Thank God for women’s professional golf and France’s Celine Boutier who sails serenely on and who delighted us with her skill and sportsmanship as she annexed the Freed Group Women’s Scottish Open Presented by Trust Golf to her résumé last Sunday, her second title in as many weeks.  She is an oasis of calm and a welcome relief from the turbulent, choppy waters of men’s professional golf which seems intent on killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

This week the PGA Tour announced its 2024 schedule dressing up its events with fancy names.  The calendar of events contains eight “signature events” with a first prize of $4 million dollars.  Very nice, you say.  Well, yes – if you can get in to them.  These bumper rich fields will only allow between 70 and 80 players, as opposed to the 144 or 156 players who can currently tee it up in a full-field event.  And, five of these eight tournaments will have NO CUT!

And guess what!  All that lovely money, which even the last player will earn, counts towards helping that player get into the next “signature event”.  There will be increasingly limited opportunities (an oxymoron if ever I heard one!) for those outside the top eighty or so to break into these events.  Sounds very much like jobs for the boys and very soon it’ll be a bloomin’ sight harder to drop out of the top eighty that it is to break into it.

Does this small field, no-cut, everyone-gets-paid model sound familiar to you?  It’s what the PGA Tour railed against and dissed last year as they fought to overcome the threat of LIV golf.  Ah well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

The tour claims that the fans (that’s you and me) will welcome the fact there is no cut as there is no risk of some of the world’s best having departed the weekend on their private jets.  Just what planet are they on?  Sport is all about competitiveness and jeopardy and the quality of your play having some consequence and meaning.  Despite what the tour thinks I’m sure most golf fans feel that way.  So, no, I for one HATE the no-cut, small-field syndrome.  It’s a disease that, once allowed to take hold in multiple events, will spread like a cancer.

Anything that stifles competition is bad and it is totally unacceptable that you can be in the top 150 or so of your profession and have limited playing opportunities.

I could go on.

I will, in fact, go on.  The same PGA tour has decided they will not back the proposal from the two world governing bodies, the R&A and the USGA, to limit the distance the ball can travel.  This would not apply to the ordinary golfer like you and me – just the elite player.  But no.  It doesn’t seem to matter that golf courses have to be stretched to around the 8000 yard mark, with the attendant operating costs, to provide a decent modern test for the pros.  The equipment available outstripped the courses many moons ago and yet the tour doesn’t want to upset their players just at the time they’re having to court them after their dismal volte face as regards the LIV problem. The endless five hour plus rounds look set to continue and even expand.

The PGA tour is nothing without its players and they are increasingly pampering them to keep them on board.  They mustn’t be upset at all costs.

I’m upset.  I’m upset that a major part of the game I’ve loved for so long is going down the tubes – and all for greed.

I’m now going to go and pour myself a strong gin and tonic and watch the AIG Women’s Open from the wonderful Walton Heath.

Walton Heath – a sight to soothe the soul if ever there was one. [Photo from Martin Park’s FB page]

There’s only one place to start this week and that’s by wishing Jeanne Bisgood, the pride of Parkstone, many happy returns on her 100th birthday.  Maureen and I are delighted to pay our respects to the oldest living Curtis Cup player and will not spoil her day by recording a rendition of “Happy Birthday”.  Admittedly, that’s as far beyond our technical skills as it is beyond our singing skills.  We sent a card instead.

“Sunset” Bamburgh Castle, from an original painting by Roger Whitham. Just liked the card. Northumberland is a long way from Jeanne’s home in Dorset.

You may have heard that the most honest assessment of my singing ability came from our school singing teacher many decades ago:  “Shows no aptitude for this subject,” he wrote.  Harsh but true.  I can’t imagine Jeanne ever received such a scathing assessment, being one of those people who seemed to be good at everything, including golf, perhaps the most frustrating game of all.

