For me, it’s been quite the year for reunions, turning my thoughts back across decades of  friendships and connections provided by this extraordinary pastime of golf.  But I’ve discovered, as well as being the most infuriating activity known to man, golf is the gift that keeps on giving.  And so I’d like to tell you a little yarn of recent and current times and dedicate this edition of the blog to present and future connections.

First a little background.  After Dad died the sister decided we should start the blog as a way for us to keep connected – with each other and with our many friends around the world.  It would also provide us with a positive focal point after so many years of caring for him.  Believe it or not, but next May we will celebrate (?) ten years of our meanderings.

Rather to our surprise, folk seemed to enjoy our musings and we built up quite a following with several readers starting to communicate with us through the comments section.  Some we knew but many we didn’t, one such being one of our American followers from California, a lovely man called Doug Forde.  Then in 2019, in a pre-Covid world, I finally met Doug and his wife Kathy at the US Open at glorious Pebble Beach.

Wandering through the tented village to the appointed meeting place felt a little like going on a blind date.  “Look out for a guy in a horizontally striped blue polo shirt with a white baseball hat” was my instruction – and there he was.  I’d like to think we all hit it off right away – you know the way that golfers tend to – and this new friendship continues apace.

Now, Doug is a man of multiple golf club memberships and last week he sent me a note written on a card featuring the par 3 8th hole at Lahinch golf club, venue of next year’s Walker Cup.  He joined the club as an “overseas life member” in 1999 (as we Irish would say, he’s no goat’s toe!”) so perhaps he’ll be making the journey to support the Americans playing next year at his Irish club.

He and Kathy are also members of Newport Beach Country Club, formerly site of the PGA Tour’s Hoag Classic and where a dear friend of theirs, Pam Higgins, (picture at the top) has been based, teaching golf, since 1984.  Through Doug, Pam has sent me a much treasured addition to my golfing library – more of which later.

Pam was a three-time winner on the LPGA tour where she competed from 1969 to 1980.  It was a tough old school in those days trying to get your nose in front of such luminaries as Kathy Whitworth, Judy Rankin, Donna Caponi and Amy Alcott, not to mention the incomparable Mickey Wright.

For those unfamiliar with the name, allow me to give you a snapshot of Mickey Wight.  Ben Hogan claimed she had “the finest golf swing I ever saw”.  Tom Watson said it “was such a joy to see her hit a golf ball”.  High, and justified, praise for the woman who hoovered up 82 titles and drew crowds larger than Arnie’s Army.

Pam Higgins travelled to tournaments with Mickey in those exciting days and her note to me brings her alive far better than I could:-

“Mickey was a good friend.  She was so bright, a true wordsmith, loved to cook and garden, drive her car, (left over from our tour days of driving every week), share online jokes and laugh.  Her voice was easy and soothing to the ear, kinda Southern Calif/like.  She was the most gracious winner and loser (so was Whit) on Tour.  Can you just picture Wright and Whitworth having side by side looks thru all of their 82 and 88 wins respectively……amazing how they must have interacted with the other……makes me smile to think of it.”  She continues:-

“Years back Mickey sent me a few of her books.  Recently I came across this one that I’m sending to you……Hope you enjoy having this in your library.”

What a treat!  An introduction through Doug to a wonderful player like Pam Higgins – and then through her the opportunity to glean a wee glimpse into her career and life and friendship with Mickey Wright, one of the all-time greats.  And, boy, yes, I will enjoy adding this to my collection.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

You see, that’s what golf does.  I’m learning it doesn’t just stop when, for whatever reason, you stop.  New connections, friendships and interests are there all the time as long as you have a toe dipped in to some golfing waters somewhere.  In my case, it is the blog, so correct as Patricia was to say it would keep us connected, I’m not sure either of us appreciated it would deliver the joy of making new connections.

I have re-read Pam’s lovely note several times, marvelling at her own accomplishments in the game, especially the wizardly, short-game skills she is still delivering to the members at Newport Beach CC.  That latter bit of info came courtesy of Doug as did the snippet that today (December 5th) she celebrates her 80th birthday.

So, the happiest of happy birthdays Pam.  Celebrate in style and let’s raise a glass to new and future friendships through the medium of golf.

