Watching runaway leader Brooks Koepka wobble then recover to win the US PGA Championship for the second successive year, I started doing some research.  Shock!  Horror!  Surely not?

First of all, I thought I heard someone say that no one ever had lost a 7-shot lead in the last round of a major championship, so I scurried upstairs and rooted out ‘A Golfer’s Life’ by Arnold Palmer with James Dodson.  Hadn’t Arnold once been seven shots ahead with nine holes to play in the US Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco and, to the horror of his adoring Army, ended up losing in the 18-hole play-off to Billy Casper?

He had indeed.

Playing with Casper, who’d been US Open champion in 1959, Palmer admitted that he was more worried about Jack Nicklaus, who was a couple of strokes further behind but in reality he was so unworried by either of his pursuers that he started thinking about beating Ben Hogan’s Open record, set in 1948.  “In retrospect, it was the biggest mental error of my career.”

Palmer reflected:  “In daring to think about breaking Hogan’s record, I violated the very rule Pap [his father Deacon] had spent all those years drilling into my head – never quit, never look up, and, most of all, never lose focus until you’ve completely taken care of business.”

Palmer describes in gruesome detail how his lead started dwindling, recalling the last nine holes “like some ghostly newsreel playing in my head”.   Playing the 18th, Casper and Palmer were level, tied, on the same score, whatever the correct terminology is these days.  Casper splits the fairway with his drive, Palmer, taking a 1-iron for accuracy, hoicks it left into thick rough.  “Walking down the fairway, shaken to the core, I doubt if I have ever felt as alone or as devastated on a golf course.  I know what a train wreck the world is witnessing, but I tell myself that I am still in the thick of it.  I can glance at faces in the gallery and see their shock and grief, too.”

Palmer has to hole a slippery, sidehill 6-footer for his par.  “As Bill and I shake hands, all I really feel is a sense of deep relief and perhaps a bit of disbelief at what has just happened…….I sign my card and walk slowly to the press tent, where a hundred unanswerable questions await…..”

Casper won the play-off with a 69 to Palmer’s 73.  “In the high drama of my collapse, it’s sometimes forgotten that Bill Casper played almost flawless golf down the stretch……..I didn’t just lose the 1966 US Open – Bill Casper’s brilliant play won it.”

Arnold Palmer was an icon, a superstar who transcended golf and was adored by millions.  He had a long and distinguished career but his seven major titles were condensed into the years between 1958 and 1964.  “The same go-for-broke kind of play that won me seven majors perhaps cost me at least that many more,” he said.  “But that’s life and that’s golf.”

Fortunately for Koepka, Dustin Johnson couldn’t quite manage flawless at the end but it was a damned close-run thing.  With the confidence (deserved) of someone who has won four of the last eight major championships that he’s played in, Koepka didn’t see why he couldn’t reach double figures in major titles.  The odds, however, are against him.

Jack has 18, Tiger has 15 and Walter has 11.  Walter?  Walter Hagen, a showman supreme, never knowingly undersold,  who won two US Opens, four Opens and five US PGA Championships between 1914 and 1929 and didn’t know what a major was.   The PGAs were all matchplay and the Masters, started in 1934, came a little too late for the Hagen heyday.  Next come Ben Hogan and Gary Player with nine and Tom Watson with eight.  Palmer, Bob Jones (legendary amateur), Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead and Harry Vardon are credited with seven and Nick Faldo and Lee Trevino have six…..You get my point.

In these days of mega money, when a couple of wins – or even none at all – can make a careful player with no expensive addictions more than comfortable for life, majors have become the measure of a golfer, almost to the point of obsession with some.  They are, when all’s said and done, a bit of an artificial, modern construct but there’s no denying that they are exciting and in most years the biggest events of the season.

