How are you all coping with the heat?

I melted in the scorching sunshine of beautiful Bergerac last week – the high 30s for five consecutive days was enough to have me thinking longingly of cooling rain showers and brisk walks along chilly beaches.  We’re never satisfied, are we?  It’s either too hot. too cold, too windy, too bright, too dark, too dry, too wet – always “too” something, never just right.

The week was a chance to really kick back and relax and catch up with my better half who was mid-way through a fabulous motorbiking trip through Spain and France.  Even he was glad to extricate himself from the confines of a motorcycle helmet and various articles of armoured clothing in boiling temperatures for a few days.  A poor internet connection in our otherwise superb gite meant there was little chance of submitting a blog for Patricia’s edit and so we relaxed and made good use of our time tasting some of the local wines on offer and doing, well, not a lot else really.  It was bliss.

The idle life changed somewhat on my return to Blighty with friends and neighbours deciding I needed to host a welcome-home, birthday barbecue for my returning hubby.   All I had to do was provide the meat, the drink and the venue – everyone else brilliantly pitched in and brought salads and puds and pretty much organised the evening.  Having a barbie on the hottest day of the year hadn’t been the intention but it was great fun and the sister was well worth her invitation when she did the lion’s share of the clearing up!

I seem to be taking a leaf out of Patricia’s book and here I am, several paragraphs in and nary a mention of any golf.  Well, last weekend I switched on to see what was happening on the PGA tour and saw two identically dressed guys.  Neat enough if a tad boring – navy from head to toe with white shoes, white cap and a white glove hanging from their back pocket.  They were on a green somewhere, each holding a putter and they were moving around the flagstick, straddling imagined and imaginary lines and occasionally holding up an assortment of fingers in front of their face.  No sign whatsoever of a golf ball.  Morikawa and Cantlay.

I watched for a couple of minutes and nothing much changed so I switched off the TV and that was the last golf I watched all weekend – well, I didn’t actually see any golf, but you get my drift.  Not exactly captivating.  Do any of you feel the same way?  I’m honestly surprised at myself.  If you’d said to me a handful of seasons ago that I would get to the stage when I couldn’t be bothered to watch golf, I would never have believed you.

I began to think about it more deeply and realised that it actually wasn’t true that I couldn’t be bothered to watch golf.  After all, I was captivated by the play of the women up at Nairn a few weeks ago and I was glued to the R&A website and the live scoring of the Vagliano Trophy matches.  More of that later – I’ve certainly not pressed a refresh button so often in years.

No, it’s the weekly grind of professional golf that I’ve had enough of.  (Oh dear, my old English teacher would be spinning in her grave at the thought of ending a sentence with a preposition.  Moving on.  Oh no, another one.)

Take the women’s professional game.  Here I’m in complete agreement with Iain Carter, the BBC’s excellent golf correspondent, when he rails at how poorly the women golfers are marketed and promoted.  The other week they had one of their majors played at the new HQ of the PGA of America in Frisco, an hour outside Dallas.  The course was long and boring, the skill sets of the women were not showcased or tested and there were virtually no spectators.  The heat and lack of shade kept sensible folk at home.

At a time when women’s sports across the board are enjoying global exposure this isn’t good enough.  Sponsors will not keep stumping up the large prize funds associated with majors for such poor returns.  And, as Iain says, the powerbase of the game is in Asia and there’s scant exposure of these players on our screens and so we don’t get to know them.  The women deserve more, they deserve better and I’ve stopped watching because it makes me feel cross.

I love the men’s majors but the men’s tours have lost me as a fan.  LIV and the subsequent fallout has a lot to do with it.  The PGA tour is moving towards the LIV model with limited field events, no cuts and revolting amounts of money, at the same time trying to convince themselves and everyone else that they are “growing” the game.  Greed and entitlement and the move to not attending press conferences because they “don’t have to” is not a healthy sign.

The final bottom line for me is they are all so SLOW even with a TV edit.

……..and breathe.  Rant over – must be the heat.

The highlight of the golfing week for me was GB&I’s magnificent last gasp snatching of victory against a supremely talented European side in the Vagliano Trophy.  The match was played at Royal Hague (where many moons ago I finished runner-up in a Ladies’ European Tour event).  Ably captained by Ireland’s Maria Dunne (picture at the top), it was another Irishwoman, Aine Donegan who holed for an eagle on the final green to edge the visitors home by 12.5 points to 11.5.

Thrilling, nailbiting, edge-of-the-seat stuff.  It was GB&I’s first victory in twenty years.

Now THAT is golf I find worth watching.

