class golf course.  Australia’s Edwina Kennedy eventually came out on top against one of England’s finest, Julia Greenhalgh.  Great lessons learned don’t always come from playing yourself.

Since lockdown has clipped our wings somewhat I have found that over the past couple of years I have played fewer “away” courses than normal.  It was exhilarating, therefore, in the first couple of weeks in June, to revisit old favourites like Royal Dornoch and Golspie but the jewel in the crown of that trip was a return to play the Carnegie Links at Skibo Castle with Gillian Stewart.

It was the thick end of 30 years since our last visit when we were welcomed and asked to play the course before it actually opened and to give our opinion.  That was an interesting experience in more ways than one because there were no actual flags on the greens at that stage!  Amazingly it didn’t deter from our enjoyment one iota.

This time, however, it was an experience of a different class, effortlessly overseen by the multi-talented head guru David Thomson and his staff.  The course has undergone some stunning changes in the intervening years but it’s the little touches that set a day at Skibo apart.  Personalised lockers and bag tags (see photo at top) awaited us when we arrived and fortified with a morning hit of caffeine we took to the course – a sensory, ever-changing, scenic overload if ever there was one.  A complimentary tot of whisky served on the final green was perfect for celebrating the round of your life or perhaps, as in my case, smoothing away the ubiquitous frustrations of the game.

It’s never fun being sidelined through injury but while not out on the fairways at the moment I find I have a moment or two to dip into the memory banks of great courses played and visited and good company kept.  Instead of feeling sorry for myself it reminds me of how lucky I am.

And doesn’t golf take us to some truly wonderful places?

For the first time for ages I played 18 holes three days in a row and by some miracle improved on each occasion, even hitting the odd shot that could pass muster as something approaching a proper golf shot, one of those things that makes you think all is not yet lost.

It was a real treat to play Hollinwell, the Notts Golf Club, again – it’s a pleasure just to turn down the drive on a lovely morning and see a proper golf course spread out before you.  Sheer bliss.  But you need to be on your mettle to have any chance of scoring well – the rough is not to be trifled with and if you can’t navigate your way round the bunkers, you’d better be a wizard with the sand wedge.

I believe the club, which has hosted many top-class events in the past, including Open qualifying, is – or was – having difficulty staying on that rota because the R&A insists that they must now have women members.  The trouble is, apparently, that the women are perfectly happy being members of Notts Ladies, a separate entity that’s been around since 1891.  A case of egalite, liberte, impasse, perhaps…(apologies yet again for failing to find the acute…)

Enid Wilson, who was born in 1910 in Stonebroom, just over the border in Derbyshire, played a lot of her early golf at Hollinwell and the ladies’ course is named after her.  A formidable competitor, Enid won the British Ladies Open Amateur Championship (as it then was) three times in a row from 1931.  She was a fascinating character who wrote about golf for the Daily Telegraph and numerous magazines and had several books to her name.  She was great company if you dived in and braved her rather prickly, no-nonsense manner.  At least you were never in any doubt as to what she thought!

She once told me that she trained like a boxer for the big competitions and would lose at least a stone during a championship.  When I played with her at Crowborough, her home course for many years, she described my backswing, succinctly, accurately and damningly as “a non-event”.  Then in her 80s, she still enjoyed the game but laughed that she and her fellow octogenarians all had trouble staying on their feet after hitting a shot – their balance was shot to pieces.

Enid, who played in the first Curtis Cup match in 1932, was not afraid to express her views in the most trenchant manner and when the veterans Belle Robertson and Mary McKenna were named to the team for the match at Prairie Dunes in 1986, she wrote, rather unkindly, “Bring out your dead” and said she’d eat her hat if they did any good.

Admittedly, the Americans had won every contest from 1960 on but GB and I upset the odds with an emphatic victory in the heat in Kansas and Robertson and McKenna, paired together in the foursomes, were unbeaten.  It was the triumph that all their years of team toil, littered with BBUs (brave but unavailings), deserved.  The team tried hard to persuade Enid to eat her hat but I’m not sure they succeeded.

Just another reminder that this year’s Curtis Cup is at Conwy in north Wales at the end of the month, August 26th-28th, more than a year late because of the pandemic.  If you want to buy a ticket, you have to do so before next Friday, the 20th.  See randa.org for details (not panda.org as my computer is trying to insist, in black and white, of course).  Elaine Ratcliffe is the GB and I captain and is plotting to regain the trophy the USA won back at Quaker Ridge in 2018.  The encouraging news is that the home side won in 2016 at Dun Laoghaire and at Nairn in 2012 and here are the women attempting to continue that trend:-

A Curtis Cup year is a good time to revisit all our yesterdays and for your delectation and delight I include some photographs from Fairway and Hazard, Douglas Caird’s pride and joy and a source of many happy hours of browsing and reminiscing.  There were extensive trials to select the team for 1970 and Belle, Mary Mc, Kathryn Phillips and Dinah Oxley led the way.  Happy but undoubtedly nerve-wracking days.

There was no stinting on detail – or opinion – in those far-off days.  Here’s a sample:  “Of course, Mrs Robertson was quite superb getting 23 out of a possible 26 points.  She left Sunningdale unbeaten and that surely was a tremendous achievement.  Mary McKenna, the Irish Champion, charmed all who met her and delighted the spectators with her great power, her determination and her temperament.  She has the three vital essentials of a top international.

“We have always mentioned that eighteen year old Kathryn Phillips was a great fighter but none of us ever saw her play better golf than on that final morning….”

And so it goes on, fascinating stuff for us golf tragics.

Finally, also from F and H, a couple of tips for the Friday morning bridgers.  May you have good hands….

Some sound advice.  Aunt Agatha isn’t always right apparently!