Meanwhile, further south, in North Carolina, in the more sedate surroundings (Bethpage Black during a tournament is about as sedate as bedlam) of Pine Needles Lodge and Country Club, Helen Alfredsson was winning the second US Senior Women’s Open.  The Swede kept her nerve to win by two shots from long-time friends and adversaries Trish Johnson and Juli Inkster.  Go to usga.org and look at the pictures; the old dolls are as competitive as ever; winning still feels wonderful; losing not so wonderful.  They’re trying their spikes off and having a ball; catching up with old friends; trying to beat the heck out of them; salving the aches and pains with gels or whatever; cranking the swings into serious action.  JoAnne Carner, aged 80, missed the cut but walked all 36 holes…….Far be it from me to insert the words PGA, John Daly, arthritic knee and buggy at this point.

Finally, across the Atlantic, at Rosses Point, God’s own country as Dad invariably called it, James Newton from Macclesfield won the Flogas Irish Amateur Open Championship by five shots from Conor Purcell, of Portmarnock.  Newton started the final round five shots ahead of the field and was still five ahead at the end despite starting with three bogeys and having a triple bogey at the 16th.  It was that sort of day, with lots of wind and rain (sorry Dad!) but the inimitable Pat Cashman, photographer extraordinaire, set up a wonderful trophy pic as the cloud enveloped Ben Bulben yet again.

 

 

I was making myself a gin and tonic before settling down to this week’s blog when I realised that I was pouring the gin as though it were tonic.  Whoops.  Catch yourself on.  Surely it hasn’t come to this just yet?  It reminded me of a friend who used to glug down a g and t as though it were water and she’d survived several days hallucinating in the desert.  In her defence, she was only a student at the time and soon learned that water was for thirst-quenching  and gin was for sipping and savouring.

In my defence, I’d been distracted by the election leaflets that have started plopping into my letterbox.  In this neck of Middle England we’ve just had parish and district council elections and now we seem to be having an “Election for the European Parliament West Midlands Region”.  (I quote from the Labour leaflet.)  Europe?  Didn’t we in the UK vote to leave?  (Helped by the fact that we’re separated from the dreaded continent by some water and thus have no truck with the thought that “no man – or woman – is an island”.)  Mmmm.  That vote was nearly three years ago, yet Europe still looms large in our lives.  Funny that.  That’s neighbours for you.

Anyway, the leaflets with the carefully posed “you can have confidence in us, you know you can” photos of party leaders are destined for the recycling box.  Frankly, I think I have more confidence in Rory McIlroy’s putting – and given what I’ve seen of the first round of the USPGA Championship at Bethpage that’s saying something.  I haven’t quite given up on politics just yet but at the moment I’m trying to simplify all areas of my life and in political terms that can be summed up concisely [Ed:  You?  Concise?  Surely not.  And isn’t that tautology anyway?  Isn’t summing up by its nature concise?], if a tad negatively:  If Nigel’s for it, I’m agin it.  NFF, as he’s known here, where we dare not speak his name, is already in the bin.  Others will follow.

Have I mentioned golf yet?  Ah yes, Rory and Bethpage, that must count.  And gin and tonic.  And Rory has said that he’d like to play in the Olympics after all and represent Ireland.  That’s not quite as simple as it sounds but it makes sense since he played for Ireland as an amateur – golf, like rugby and many other sports, is an all-Ireland affair.  The added complication is that Rory, being an Ulsterman born and bred, could also play for GB (or whatever the official Olympic designation is).  Don’t ask me to explain; there’s a whole library of books on this subject.

I had what I thought was quite a good idea for a theme coming in to this week but, as so often, themes tend to get overtaken by events, or musings, or whatevers.  It was something to do with money and what people are playing for on the numerous tours at numerous levels all over the world.  At Bethpage it’s US$11,000,000, which puts everything else in the halfpenny place.  For instance, Leona Maguire, who’s on the Symetra Tour at the moment, won just over $11,000 for a share of second place (after a play-off with three others).  Maria Parra, of Spain, winner of the IOA International in Atlanta after prolonged sudden death – she had an eagle three at the 5th extra hole – earned herself $22,500.

