The golf swing is a thing of beauty.  No, let me qualify that.  The golf swing of a good player is a thing of beauty.  (I’ve just witnessed a host of players hit off the tee at a local golf club.)

I was struck by my initial thought when watching the last knockings of the Ladies’ European Tour event last weekend at the Centurion Club, the PIF London Championship.  Watching those women makes it easy to appreciate the sheer athleticism of the action, the build-up and storage of power and the smooth rhythm of the transition as the clubhead accelerates at great speed through the ball.  It’s powerful and takes an inordinate and deceptive amount of strength and, as with all things done well, it looks easy.

When watching some of the men professionals you will still see the occasional “lurcher” – i.e. a player whose strength allows him to attempt to overpower the ball and one who relies on phenomenal hand/eye co-ordination as well as a fair degree of brute strength. That is less common amongst the women who need every last bit of the chain to be synchronised in order to produce the strongest, most accurate results.  They completely understand the concept of swinging through the impact area at speed, gathering the ball en route.  That’s completely different from trying to hit at the ball.

Watching 17-year old Anna Huang (top pic) lift the title was impressive.  Less than a year ago she was wondering should she take the giant step of turning professional at such a tender age.  Eleven months later the young Canadian has four LET titles to her name, eclipsing the early exploits and record of her heroine Lydia Ko.

With her father on the bag she withstood the assault on her lead and on the title by Charley Hull, the home favourite, and ultimately was the one who refused to blink when one behind after seventy holes.  A par, eagle finish – it was the fourth consecutive day that she’d eagled the last – saw her home by two shots.

What a player!  Technically sound, mentally strong and seemingly impervious to pressure.  It was only when she came off the final green and saw her Mum, who was seeing her win for the first time, that Anna burst into tears and fell into her arms.  And that’s when I thought, “My goodness, she’s just a kid!”

Her composure when under the cosh couldn’t be faulted.  Perhaps that will change as her career unfolds and she inevitably suffers some scar tissue but it’s impossible not to marvel at the assuredness, on so many levels, of young players like Anna.

It all leads me to conclude there must be a number of factors contributing to the exceptional skill sets of such young players.  The quality of the coaching is an obvious starting point.  Don’t get me wrong – there have always been great coaches but back in the day they were less likely to share their “secrets”.  I think the advent of specialised strength and conditioning coaches who understand how to develop these young athletes is key.  There was no such thing in my day when I was seventeen.  My “fitness” advice in the early days was to run along Portstewart strand and as for any mental skills input – that came from Dad who simply said, “Never, ever give up.”

Granted my playing and coaching careers spanned an enormous and seismic change in golf instruction and how it is delivered and there’s no doubt that this digital age we all now inhabit means that even the youngest aficionados of the game can gaze all day every day at the best swings in the world, imprinting as fast as their brain allows.  Don’t underestimate the power of simply copying.

The popularity of what was once considered a game for fuddy-duddies is definitely on the up.  In this 21st century there are now thousands and thousands more folk than ever before making a living from the game.  That includes players, instructors of every discipline, mental and physical, equipment companies, tour officials and administrators at all levels from local to international, amateur to professional.

The lure of making lots of money at something can be quite the driving and motivating force and this, to a large extent, spearheaded the rise of the game, particularly the women’s game, in Asia and the Far East.  Successful female golfers there are followed like pop stars and in many cases the players have single-handedly lifted their families to an elevated standard of living.

For lots of casual players the relative ease of international travel means some of the game’s oldest and most venerated courses, as well as some phenomenal new designs, are now more accessible.  The result is that golf tourism is very big business indeed.  After all, who amongst us doesn’t have a bucket list of venues to visit?

I’m willing to bet that the majority of readers of this blog are middle-aged and upwards.  No longer in the first flush of youth, it’s certainly easy to wonder what relevance the swing of such as Anna Huang has for you.  Well, you could do worse than try to assimilate some of the smoothness, balance and rhythm – at your own pace, mind.

Remember, your body has undoubtedly changed over the years and be sure to allow your swing to adapt to your changing shape and years.  That may mean relinquishing a decades-old swing thought that may have served you well………but now it may cause you pain – so let it slip into the ether.  Your golf swing mustn’t hurt you.  Your task is to swing through the impact zone with a reasonably square clubface and we’ll all do it slightly differently depending on our bodies, strength and age.

With a bit of luck your golf swing has given you more than you could ever have believed possible.  Hours of exercise, enjoyment and fulfillment;  it has helped you make friendships, undoubtedly caused hilarity now and again and perhaps provided you with unforgettable trips to lovely places.

