A pal of mine sent me an email this week to see if I had any suggestions re membership categories at golf clubs and avoidance of stagnant waiting lists.  This is an area in which I have zero knowledge or experience but it did cause me to ponder the dilemma facing many folk who want to join a club.

This is not a problem I have ever faced.  My parents made Patricia and me members of both Portstewart and Portrush as children and other memberships in later years were of the honorary variety.  After turning professional I had no reason to join a club and then much later in my career, when I wanted to play a bit more again, I joined a club that had a small section for professionals.  It was all very straightforward as far as I was concerned.  You can see my naivety sometimes knows no bounds!  It reflects the very privileged journey I’ve enjoyed through this game.

Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest there is currently positive discrimination towards women joining clubs, which I applaud, feeling that, on the whole, this is a good thing – at least until the male/female numbers even up a little bit.  There also seems to be a bias to attracting and accepting brand new players, which I find a bit strange because this must surely be at the expense of those who already play and are perhaps doomed to occupying many years on a waiting list.  Have we forgotten to look after those who already play the game in favour of lassoing in brand new souls?

Apparently some clubs use a points system rather than a straightforward waiting list.  So, you accumulate points for having a partner already in the club, or perhaps a relation.  A low handicap, number of  years played, your service to golf and so on will all help to bump up your score.  That seems to be a good idea but it must still be really hard to make headway if you are not a particularly good player and new to an area, perhaps having relocated because of changing your job.

I know some of our blog readers own and run golf clubs as well as working in them and many of you have served or are serving on membership committees.  Please tell me, just how do you keep the life blood flowing through a club with an ideal mix of membership categories?  Perhaps you abandon all categories?  (Ooops, poor juniors and students!)  I’d be very interested in your suggestions………..and so, I’m sure would my pal who, surprise, surprise, got a very short email in response to her plea for input.

It’s autumn now, the clocks are about to change and another golf season is winding down.  It’s also a time of year when I reflect and ponder (more pondering!) on the golfing highs and lows of the past few months.  One thing golf and sport has taught me over the years is that incredible performances can be delivered by generating, and then riding that most nebulous, will ‘o the wisp thing called momentum.

But what is it?  And how do you summon it when it is glaringly absent?  It arrives as a subtle shift in your favour, an altering of the universe, a change in the air that is almost tangible.  Sometimes it is generated by a change in your own self, in your attitude, in your expectations.  Positive emotions become so heightened you feel you can reach out and touch them.  Harbour the slightest bit of negativity and momentum will leech away from you in an instant.

Suddenly the bounces are kinder and you skirt the flanks of a bunker instead of  running up the face;  a couple of putts drop in from the low side of the cup;  you get a feel of something on one particular swing and your confidence soars.  The tide has turned.  You may have spent months trying to unlock the secret to your backswing or whatever and seemingly got nowhere and yet all that can alter in a heartbeat, even in one practice swing.

We witnessed the power of  momentum aplenty in the Ryder Cup.  The first couple of days it was all with the Europeans.  Don’t think the Americans played poorly on the Friday and Saturday – they didn’t.  Our boys were phenomenal and simply everything went their way, with momentum moving like an energy between the different pairings on the course.  The result was Europe appeared to have built a totally unassailable lead come Sunday.

And then, fickle old momentum decided to don the red, white and blue colours of the good, ole USA and suddenly Europe’s domination evaporated like a puddle in a desert resulting in a nail-biting finale that certainly left me spent.

The player in world golf successfully riding a wave of momentum right now is England’s ever popular Tommy Fleetwood.  He has been magnificent over the last few months with oodles of high finishes (and disappointments) in America until at last he broke through to the top of the podium by winning the Tour Championship.  He followed that up by being leading points scorer at Bethpage Black and last Sunday he won the DP World India Championship at Delhi Golf Club.  When things go your way like that, take a deep breath, don’t question it, keep working hard and don’t interfere.

Who knows how long Tommy will ride this streak?  Golf is a tough game and there are many more lows than highs.  One high he’ll remember for ever, though, is seven-year old son Frankie running on to the final green to congratulate him at Delhi.  That fulfilled an item on Frankie’s bucket list and was the coolest thing for Tommy to be able to deliver to him.