Purses are now a topic for another day, so I’ll start with an amateur, Lily May Humphreys.  The 17-year old from Stoke by Nayland in Essex, already a seasoned England international and Curtis Cup player, coped calmly with difficult, windy conditions at Co Louth (Baltray) to complete a memorable double, having just won the Welsh Women’s Open Strokeplay at Royal St David’s (Harlech).  She has her heart set on a professional career, so let us hope that she, Maguire, Parra and all the other talented hopefuls can make a decent living from their passion.

Fellow Englishwomen Trish Johnson and Laura Davies have more than managed it.  This week, the perennial pair, ever peripatetic, are competing in the second  US Senior Women’s Open at Pine Needles in North Carolina, just down the road from Pinehurst.  It’s a place dear to my heart for many reasons, not least because of the hospitality of the inimitable Peggy Kirk Bell and because it’s where I played my first round of golf with Dai.  It’s also wonderful golfing territory.  Dame Laura is defending the title she won in Chicago last year.

We at WHGC (Whittington Heath Golf Club for our new reader) are learning that straightforward, old-fashioned strokeplay golf is not the only form of the game that professionals play.  We’re now exploring the world of long drivers, who are, in many respects, a breed apart.  All thanks to our own Jordan Brooks, a man of Tamworth, who’s up there with the best in the world.  He’s not quite as celebrated – yet – as Dave Gilbert, also from Tamworth, who recently came agonisingly close to reaching the final of the snooker World Championship at the Crucible in Sheffield.

Jordan, who’s a rookie in long-driving terms, is just back home after competing with the best at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.  He reached the semi-finals and now knows that he can hold his own with long-driving giants like Kyle Berkshire, Will Hogue and Ryan Steenberg.  Go Jordan.

Sporting excellence is in short supply in this part of the blog but you don’t need to be good at something to know quite a lot about it, especially if you’ve been around for a long time and have been paying attention.  You know those people who say that you can’t understand the pressure/tension/whatever that top golfers, top footballers, top players of whatever are under unless you’ve competed at the highest level?  Well, not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve always thought that that’s arrogant bollocks.

It’s a matter of degree of course but any of us who’ve played a match at however lowly a level, especially for a team, knows about nerves, tension, shortage of breath, trembling hands, knocking knees, siren voices of doom and disaster.  We’ve succumbed or found ways to counteract the doubts and the nerves – just like the Ryder Cuppers, the Champions’ League or Wimbledon finalists, the players who are much, much, much – ad infinitum – better than us.  At the most basic level, we understand, we can empathise.

Last Sunday, we, the middle-ranking Whittington Heathens, the 12-24 handicappers, won a first-round match for the first time for quite a few years (it’s inter-club, 5-a-side, straight knockout, full handicap, no second chances).  My opponent and I were well matched – I had to give four shots – and after all these years I can recognise a competitor when I see one.  Fortunately, thanks to growing up in a hard school playing against Dad and his friends – they’d concede nothing and if you chipped in and waited expectantly for a congratulatory grunt, you’d be chastised for holding up play – not much fazes me.  I still lose, of course – hardly surprising when you have to ask where the practice ground is – but this time I managed to win on the 18th.  It could’ve gone either way and it was mostly luck and home advantage that got me over the line.

The next morning I woke up with a foot so sore that I could hardly hobble to the bathroom.  How had that happened?    I had to cry off golf on the Tuesday and hirpled into the club feeling very sorry for myself.  A bad foot, no matter how minor, is bad news because it limits you immediately.  Aaaagh.  Woe is me.  Then you look around at people who’ve coped with much worse and feel like a wimp.

Up at Hillside, where Tommy Fleetwood is hosting the British Masters this week, EDGA (the European Disabled Golf Association) launched a book called “Mulligan” that put my aching foot in perspective.  Inspirational isn’t the word for it.