Well, you’d think it’d be easy-peasy, a nice relaxing day at the cricket – though test cricket is tough and there’s nothing too relaxing about it for the players out there in the blazing sun.  We spectators have it a wee bit easier, though it’s amazing how often you lose concentration:  looking down to pick up your beer, have a sip of coffee or root in your bag for a biscuit – and end up missing a wicket.

Some people, mostly men, pitch up carrying only a phone – tickets are digital things these days and you can also pay for everything with your phone if you’re clued up enough.  Not being a minimalist in any shape or form, I marvel at how they can manage it.  “Och, they’re just going to drink beer,” said a youngish woman carrying only a handbag – quite a big, expandable one admittedly but nothing approaching my two bags.  One for food – strawberries for three, cubes of cheese, apples, nuts, struggling hard to bring the healthy options; the other for the umbrella (complete overkill), jacket, sunglasses, suncream, floppy hat and, the piece de resistance, kitchen roll.

And it was the kitchen roll that really came into its own when the guys in the seat behind warned us that there was a waterfall of beer – and later water – heading our way, cascading down the steps towards us and our bags.  We managed to lift everything out of the way – beer stains are a bugger to get rid of – and stem the flow before it reached the row in front and a rather swanky Fortnum & Mason bag.

“It’s my wife’s,” the man in charge of it said, “and she wasn’t too happy about me bringing it here.  Thanks for saving it – and me!”

We left just before India’s impressive young captain Shubman Gill reached his century but our journey home did not run smoothly.  Bus to New Street but alarm when the driver told us that there were no trains!  She wasn’t joking.  A train had somehow managed to damage some crucial overhead wires and Birmingham’s main station, a vital hub, was in chaos.  To cut a long and tiring story short, we eventually got a bus to Sutton Coldfield, another bus that we thought was going to Lichfield but didn’t and had to summon a lift from a dutiful daughter for the final few miles.  Phew.  Later we found that a friend had found a more direct, less stressful route and was home with his feet up long before us…..

It’s hard work sometimes, this hedonistic retirement lifestyle.

A few days earlier, having had to have a knackered tyre replaced at short notice, I’d headed down to London for a long-awaited 90th birthday celebration.  The birthday girl is now well on her way to 91 but who wants a big garden party in February?  Not in this country anyway.

Liz, the star of the show, is more than worth the detour – the “God Bless Atheism” sticker is on her study window, by the front door and irresistible to some of us.  The hot, sticky journey down the M1 was forgotten.  This was party central and irreverence was de rigueur.

People came from far and wide to pay homage and Lewine, a fellow golf writer, following in Liz’s distinguished, trailblazing footsteps, nipped down from Edinburgh for the evening.  On the way out, to catch a flight back home from Heathrow, she couldn’t resist the piano and I’m just sorry I wasn’t sharp enough to video the moment.  Some of Liz’s extensive collection of rocks came from Quartzsite, Arizona, where Lewine and I stood in line, arms full, as Liz arranged shipment home.  By sea, amazingly – but there were a lot of rocks.  They all arrived safely several months later.

There was another party two days later, for brother-in-law Brian and the dress code was a little less flamboyant but one of B’s presents caught the eye.  He does like a black tee shirt (much to his wife’s despair) and after spending time working in South Africa, he loves a barbie, though that’s not the correct terminology, as the tee explains.

Brill.

Not so brilliant was Eddie Pepperell’s withdrawal from the Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge in Normandy after sharing the third round lead with David Horsey and Albin Bergstrom.  Eddie’s making his way back to form and fitness on the HotelPlanner Tour (formerly the Challenge Tour) but his back seized up and he could barely move last Sunday, let alone swing a club and compete over 18 holes.  Gutting does not begin to describe it.  For the full, gory details and more listen to the Chipping Forecast with Eddie, Andrew Cotter and Iain Carter.   Horsey, another veteran fighting to get back with the big boys, won the title.

Finally, two classic pics from Scotland, undoubtedly the home of golf and golfers extraordinaires.  First, we have Louise Clark, a volunteer at the recent Women(‘)s Amateur at Nairn and a stickler for getting things right, with her self-corrected bobble hat.  She spent the night before her stint adding the apostrophe abandoned by the R&A.  Look closely, it’s an immaculate piece of work – which is more than can be said for the R&A’s effort.

And a lovely photo of a legend and a legend-in-the-making at The Machrihanish Golf Club the other day:  Belle Robertson with Bob MacIntyre on a glorious day in Golf’s Own Country.

Oh, and before I forget, a friend who’s a bit of a soap buff chided me (gently) that it was Cliff Barnes in Dallas – not Jim.