Well, the New Year is now well aired and the golf tours are all up and running again as some of us decide to keep our own clubs under wraps for just a little while longer.  The sister’s new irons have arrived at long last so I expect she’ll be out swishing and swinging fit to burst.

Seamus Power’s game doesn’t appear to have too much rust on it at the moment.  The lanky 6′ 3″ Irishman from Waterford has had a card on the PGA Tour since 2017 and with his maiden victory last year in the Barbasol Championship he bounded up the world rankings.  His latest performance last weekend in Hawaii, where he finished third in the Sony Open to Hideki Matsuyama, has helped him force his way into the top 50 for the first time.  He’s currently nestled in there at 49th spot, one behind his fellow countryman and good buddy, Shane Lowry.  This is a serious move for Power as it brings an invitation to the Masters into sharp focus.  There’s nothing he’d like more than a first trip down Magnolia Lane and if he maintains that coveted top 50 position until the week before the tournament he’ll achieve a significant milestone in his career.  Fingers crossed.

Another person I have my fingers crossed for in 2022 is the immensely likeable Bob MacIntyre, the softly spoken, shinty-playing Scotsman from Oban.  Currently 58th in the world rankings, MacIntyre has already received his coveted invitation to Augusta in April, courtesy of birdieing his final hole in the 2021 tournament and securing a share of 12th place.  He was disappointed to miss out on last year’s Ryder Cup team and will be keen to have a fast start to this season.  He has plenty of game and plenty of class and is more than capable of major and Ryder Cup success.

Turning to the women’s game, one or two significant advances have been made over the Christmas period.  The US Women’s Open purse has catapulted  from $5.5 million to a whopping $10 million with a commitment to reach $12 million in the next five years.  Step forward and take a bow that man Mike Whan, formerly the extremely effective and successful commissioner of the LPGA and now the new boss of the United States Golf Association (USGA), who run the championship stateside.  There is arguably no one who has done more to elevate and drive forward the women’s game in terms of exposure and increased prize funding and this latest increase is seismic.  It’s a great move in the right direction.

Let’s now address the most important stuff of all – your own golf.  With some courses closed or, at the very least, on temporary greens, it’s time to think of just keeping things ticking over ready to burst into spectacular form when spring and the competitive season finally arrives.  My intention this year was to put in the blog a few more video tips, as requested by so many of you.  Alas, it’ll be a while before I can manage this.  At the risk of turning this into a medical blog I have been hors de combat since contracting Covid in mid-November.  I am suffering from joint pain which has rendered me unable to play golf, drive a car or, in fact, do much of anything.  Perhaps I can wrestle Patricia into shape to appear in the instructional videos?  After all, with her new irons she’ll surely be a sight to behold!

Anyway, here’s a written tip to keep in mind until we all get fully back into the swing of things.

The idea of this is exercise to become accustomed to making a backswing while remaining fairly central.  Note, I said FAIRLY central.  Don’t beat yourself up if you move off the ball slightly.  Keeping a still head is great, but NOT if it inhibits all other movement in the backswing and you become static.  You DO want the rest of your body under your neck to move.  Most of us at this stage of our lives will not have the flexibility to swing around a completely still head.  Our aim with this exercise is to have a free-flowing swing while remaining reasonably central.  Just do what your body can do.  Moving a foot off the ball going back makes a decent strike more likely than if you move two feet off the ball.  A small improvement in this one area over the winter will improve your ballstriking.

1.  Take your address position (preferably with a club but not essential) looking into a mirror or, if outside, a window.

2.  Fix your eyes on the bridge of your nose and slowly perform your backswing, keeping your eyes on that point.  Only go back as far as is comfortable – it won’t be your normal length of backswing as your neck is in a non-golfing position.  Keep your head as steady as possible.

3.  Look back down to the ground to where your golf ball would be sitting and swing through freely to your finish.  (NEVER attempt a full follow through while looking in the mirror/window as your neck is in a non-golfing position and you could hurt yourself.)

4.  After a few of these rehearsals take a normal practice swing (i.e. starting off looking at the ground) and see if you can maintain that feeling of staying more central on the backswing.

Take it EASY, take it SLOWLY……..and ENJOY!  Good luck.