After the events in Liverpool and Amsterdam earlier in the week, it’s been hard to calm down and concentrate on anything else.  I must admit I didn’t doubt that Liverpool could score at Anfield but I didn’t think they’d stop Barcelona/Messi scoring.  I was playing bridge that evening, with a Liverpool supporter who’d got her dates confused – in her defence she’s a peripatetic person and had been doing a lot of travelling, just back from one trip, preparing for another – and was blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding further north.

I met her in the pub the next night and she couldn’t believe her blunder, her face as red as her team’s kit.  “Good luck,” she said as she left me to cheer on the team Mum always called Totspurs.  Why do I support Spurs?  Well, it’s Pat Jennings’s fault.  Chelsea are playing Spurs in the 1967 FA Cup final and you’re in Portstewart.  Who do you support?  Ah, Pat Jennings, the pride of Newry and Northern Ireland, is in goal for Spurs.  Spurs win 2-1 – Jimmy Robertson and Frank Saul I think (I checked and I was right!) – and I’ve been lumbered as a Lillywhite ever since.  Hooray.

Apparently I used to cry when Spurs lost (I learned!) and Mum would come home from the newsagent’s laden down with Shoot, Goal and Football Monthly, regarded as odd when everybody knew she had two girls.  I learned about Arthur Rowe, Alf Ramsey, push and run, Jimmy Greaves, Danny Blanchflower, John White, Bill Nicholson, the legendary Double team, all of that.  When Mum and Dad moved to England and Mum refused to accommodate my collection of Charlie Buchan Football Monthlys and Spurs scrapbooks any longer, I wanted them to go to a good home and gave them to Mike Ingham, who became BBC Radio’s chief football commentator, in exchange for a few bottles of wine.

I had a long period as a bit of a Spurs tragic.  I won a bet (think it was about Spurs’s chances of avoiding relegation or winning promotion; it wasn’t one of our glory periods) with a friend at RPGC (Portrush for short) and used the £15 to become a life member of the Spurs’ supporters’ club – now defunct I fear but I’ve still got the badge and the wee booklet.  I tried to buy a seat in the new stadium but the internet connection was so slow and the demand so great that the £800 seat I’d targeted had disappeared and the remaining ones started at £2000.  Ah!  Sense – and the bank balance – prevailed.

Barring something exceptional I won’t be in Madrid for the final – though, come to think of it, I know someone who once worked for Joe Lewis; wonder if he’s still got Joe’s number……Joe is one of those billionaires, based in the Bahamas these days I believe, who started off modestly enough and is now often described as “mysterious” simply because he’s not a flash git with a penchant for publicity but essentially he owns Spurs or as near as dammit.

We few Spurs stalwarts who frequent the Horse and Jockey in Sandford Street in Lichfield will be outnumbered by the Liverpool fans come the final but I won’t care as long as we win.  They’ll be super-confident, quite rightly but we’re no pushovers and if we can keep our nerve and 11 players on the pitch (lucky to finish with as many as 9 against Bournemouth) – what’s that saying:  heart on fire, head in the freezer?…….Who knows?  Anything could happen.

Didn’t someone famous once say, “Football, bloody hell.”…………..

COYS.

One good thing about writing this blog late at night is that the Feherty Show is now on Sky golf and provides inspiration and distraction in equal measure.  It’s Freddie Couples this week and Fred’s always been one of my favourites; how could he not be a favourite!   He’s just a delight, a sweetheart.

At the Ryder Cup at Valderrama, Fred was walking up the 18th in one of the practice rounds and I was watching from behind the ropes.  He smiled and nodded in my direction but I remained stony-faced, then glanced behind to see who it was he was acknowledging.  There was no one there.  FREDDIE COUPLES HAD BEEN SMILING AT ME.  And I had blanked him…..There were, are, no words.