Now, just how to bottle that momentum?  Suggestions welcome.

Something wonderful happened to me the other morning and it had already started well with a sociable, if chilly, dog walk with Sue and Alice.  We bumped in to friends with their dogs, then, wishing I’d already rooted out the winter gloves, I went to the bakery to stock up with sourdough muffins – have I mentioned that they freeze well?  Then I warmed up with a latte in one of Lichfield’s many caffs.  So far, so good.

Then, on the way home, a bit of a miracle happened:  two people asked me for the best way to get to the cathedral, which was easily visible from where we were standing.  Hallelujah, a directions question that I could answer with complete confidence!  (I’d just spent a few days in Germany shrugging and apologising:  “Ich habe keine Ahnung; ich spreche nicht Deutsch; entschuldigung….”  Just enough German to confuse the questioner utterly.)

I suggested the most direct route, which would mean they’d hit the cathedral full frontal, so off they went and I headed home, smiling broadly, inordinately pleased with myself.  It really is the little things in life, the teensy-weensy, titchy-witchy, tiny triumphs that give the most pleasure.

My republican friends aren’t too happy but there’s a royal visit scheduled for Lichfield at the beginning of next week.  I’m not quite sure what the occasion is but it’s a big deal, although probably not quite as big as the visit to Rome this week, featuring prayers with the Pope in the Sistine Chapel, I believe.  Lucky old Charles and Camilla.  Mo and I paid a lot of money for our tour of the Vatican a couple of years ago and got 30 seconds max to admire Michelangelo’s artistry.

Ah well, rank always has had its privileges.

I was in Germany on a course that had been a very long time in the making.  I can’t remember when I first came across Esther Gokhale (Go-Clay) and her book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, written with Susan Adams but a lot of years ago, I was within a few metres of a weekend course with Esther herself when I got a call to say it was cancelled.  She had been turned back at Heathrow – no work visa I believe – and the only benefit was that I made a few quid on the rate of exchange when I got my refund.

Four years ago Mo and I went on a weekend course with Clare, the only active Gokhale teacher in the UK.  In Bristol.  It was unbelievably tiring but inspiring and I signed up for the daily Gokhale online classes.  They’re great and you get to know the other participants, wherever in the world they are.  The classes operate on US west coast time because Esther is based in California but, it’s like golf:  you can’t learn it all from a distance, from a book or from Zoom.  So, I went to Germany.

Julie, one of Gokhale’s top team, lives in Öhringen and that’s where eight of us relative novices pitched up, from various places, by various means, to spend six sessions of a couple of hours each working with Esther, Julie and Karin and Doris, two trainee teachers from Austria.  We came from the UK (me and Angela),  Austria (Gillian and Herbert), Berlin (Di and Martin), Italy (Linda) and just round the corner (Hans-Christian).

Essentially, to put it simply, the Gokhale Method is all about posture, about stacking yourself in the right position and it’s blooming hard after decades of slumping and coping with bunions because your feet have been asked to work from the wrong end – toes taking the brunt instead of the tougher heel.  I ended every day knackered and now that I’m home I’m still knackered!

There’s nothing like hands-on teaching – literally in this case, with my permission of course.  And our teachers sounded a lot less fierce than the woman taking the kiddie-winks ballet class in the next room; for a start they didn’t shout at us!  They were insistent that we got the positions right but they were encouraging and understood that most of us were trying to change the habits of a lifetime.

Now that I’m home, recovering from lugging my luggage from train to train and happily filling in time at the airport by rearranging my weighty hand baggage (see the pic at the top), I’m starting to panic that I’ll forget everything.  It all seemed to make such sense face to face.  Hey ho, I just have to accept it’s the work of the rest of my life.

Finally, never having watched anything of the Traitors, trailers apart because I thought it was a nasty, hideous concept, bringing out the worst in people, I’ve become addicted to Celebrity Traitors and am binge watching – not a good idea when you’re trying to write a blog at the same time.  Apologies if it doesn’t make any sense.