…………………………….and breathe………………………….!

This laptop is in mortal danger of being chucked out of the window and/or smashed with a sledgehammer.

I am in the middle of a very busy time with lots of jobs in the house to finish, entertaining and hosting to do and packing and preparing for a holiday.  There’s also a six-hour Blood Biking shift to be inserted at least once a week.  So, I thought I’d sit down and bash out a few hundred words of the blog and get things started – and it’s the start that’s the worst bit.

Anyway, rather unusually, the words were flowing quite nicely earlier today and then the heel of my left hand grazed a button low down somewhere on the keyboard and all but one letter of my scintillating prose disappeared into the ether.  The one bold letter still looking at me was an “L”.

I knew there was no need to panic.  After all, I’d been here before and knew that the drafts were automatically saved and all I had to do was restore the back up on the blog.  No sweat.

That was precisely 90 minutes ago and my blood pressure has been rising with every passing second.  I have been unable to locate any saved drafts that contain more than that hateful “L”.  I really do not, absolutely not, have time for this.  So, I’ve aborted and started again, smarting at the loss of 300 plus words.  What the “L?”

I’m slowly getting back into the rhythm of watching golf again having had a wee break from it recently.  I keep an eye on things on a Thursday and Friday, seeing who’s made and missed the cut.  Then, if my interest is still piqued by Sunday, I’ll try and catch the final round.  In the last month or so, two names have been very much to the fore – Patrick Reed on this side of the Atlantic and Chris Gotterup on the other.

Since the turn of the year each American has won twice already and, in fact, Reed lost in a play-off in between his two victories – otherwise he’d be celebrating a hattrick.  Gotterup, on the other hand, at 26 years of age, is just at the start of his third season on the world’s best tour and he’s just doubled his haul of titles to four, winning the WM Phoenix Open last Sunday.  That’s a pretty fast start in anyone’s language but even he wasn’t really entertaining any notions of victory last Sunday until a scintillating finish of five birdies in his final six holes gave him a total of 16 under.

At that moment he was unaware that the overnight leader Hideki Matsuyama was staunchly fighting a rearguard action against arguably the most errant driving of anyone in contention to win a tournament.  His incredible firefighting meant he arrived at the 18th tee with four birdies on his card, no bogeys and a slender one-shot lead.  That’s when Hideki ran out of steam, hitting yet another awful tee shot, and this time even he couldn’t fashion a par for the win.

The play-off hole was a microcosm of the final round – a superb Gotterup tee shot and second leading to yet another birdie while a woeful drive, a penalty drop and a remarkable recovery still gave Matsuyama hope – until that final putt of Gotterup’s.  It was a compelling watch.

Further compelling watching has been following that player most likely to divide public opinion, namely Patrick Reed, aka Captain America.

As an honorary life member of the DP World Tour (awarded to him in 2019 after his Masters victory the previous year) Reed is plying his trade on that tour this season, his LIV contract having come to an end with no agreement to further it.  This season he’s odds on to win one of the ten PGA cards on offer which will create a pathway for him back to his home tour and, come August, he will have gone a year since he last teed it up on the LIV tour.  That further eases his path back to the certainty of playing full time once again, should he wish, in his homeland.

Not so certain, however, is the reception he’ll receive from his peers.  Granted, Brooks Koepka is already treading a path back from LIV to the PGA Tour so Reed isn’t the trailblazer in that respect.  Koepka, however, is a completely different kettle of fish.  He is, and always was, well liked by the other players.  He’s paid his fines.  He sought rapprochment with his home tour after curtailing his LIV contract.  Word is that he has softened his sometimes arrogant exterior – and, most telling of all, he never joined any lawsuit against the tour.

As for Reed – well, suspicions of dishonesty and cheating have eddied around him since his college days and he never has been one of the most popular boys in the class.  And then there was the curious backstory in 2018, when he won the Masters, of his not wanting his parents to attend the tournament, despite it literally being down the road from their home.  Nor were they included in any of the victory celebrations.

Domestic issues aside, however, it will be the $750 million lawsuit against, amongst others, the PGA Tour that will be a pill too bitter for some to swallow.  I don’t believe Reed will find a welcome mat awaiting him – not that for one minute I think he’ll care a jot.  He’ll carry on just doing his thing – as he always has.

And at the moment his “thing” is collecting titles and leaving the rest of the DP World tour players in his wake, shaking their heads at the extraordinary high level of the Texan’s play.  In his commitment to his game, with his forensic preparation and work ethic, there is much to be admired.  Day after day of nine-hour practice schedules are not uncommon for him.  That’s three hours on the long game, three on the short game and three on putting.  No wonder it’s hard to name a better short game player or putter in the world of golf.