It was the evening of the gala dinner, so, later, when the teams were assembling in their finery with their wives and partners, I, in my not-so-fine daily duds, took a deep breath and went up and apologised to Freddie – fully expecting him to look blank and wonder what this eejit was whittering on about.  Ever the gentleman, he smiled (I nearly fainted – he was, after all, in his dinner duds and like Seve scrubbed up to devastating effect) and I’ve remained eternally grateful that I plucked up the courage to say something.

Ah, happy days!

Now that I’m an invisible old doll who doesn’t lurk outside – or inside – ropes any more, these stories sound like fairy tales, even to me, but they are true – honest!  I probably have a photo somewhere but there’s no guarantee of finding the right one even after days of rooting through box after shoebox after plastic container after box.  And, if I’ve taken it, the chances are that the subject will be blurry, out of focus and headless.  An early, slightly less bloody version of Game of Thrones or Line of Duty.

At this point, I should remind you that a lot of Game of Thrones was filmed on the beach at Portstewart (not sure about LOD, which, from what I’ve seen on Gogglebox and assorted clips, is bloody but not very scenic).  I’ve got a picture of the beach somewhere but since Mo is the photo editor in these parts and she doesn’t do late nights, you’ll just have to take my word for that too.  I’m taking lessons on editing photos for the occasions when my flights of fancy take me by surprise and require me to sort out my own illustrations but it’s taking time.  A slow exposure for a slow learner?

At long last I’ve realised that there’s nothing wrong with being a slow learner.  Whatever we’ve grown up thinking, learning is not a race.  Like golf, it’s something that can – should – last a lifetime.  I know people, good sportsmen, with an eye for a ball and a facility for games, who struck golf off their list because it didn’t click right away; they couldn’t master it first go, so they abandoned it, unwilling to be bad at something, if only briefly, after always being good at everything.  Their loss.

We at WHGC, along with a lot of other golf clubs and organisations, are promoting the game as best we can, trying to encourage girls and women especially to give it a go.  I’ve said it before and I suspect I’ll keep saying it until I keel over for the last time:  The thing I love about golf is that it’s INCLUSIVE not exclusive.  It’s the IN bit I like.  Let’s ditch the EX!

People, we’re full of notions.  We get an idea in our head and that’s it, we’ll never shift.  Golf is not for the likes of us (the likes of us, who are we when we’re at home?), it’s a game for fuddy-duddy codgers with ruddy faces and rotund tums.  Well, yes, it is – and why shouldn’t it be? – but it’s also for slim Jims, svelte Sues, creaky Chrisses (sp??), rip-roaring Rorys, toddling Tigers, retirees, primary schoolers; black, white and every colour in between; male and female and every orientation in between; big, tall, petite, size is no object.  Money might be but that’s not insurmountable.

Look at me and you’ll see – well, I shudder to think but I’m white, flabby, female, elderly (yuk!!), middle-class and I play golf.  Help.  A lot of my friends and fellow golfers are like me (if less flabby) and we can’t help most of those things.  We could be less flabby if we decided to fight against nature and give up the wine and the gin and the cheese on toast and we could give up golf but the rest is, essentially, beyond our control.

I love my friends but I don’t want all golfers to look like us.  I want more golfers to look as unlike me as it is possible to be!  The trouble is that I look like me and people make assumptions, as we do, based on looks mostly – and assumptions.

Dangerous things assumptions, as a magistrate, a member at Royal Portrush as it turned out, once told me when I gave evidence before him.  He dismissed my version of events – I’ve neither forgotten nor forgiven – but I’ve been chary of assumptions ever since.

Finally, congratulations are in order to two people:  to Jenny Burton, who is retiring after nearly 33 years of keeping things in order at WHGC and to Rory McIlroy, who is celebrating his 30th birthday tomorrow.  Ask Jenny, or most of us, Rory, that big 3-oh, ho, ho of yours isn’t so bad after all.  Have a good day.