Yes, indeed – a golf swing is a thing of beauty.  I’m now going to modify my opening thoughts.

YOUR golf swing is a thing of beauty.

Love it no matter what – it’s given you so much…

 

It’s a while since I’ve given any thought at all to Bubba Watson but watching the men’s European golf yesterday, there he was.  “What on earth’s Bubba doing in Denmark?”

The two-time Masters champ, who took himself off to LIV, is playing as an invitee, a wild card and he’s still a player worth watching because there’s nothing predictable about him; if you want to see the unexpected, shots beyond the imagination of others, Bubba’s your man.  You want him to miss fairways and greens in the wrongest of places simply because his powers of recovery are often magical, beyond belief.  Dull he ain’t.

He’s playing in the Danish Golf Championship at a new venue for the tour, Great Northern, in Kerteminde –  “the garden by the sea” – on the island of Funen, a couple of hours from Copenhagen.  You can read all about it on the DP World Tour website in a piece by Mathieu Wood.  It’s a Nicklaus Design course, described as “the passion project of Thomas Kirk Kristiansen, a fourth-generation member of the Lego Group family”.

It looks spectacular on the telly, with dramatic elevation changes and lots of water and to avoid building hospitality stands in front of the clubhouse, the two nines have been flipped, so the 18th this week is the usual 9th, a wicked-looking par three with a green surrounded by water.  Daunting enough on a calm day but if the wind blows…

In the US, the men are playing in the FedEx St Jude Championship in sweltering Memphis, Tennessee.  I was there once, when it was the FedEx St Jude Classic and the great, the charismatic Seve Ballesteros was completely ignored by hordes rushing past him to catch a glimpse of one of the pro-am celebs, a bloke called Michael Jordan.  It was an eyeopener for me – I knew nothing about basketball and had never heard of Jordan and couldn’t believe that the maestro Seve was being upstaged.

A lot of the basketball fans knew nothing about golf and had eyes only for their hero and one over-enthusiastic eejit desperate for a better view dived under the ropes and hurtled across in front of the 1st tee just as Andy Bean (it was a long time ago, look him up) was hitting his drive; he managed to semi-abort and an untimely death was avoided.

I have no memory of who won the tournament but I still mourn the loss of one of my all-time favourite earrings, part of a pair that featured a spider in one ear and a web in the other.  Think the centrepiece was a moonstone and whichever one I lost, it slipped out of my sweaty ear lobe and disappeared into the thick, lush grass at my feet never to be seen again despite my desperate, on-my-knees-grovelling efforts.  It was the sort of rough to be avoided at all costs, however strong you were.

It’s too hot for golf here, for me anyway (36 degrees Centigrade) so a large part of my week has been taken up with skulking inside, behind closed curtains, studying kettles.  I need a new one because my faithful Kenwood (quiet, quick) slipped off the bonnet of the car as I was cleaning the dust off my windscreen and window wipers.  It looks fine but after boiling it up without any alarms I noticed a pool of water on the kitchen counter.  Oops.

Inspired by the Rare Tea Company, founded by Henrietta Lovell, who wants us to enjoy proper tea again and ditch the bags, I started to look at kettles more closely, pondering a temperature-controlled model that allows us to brew our teas to perfection. It’s time, surely, to revive the tastebuds and sip with sensitivity and feeling, not glug mindlessly….

The Rare Tea customer support team have been very helpful – thanks to Thomas and Will – and Which?, which is a must for its reviews on items of all sorts, has put numerous kettles through their paces.  I’ve been trawling through the results, with the added complication that I’ve been considering plastic-free models, heeding a friend’s dire warnings about microplastics.

There’s the super-duper SAKI Luna Pro – not a bit of plastic in sight – but you have to order it from America and since it retails at about $169 or thereabouts, it’s a no-no, even for me at my most extravagant.  That’s too much of a stretch for somebody who thinks £40 is nearing top of the range.  Then there’s KitchenAid, Cuisinart, Bosch, Sage, Fellow, Haden, Ascot…. You’ll be beginning to understand why I am still without a working kettle.

It was a relief to forget the kettles for a while and head out to observe the eclipse the other evening.  We broke out the colanders, as instructed but never did work out how to use them properly.  Fortunately, one of our number had a pair of slightly battered cardboard glasses designed for viewing an eclipse, however partial and they did the job well enough.  In the end, though, the clouds won.