Hello everybody and Happy New Year.  First things first, apologies for my dearth of Christmas cards; am starting early this year in the hope that I’ll be able to work my way through my list and let my friends (most of whom are not psychic) know that I’m thinking of them.  If I write a few every month between now and December, my main worry will surely be remembering where I’ve put them.

One of my friends told me to “keep writing the bollocks”, so here we are again.  I wasn’t sure Mo and I would start up again – she’s not feeling great and has had to suspend her golf club membership, not least because she can’t cope with being in the car long enough to get to the club and I’ve been spending more time going up and down to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (think I’ll go back to calling it White Hart Lane) than on the golf course.

And much as I enjoy watching people playing golf in shirt sleeves with a sparkling sea in the background while I’m bundled up in multiple layers, I’m not that excited by a few multi-millionaires in a jostle towards billionairedom annoyed that they haven’t broken 60!  Fantastic players, some amazing shots but, frankly, at this time of year it’s the view that appeals to me.  And making full use of my season ticket.

My golf, such as it is, has been so sporadic recently and so rubbish that it’s as well that I now play for the company and the exercise – and the worse the golf the greater the exercise, so I suppose you could call that a bonus.   Then, last week, oh happy day, the new irons that I’d ordered in July arrived at WHGC.

We’d played bridge in the morning – most of us still beginners but definitely getting better and now almost sedate enough to survive a hand or two at a proper bridge club should they (and we) be desperate enough.  Anyway, the course was closed for most of the day because of fog but lo and behold it cleared just as I was about to head for home after a leisurely lunch, the sun was out and I couldn’t resist the temptation to try out the long-awaited irons (living on your own without a dog your time’s your own).

I left the driver in the locker and played a loop of five holes.  Of course I hit the new clubs beautifully most of the time because there was no score to worry about, no pressure to do anything but test them out and do my best to judge the frozen bounce.  I’d forgotten how lovely it is to play a few holes on your own on a beautiful evening simply for the joy of it and I had a bit of a revelation.

I am still a golfer.

Blimey.  That came as a bit of a shock.

Not a person who can hit a golf ball well, not even remotely that sort of golfer these days; after all a friend who was a proper golfer couldn’t believe that my new irons consisted solely of a 7, a 9, a wedge of some sort (think it’s got a U on it) and a sand iron.  No sign of proper irons like a 4 or a 3, let alone a 2.  She used to love her 2-iron, hitting it miles, especially when the fairways were dry, fast and hard-running.  Dead as the dodo now thanks to hybrids and different lofts and lies and myriad modern tweaks.

No, I’m not a golfer who can hit the ball properly, I’m just a golfer who has discovered, rather to her surprise, that she still loves golf, that the game itself is the main thing.  Weird.

Our AGM’s today (Friday) and there’s been a lot going on, what with big changes to the constitution, the move to the new clubhouse, COVID 19, loads of trees being cut down as we prepare the ground for a return to proper heathland and the monstrous HS2.  Any number of people have put in hours upon hours of time and effort to keep us going throughout the disruptions and I’m full of admiration and gratitude for their dedication and diligence – and their ability to cope with the gripes and snipes, the moans and groans of the rest of us.

We women, greatly outnumbered, still have to fight our corner as part of the whole, as all minorities do (albeit in this case a pretty privileged one) but hey ho, we relish the challenge and send our representatives in to the fray armed with a smile, a packet of paracetamol and membership of The Wine Society.

Over in Australia, where even the male chauvinists are forced to be creative (isolation, small market, small fields, economic forces, that sort of thing), they’re getting quite good at accepting that it makes sense for the women and men professional golfers to run their events concurrently.  The other week the Australian PGA Championship and Australian WPGA Championship, both sponsored by Fortinet (a cyber security firm as far as I can gather) took place at Royal Queensland, separate tournaments played together on a proper golf course.  Hallelujah.

Jed Morgan (keep an eye out for him further afield) ran away with the men’s event, smashing all sorts of records on his way to lifting the Joe Kirkwood Cup and Su Oh won the women’s championship to take home the inaugural Karrie Webb Cup.  Stoked to give her name to the trophy, Karrie apparently insisted that it be big enough to hold a bottle of wine! Slainte.