 

Pete the Postman looked a bit weary as he stood on the doorstep delivering yet another package ordered in the pre-Christmas frenzy.  It was a wet morning – again – and he’d had to slalom his way to the door through the builders’ vans and paraphernalia that cluttered my drive but he was doing his best to take the long view and remain unfrazzled by the razzle-dazzle.

It’s a hectic time of year for most of us but especially for posties and Pete took the time to explain that he was deliberately trying to slow himself down a bit, take his time, concentrate on his breathing, keep calm and carry on delivering.  He’d be keeping his heart rate down, giving added meaning to the phrase poste restante…

Good thinking, Pete, my sentiments exactly.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the rush, rush, rush, swirling around in a panic, driving yourself dizzy and forgetting to breathe.  Just before our chat I’d been thinking about that very subject and had picked out another couple of words that fitted the bill, from Susie Dent’s book Roots of Happiness.

The first was “seijaku” (pronounced say-yak-u), a Japanese word which evokes serenity and stillness, describing “a moment of healing that can be found, particularly in nature, when we stop and breathe for a little while”.  Luckily for Pete, a lot of his route is close to Beacon Park, voted one of the best small parks in England.

The next word is “gongoozler” and probably wouldn’t help Pete on his rounds but would be ok for days off, not least because they’re often when we rush around the most.  Susie says that “gongoozlers like nothing better than sitting and watching other people being busy on a canal or a river.  Their name is probably based upon an old British word ‘gawn’, meaning to ‘stare lazily at something’…”

Oops.  Guilty as charged; there I was, staring dreamily at nothing in particular.  At this rate, I’ll still be up in time to dot between the Ashes from Brisbane and the Australian Open golf from Royal Melbourne.

Now, all of you golfers and golf fans out there, answer me this:  how on earth do you keep up with everything, with all the podcasts and stuff?  I’m overwhelmed simply by reading one newsletter, The Quadrilateral by Geoff Shackleford.  He covers a lot of ground, including some PGA Tour stuff, with Tiger at the heart of it; mentions the Hero World Challenge, featuring Scottie Scheffler back in action; the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa, with Viktor Hovland headlining; and the Aussie Open at Royal Melbourne, the undoubted star of the show despite the stellar presence of Rory McIlroy.  What a golf course.

Geoff describes it as “majestic” and says, “It offers the best reminder of what pro golf at its best looks like…”  He and Lawrence Donegan, a man of myriad talents who was once golf correspondent of The Guardian (and whose son Niall Shiels Donegan, born in Glasgow, raised in California, played for GB and I in the Walker Cup at Cypress Point earlier this year), have a podcast on the subject:  McKellar Golf Podcast 141 The Royal Melbourne Edition.

It’s on my list to listen to – only one hour 16 mins of my life – and I’m sure I’ve said this before:  if you have a chance to play Melbourne’s Sandbelt courses, don’t hesitate:  it’s golfing heaven.  Royal Melbourne has the East and West (the Open is on a composite of the two) but Kingston Heath shouldn’t be missed and there’s Victoria (Peter Thomson, who won The Open five times, was a member), Yarra Yarra, The Metropolitan, Commonwealth, Huntingdale….Bliss.

No wonder the Australians have always been good at golf.

A point to note is that Rory had a 72 in tricky, windy conditions and Eddie Pepperell, The Chipping Forecast’s touring pro, whose approach to the game could fairly be described as idiosyncratic, had a 68.  Try and make space to listen to him talk about his preparations…The man’s a marvel.

For some reason that made me think of Constitution Hill, a very good horse, a former champion hurdler no less, who is obviously having some sort of crisis of confidence.  He won his first ten races but has now fallen three times in four races, including his latest, at Newcastle.  Seemingly in the best of nick, looking terrific at home, he fell at the second.  Shock, horror all round.  Horse and jockey were fine but Constitution Hill’s connections were beyond baffled.

So, just how do you read a horse’s mind?  Understanding a Pepperell, for instance, is tricky enough but at least he is articulate and can put his thought processes – or some of them – in to words.  Presumably Constitution Hill was happy to go to the race course, to go to the start and set off, tackling jumps that were well within his compass until he decided that they weren’t.  He didn’t do a sainted Alice and flat out refuse to budge if he didn’t fancy something, he just made a complete bog of something that used to be second nature.

Time to retire.

[We’ll leave Captain Smith of Titanic fame, staring thoughtfully at the spires of Lichfield Cathedral, to ponder the conundrum.]