The Christmas season is fast approaching – in fact, it’s galloping along, and for a person who steadfastly refuses to hang a bauble or send a card while still in the eleventh month of the year I have to admit I’ve already broken all my self-imposed rules.  Full disclosure – last weekend we hosted Christmas dinner (yes, turkey and all the trimmings and plum duff) for fourteen.  This was largely my hubby’s branch of the family and it was a grand collective effort with everyone having an allotted responsibility, food, drink and preparation wise.  So, it all bowled merrily along and the house now seems strangely, and blessedly, quiet.  The most noise since the departure of our guests came from trying to manhandle the bottle recycling bin up to the gate for its next collection.

The reason I mention the festive season is to warn (reassure?) you all that this will be the final blog offering of the year and that we will be taking our annual break until sometime in……… well, who knows exactly when?

For me, this has been the strangest of years with zero golf interaction at any level for me.  No attendance at majors, no research to do, no interviewing players, no being abreast of all the unrepeatable swirlings emanating from the rumour mill.

There’s been no interaction at club level either.  It’s now been thirteen months since I last played and with my golf club being forty minutes away it’s a little too much of a fatiguing drive for me to just pop by the club for a coffee and to see who’s around.  The result is that it’s been an odd (non) golfing year for me and my only connection with the sport that’s been a massive part of my life has been through a screen – either a television one or a computer one.

If you are a regular reader of the blog you will be aware there has been no movement on the instruction front either (ongoing joint pain), so I’m following my friend Mary McKenna’s advice.  “Remind all your readers to just look back at your tips over the winter!”  They are all there on youtube or just go to the Coaching tab at the top of the home screen if you fancy a quiet bit of golfing armchair meditation with a glass of something nice at your elbow..

Here’s hoping things are a little different next year.

I must say I did enjoy the denouement of the Ladies’ European Tour (LET), with the last event, the Andalucia Costa del Sol Open de Espana, being played at Alferini golf club.  There was a smorgasbord of Swedish talent on display with Linn Grant and Maja Stark, two great friends and two great golfers, battling to the wire to see who would triumph in the season-long Race to the Costa del Sol.  In the end, it was Grant who, with a third place finish, scooped the Rookie of the Year title as well as the big Order of Merit one, with Stark runner-up and yet another Swede, Johanna Gustavsson, third in the season’s standings.

One of the main draws in Spain was Leona Maguire, the highest-ranked player in the field at world No 11. She was fresh off the plane from last week’s LPGA event in Florida  and jet-lag or no, she finished a highly creditable fourth, going on on Monday to attend a small Solheim Cup gathering down the coast at the invitation of captain Suzann Pettersen.  By now, I really do hope she’s got the feet up at home in Ireland and is enjoying a well-earned rest after a fabulous year.

Meanwhile, battling it out for the Spanish Open crown was yet another Swede, Caroline Hedwall, (top picture) four-time Solheim Cup player, who has found tournament victories a little thin on the ground over the last eight years.  Always an impressive ball striker she has become a little jittery on the shorter putts and admitted to wondering did she still “have it in her” to handle the pressure and win again.  Her questions were answered when she rolled in a fifteen footer for birdie on the fourth extra hole to deny the elegant Swiss player, Morgane Metraux, her maiden tour title.

Metraux is another to watch for captain Pettersen.  She has just completed her first season on the LPGA and has comfortably secured her card for next year.  Winning is her obvious next step and I don’t think it’ll take too long.

As the players are heading home for well-deserved rest and relaxation I’m looking to start gearing up a bit more if possible.  I decided I really did need to keep the grey cells in some sort of working order so I’ve done the training to become a Controller for the Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Cheshire Blood Bikers.  The Blood Bikers are a network of regional charities, run completely by volunteers offering a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week service to hospitals and health centres.  The riders collect and deliver all sorts of samples and tissues all over their area (and frequently further afield).

My first shift will be on Friday December 2nd, the very day this blog is posted, from 7am until 1pm and I will (hopefully) be in control of 3500 square miles and up to seven riders from Shropshire, North Staffordshire, East Staffordshire and Cheshire.  This is arguably the most pressure I’ll have felt since I was on tour decades ago, so wish me well as you sip your morning cuppa!