The Englishwoman played her best golf in the 1950s, winning her native championship three times, plus the Swedish, the German, the Italian, the Portuguese and the Norwegian.  She was Surrey champion in 1951 and 1953, then popped up again in 1969.  She played for England many times and played in three consecutive Curtis Cups, in 1950, 1952 and 1954.  She was also the non-playing captain in 1970.

This info is from the invaluable Avia Watches Who’s Who (1985), in the days when everything was in print and the internet was barely a gleam in the most far-seeing eye.

There was also some valuable information in The Shell International Encyclopedia (sic) of Golf (1975), one of my favourite reference books.  And there was a pretty aged pic (below), which, if I read the credits right, was taken by Frank Gardner.

Somebody told me that Jeanne edited her own Wikipedia entry, so it should be accurate and here’s a sample:  she went up to Oxford to read history during World War II, lasted a year or so before joining the WRNS and working at Stanmore, an outstation of Bletchley Park, code-breaking and all that cerebral sort of stuff; qualified as a barrister; joined Poole Council, specialising in education; became a magistrate; appointed CBE in 1982 as chairman of Dorset Education Committee; made an honorary Doctor of Education at Bournemouth University in 2018; oh, and there’s the charitable trust to mention too.

Jeanne at the Curtis Cup in 2016, tramping the course at Dun Laoghaire.

No wonder she came across as formidable at first but you couldn’t hope to find a kinder, more generous and entertaining companion.  Bridget Jackson, the pride of Handsworth, who won the British Girls’ title in 1954 and was English champion two years later, recalled that Jeanne couldn’t have been more friendly or encouraging to her new home international colleague.

And Jill Thornhill, current president of Walton Heath, remembered being terrified when Surrey captain Diane Bailey told her that Jeanne was to be her trolley puller at the county finals.  Not quite like having Jack Nicklaus pitching up to caddy but overwhelming enough nonetheless…I believe Jill and Jeanne proved an unbeatable combination.

Jill Thornhill, taking a break from a Women in Golf summit at the AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath.

No doubt there’ll be cake to celebrate the century and on a fleeting visit to the media centre at Walton Heath earlier this week, I wondered if Mary Berry had discovered the joys of golf and was opening up the game to the baking fraternity.  There was a lot of cake, proper cake, on offer, replaced almost as rapidly as it was scoffed.  The photographers in particular need plenty of sustenance because even in this digital age they have to lug around an inordinate amount of heavy kit.  And that’s just coming from the car park…

Crumbs: disappearing sponge.

It was delightfully sunny on Wednesday during the pro-am (not a sentence you ever write about the Open) and guess who had forgotten the sunscreen?  Not only that but I’d chucked at least three waterproofs into the boot of the car and not a single sunhat.  Given the summer we’ve been having, I thought it was a brave decision to head for the course without a brolly and there were some in use at the practice ground – but not to keep the rain off.

Bliss: beautiful blue sky, puffy white clouds and brollies being used for shade.

Out on the course, where the players play the 1st, then promptly get into buggies to be driven to the 2nd tee, this spectator decided not to roam too far but still witnessed one notable player so absorbed in her own game that she ignored her pro-am team altogether.  Blimey.  Perhaps they had an agreement of some sort.  Or had had a mega row.  Or perhaps she was just plain rude, which is what it looked like to the casual observer.

Fortunately, Angel Yin and her team pitched up at the 16th green and restored my faith in professional manners.  They were laughing, teasing and encouraging each other, engaging with the spectators and everybody looked as though they were having a great time.  Angel duffed her first attempt at a chip from the back of the green, said to the gallery, “You didn’t see that,” then nearly holed her second attempt without missing a beat.   “That’s more like it,” she said, in unison with her newfound fans.

On the side of the Angel: Yin engaging with the next generation or three.  Don’t you just love the bright outfits.

And it wasn’t just the youngsters who were opting for a dash of colour.

Think I’ll be ditching the navy and white…