There’s been a feast of golf to watch and read about this past week and it’s always fun following your favourite players.

The Ladies’ European Tour finishes its 2023 schedule on Sunday down on the Costa del Sol at the wonderful Las Brisas golf course.  Caroline Hedwall, who delivered under the most intense pressure in the Solheim Cup in September, is the defending champion.

It’s a fabulous golf course, one of the early ones on the Costa del Sol and still capable of holding its place as a “must play”.  I once played there with Sean Connery – or was that at Aloha?  No matter, – I do remember we had a halved match and an extremely pleasant, if seriously competitive fourball.  Over lunch in the clubhouse afterwards our table was approached by a steady stream of fans with autograph requests and the great man graciously and tirelessly fulfilled every single one.  But, I digress.

I had a trawl down the Race to Costa del Sol rankings and was a little disappointed to discover the four home countries only had half a dozen players in the top 30 between them.  Five are English players and in 27th spot is the Welsh player Chloe Williams who hails from just up the road from me in Wrexham.  My long association with Welsh women’s and girls’ golf means one of my first ports of call is seeking out how the players from the Principality are faring.

Chloe’s form since mid August has been very encouraging – and solid – and I thought she just might make her big breakthrough last week in Mallorca.  Leading by a shot going into Saturday’s final round she slipped to a round of 76 which dropped her down to a tie for sixth spot, her fourth top ten of the season (not counting team events).  Despite her understandable disappointment at her final round I think she’s done remarkably well considering that half way through the season she was in danger of losing her card.

She said she “gave herself a good talking to” which consisted of threatening herself with a return to Q-school.  The subsequent hard work to change her mindset certainly seems to have paid off and I look forward to her continuing to fly the flag for Wales next season.  There is no reason she can’t follow in the footsteps of previous Welsh winners on Tour, namely Helen Wadsworth, Becky Brewerton and Becky Morgan. (Hope the old grey cells are still working sufficiently not to have omitted anyone – an unforgiveable error!)

The LPGA tour and the two main men’s tours have all drawn a line under the 2023 season and I confess I was looking forward to a break until I discovered (with not a little horror) that the first tournament of the 2024 season on the DP World Tour started YESTERDAY down in Australia, the first competitive action of what now pleases to call itself “the opening swing” of the schedule.  What’s happened to an off-season for goodness sake???

I thought the Solheim and Ryder Cup excitement of six or so weeks ago virtually impossible acts to follow, but apparently not.  The guys have been doing their utmost to startle us all with their brilliance and boy, have they succeeded. The DP World Tour was playing its Tour Championship on the Earth course in Dubai when Matt Wallace lost the run of himself, went on a tear and and recorded NINE consecutive birdies on the back nine on Saturday!

What on earth?!!!  A dazzling, bewitching, other-worldly performance that resulted in a third round effort of 60, four better than anyone else could manage all week. Eventually he finished in joint runner-up position, two behind Danish Ryder Cup twin, Nicolai Hojgaard, who, at 22 years of age, was the baby of the Old World Ryder Cup team in September.  Nicolai has now notched three wins but this was easily his most impressive.

This sensational golf was matched stateside by a sublime performance by another European Ryder Cup rookie – Ludvig Aberg – in the RSM Classic at Sea Island, Georgia.  Aberg (see pic at top) emerged victorious, snaffling his first PGA Tour win after shooting 61-61 on the weekend, equalling all sorts of records along the way.  For goodness sake!

How do you even begin to describe the Swede’s first five months of his professional career?  In a nutshell, he turned pro in June having become the first player to secure a PGA Tour card through the new university graduate scheme.  In the next few weeks he won on the DP World tour; he was a member of the winning European Ryder Cup team and then rounded things off nicely with a win in America.  His succinct summing up of things was that it was “six months that I’ll never forget”.

Sounds like he’s a master of understatement as well.  Has he won a major yet?  The short answer is no – he’s yet to play in one!  Ah well, not long now till April.

The world of golf has gone crazy – in a good way.  Scoring is lower than it’s ever been before, on courses that are longer than they’ve ever been before and the quality of shot-making and putting is simply off the charts.  It’s becoming akin to watching a golf video game and I sincerely hope that increasing familiarity with witnessing sheer, unadulterated brilliance doesn’t inure us all to the skills on show.