If I survive, and the riders survive, I’ll see you in the New Year.

 

No drenchings on the golf course so far this week but it’s been murky and foggy and not particularly pleasant; time to root out the mittens and hand warmers and the hair-crushing bobble hats.  Fingers crossed for a bit of blue sky for today’s Friday Frolics Christmas Bash (Secret Santa included).

I thought I had it tough when I had to give 16 shots in a Round Robin match last week but Sue Spencer, one of our best golfers, an England international (senior division) and a sweet swinger, had to give an eye-watering 31 shots.  Claire Hicks, her opponent, hasn’t been playing long but is proving a quick learner, hits the ball miles and uses a distance device, not for show but because she already knows how far she hits each club, a skill that still eludes some of us.  Against Spenny she recorded her first gross eagle – a three on the par 5 2nd – and won 5 and 4.

Claire was a bit more wayward next time out and lost to the redoubtable Jenny Smale, who was only giving a shot a hole (!!) and  admitted that she played damned near her very best.  That’s one of the good things about the RR:  you have to play well to win a match; it keeps the best players on their mettle.

There was some sad news earlier in the week when the PGA announced that Sandy Jones, their former chief executive, had died at the age of 74.  Sandy, a Scot from Gartcosh, had a long and distinguished career in golf administration and was a fair player too.  He never looked back after finding his mother’s old clubs stashed in a cupboard at home.

Dai and I played quite a lot with him and his – and our – great pal Bob Cantin.  Every game they played was competitive and their long-running bet, with attendant bragging rights, lasted many years.  I know the inestimable Pat Ruddy says there’s no such thing as a bad golf course but we were playing a particularly ghastly desert creation in Arizona and Sandy summed it up succinctly as “a waste of a perfectly good desert”.  That still makes me smile.  Condolences to his wife Chris and family and friends.

In between watching World Cup matches and marvelling at some amazing results, not least Japan beating both Germany and Spain and England managing a draw with the United States, I flicked over to the golf and drooled over the pictures from the ISPS HANDA Australian Open.  The men and women are playing on Kingston Heath and Victoria, two of the glorious courses that are part of Melbourne’s famed sandbelt.

Cameron Smith, the Open champion, now a LIVer, who won his national PGA title in Queensland last week, is the star attraction but admitted that his golf was “pretty shitty”.  He had a 71, one over par, in tricky, blustery conditions, to be eight shots behind leader David Micheluzzi, a local who is starting to find his form after struggling with performance anxiety when he first turned professional.  If he’s still ahead of Smith come Sunday, he could well be holding up the trophy.

Admittedly, I’m paying more attention to the surroundings than the players, enjoying seeing proper golf courses that require a lot of imagination and variety in the shot-making.  It’s a positive joy after the dreary diet of smash and gouge that makes up so much of day-to-day televised golf.  And how lovely to see natural-looking bunkers instead of traps.  Blissful.  (And being thousands of miles away, in a different hemisphere, I’m in no danger of having to play out of them.)

The sublime, world-class courses are one of the reasons that there have been so many outstanding Australian golfers over the years, whatever the state of the track they started on.  There’s a lot of competition, of course and heroes to emulate, so the Aussies have always more than held their own on the fairways of the world.

Dai and I loved our trips to Australia and he used to say that if he’d discovered the place when he was 19 or 20, he’d have been an Australian.  Here he is at one of our favourite places, Historic Court Barns in Tanunda, in the heart of the Barossa wine country, not far from Adelaide.  He’s wearing shoes, so Elvis, the tame, wing-clipped galah, who preferred pecking at bare toes, has to make do with nipping fingers.

That pic reminds me that I’ve been neglecting my Australian friends, so I’ll root out the address book and make a real effort to send them all a Christmas card and thank them for all their kindness and hospitality over the years.

And thanks to everybody for reading Mo’s and my blogs throughout the year and encouraging us to keep going.  Now that we’ve hit December, we’re signing off for the year and hope to be back in 2023, fit and firing.  I’m off to wrap up my secret Santa and unwrap the Christmas decorations.