Reed is currently the owner of a lone major but I’m pretty certain that that Masters title of his will soon have a few new major buddies.  And, of course, there’s also the delicious prospect of seeing him in the Ryder Cup colours of the US again.  That’s a spectacle I’d really like to see.

Let’s get the sad stuff over with quickly:  Spurs have got rid of yet another manager, sacking Thomas Frank after eight months or so in the job.  Well, surely, that’s more than enough time to sort out a basket case of a club with more than a dozen first-team players out injured, isn’t it?  Not forgetting a captain, a World Cup winner no less, who is a red card waiting to happen and is now sitting out four games, all crucial, as we struggle to keep a tiny, increasingly uncomfortable gap between us and the relegation places.

We finished fourth from bottom last season but were never in danger of going down because the bottom three were so far adrift.  We also won a European trophy, the first bit of silverware for nearly 20 years and still sacked Aussie Ange because the league form was so dire.  It’s still dire, even worse if anything and Frank’s last straw was Tuesday night’s 2-1 loss, in the pouring rain, at home to Newcastle, another side not exactly brimming with confidence.  However, a visit to “Dr Tottenham” sent the Geordies home feeling a whole lot perkier.

I didn’t go because I decided it was a better idea to spend the night at the sister’s, having dinner (a delicious venison stew) with friends up from south Wales.  Oh, just as a point of interest, no one bought my tickets on ticket exchange, probably because we’re so bad on our home patch but also because the kick-off times make it so hard for a lot of people to get home after the game.  A friend who was at the game suffered even more on the train home to Derby because he found himself in a carriage with what he uncharitably called “moron students”, a mixture of Newcastle and Leeds (2-all draw at Chelsea) fans making a racket… Such are the trials and tribulations of a travelling supporter.

Anyway, we watched the footie on my iPad thanks to a friend’s Sky Go and the others just about tolerated my agonised swearing and despairing shouts of “Run, run, close him down, don’t let him shoot…..aaaagh….”  There was, I’m ashamed to say, lots of unedifying effing and blinding on my part before I handed the iPad over to the others, all Manchester United fans, to watch their late kick-off at West Ham.

Nastily, I wanted the United fans to suffer too and West Ham, who looked doomed to relegation before they won at our place a  few weeks ago and started a revival, went 1-nil up.  Then, belatedly, I realised that three points for the Hammers might be a nail in our coffin and in the 96th minute United equalised.  Hooray.  I suppose.

Well, next up, on Sunday week, at our place, it’s Arsenal, our deadliest rivals, who are having a brilliant season, top of the table and possibly the best team in Europe at the moment.  They’re looking a wee bit wobbly as the end of the season, with all those tantalising trophies glittering, gets ever nearer but not that wobbly.  If they win everything and we get relegated -it doesn’t bear thinking about.

On the BBC website, Ian Poulter, of Ryder Cup fame but now of LIV, a mad Arsenal fan, took on Chris Sutton, footballer turned pundit, at a few predictions, including Spurs v Newcastle.  They both went for 1-all, which was very kind of them, especially considering that Poulter has a nice line in insults when it comes to Spurs.  Even though he was an Arsenal fan from the beginning – “My dad just dragged the shirt straight over my head and that was it” – he had trials at Spurs when he was 13.

“I’m so glad that never worked out,” he said.  “I had two left feet and it turned out everyone else Spurs have signed since has got two left feet as well….”

The club motto is Audere Est Facere – to dare is to do – but there are many, including Ange, who doubt there’s enough daring, let alone derring-do, about the place at the moment.  So, to cheer myself up I rooted out the book celebrating the majestic Double side that won the League title and the FA Cup in 1961, playing beautiful football.  It’s not all in black and white, there’s some colour and I suppose it’s why we have our delusions of grandeur and why most subsequent teams are doomed to failure….

Really, football, which has taken up the whole blog, more or less, should be well down the pecking order at the moment because everywhere you look there’s fantastic international sport at full pelt:  The T20 Cricket World Cup – did you see how close Nepal got to beating England and then lost to Italy; the Six Nations Rugby – could be tough for us Celts; golf in California and Saudi Arabia – still not sure how I feel about the women being there; and of course the Winter Olympics in Italy at Milan-Cortina with all that curling, skiing, skating, skeleton, ice hockey and snowboarding.  The terminology is something else and I’m lagging behind, just about remembering that a goofy stance is right foot forward on the snowboard.

It’s exhausting and mesmerising all at once and is keeping me out of the rain.