The madness of exhilarating performance isn’t restricted to the professionals, however.  Even one of our oldest friends is producing some never-to-be-forgotten golf.  An excited email thudded into the inbox from him this week.  He entitled it “Age Concern”.  Here is an extract:-

I woke up screaming the other morning – not in fear and not very loudly but so frustrated that I knew there was no getting back to sleep.  It was early enough to hear the binboys doing their stuff but there was nothing for it but to get up, make a cup of tea and read something soothing.

I had a choice and plumped for Queenie Hennessy, more than emotional enough but a work of fiction and I wasn’t feeling quite strong enough for the mind-boggling real-life adventures of Billy Walters, a gambler’s tale that is not for the faint-hearted; large lumps of it aren’t for the mathematically challenged either but this reader, clueless as she is, is ploughing on regardless.  Both books are cracking reads.

Queenie did the job and took me into another world, calming me down.  The night before, channel hopping, I’d come across The Great Climate Fight on Channel 4 (well 4 +1), presented by the formidable trio of Mary Portas, Kevin McCloud and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.  They, like me, are spitting mad at our refusal to do every last thing we can to change our planet-destroying habits, wilfully ignoring all the advances in technology that make improvements possible – and have done for many years now.

Our housing stock is a disgrace – Kevin is the man for this – but it doesn’t have to be and it was the vision of all the same old, same old new builds being thrown up all around Lichfield that caused my early-morning meltdown.  If I hadn’t been feeling a bit delicate after a visit to the osteopath, I’d have tramped over to the development and taken a photo but you’ll probably get the picture anyway.

Kevin visited a lovely, energy efficient batch of new homes in Lancaster, to show what can be done and Mary got herself a red coach and a driver and parked it outside the Treasury.  She took up her little megaphone to try and tempt Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, who’d been ignoring her emails, to meet her to discuss the matter of fossil fuels and the like.  He didn’t appear but she caused a stir.

Government ministers did their level best to avoid our intrepid trio, though Michael Gove did agree to visit Lancaster with Kevin, then, what do you know, he couldn’t find a slot in his diary…Obfuscation at every turn, stringing us along, hoping we’ll soon be too cold to use our keyboards and will be too busy surviving to think about thriving.  You wouldn’t believe these people have children and grandchildren and should be doing everything they can to save the planet for them.

Well, there’ll be an election soon enough…In the meantime, just what should I be replacing the gas boiler with?  And did I really grow up without radiators?  Where has that hardiness gone just when it’s needed!

Talking of string, that was the comp for us frolickers last Friday.  We each got given a piece of string, how long depended on our handicap, the higher the longer, so you can imagine the tangled mess some of us got into.  The idea is to use your string to get out of trouble, a bunker, say or a clump of heather or to hole a tricky putt.  You cut off the length as required until you run out of string.

For once I managed the intricacies well-nigh impeccably, putted the lights out and racked up 18 points in the 7 holes, with five proper pars, two of them string-assisted and two bogeys.  It’s a bit of a faff, not least because it takes two to stretch out the string and work out where to cut it – there were lots of cries of “who’s got the scissors?”  Then you have to remember which string is still in play and which is out of action.  A bit of a miracle we made it in in daylight; no wonder the two-ball behind us took themselves off who knows where.

The whole point is that the string is your get-out-of-jail free card but for some unfathomable reason and to general astonishment our esteemed organiser, who sets the rules, and her group added a shot to their score every time they used a bit of cord.  Duh.  At least she had the grace not to declare the comp null and void.

That evening, when I was slobbing out at home in front of Father Brown and Gogglebox, a load of the more intrepid members were back out on the course for a few holes of floodlit golf.  They all raved about it so much – despite a certain amount of disorientation (hip flasks were spotted apparently) – that I’m putting my name down next time; it sounded like a lot of fun.

I forget to tell you that the other week at bridge I called, with a lot of help from our resident guru, a grand slam, shock, horror.  I didn’t make it – but I should have.  It all came down to the last two cards and muggins (whose brain cell failed her at the critical moment) nearly made the right choice but prevaricated (knowing that the others at the table knew what I should be doing) and as so often got her 50-50 chance wrong.  I chose the six of diamonds and the six of hearts was a master.  Bugger.  That could be my one and only chance.

Billy Walters would be shaking his head in disbelief.  You’re kidding me.  You weren’t playing for money?  And you can’t count!