The cartoon above dates from 1928 and the caption has the caddie saying:  “‘Ave yer finished with the links for today, Sir?”  Sir is stomping off, clubs and caddie abandoned, radiating rage from every pore.

Every golfer, at whatever level, has to learn to cope with the frustrations of a game where the ball sits there waiting for you to hit it.  There’s no opponent trying to kick it or hit it out of your way; no one trying to send you flying with a big hit, sorry, tackle; it’s just you and a ball, sitting there waiting quietly for you to do your best/worst.  Easy-peasy.  No problem…..

As every golfer knows, it’s not quite as easy as it sounds and Eddie Pepperell, an affable Englishman who’s still just in the top 50 in the world as I write, had some sort of meltdown at the Turkish Airlines Open last week.  I don’t think he’s written one of his entertaining, thought-provoking blogs about the incident yet but he put four or five balls in the water, then walked off, saying he’d run out of balls.  His partners Martin Kaymer and George Coetzee were gobsmacked and Pepperell was DQd for not completing the hole and the round.

Yesterday, the R&A tweeted a picture of the finalists in the 2009 Boys Amateur, who now have seven professional wins between them.  Tom Lewis beat Pepperell 5 and 4 and the tweet asked:  “Who would win now?”   Pepperell, having recovered his humour and, with luck, his equilibrium, replied:  “Probably Tom as I still have no balls.”

Dai, my late husband, had his moments on the golf course but the most memorable were mostly of the volcanic variety.  Some of his former colleagues have some hair-raising tales, including behaviour the man himself would have excoriated as appalling:  stomping off the course without finishing out or shaking hands, heading straight for the car – not the bar – and roaring off.

On one memorable occasion, at Whittington, Dai’s temper didn’t make it as far as the 1st green.  Our 1st is a hole he used to call “the easiest par 5 in the country” and he invariably, inevitably, took at least six.  This time he hit two crackers just short of the green and, for reasons best known to himself, took out a horrible, deep-faced, heavy-headed wedge that he’d liberated, again for reasons best known to himself, from the dark recesses of a friend’s garage.

The ground was wet, Dai duffed the ball into the dip in front of the green, considered the situation briefly, then let out a roar as he raised the club above his head and speared it with all his might into the sodden turf.  As the head buried itself well en route down under, the shaft broke in half and the bit with the grip went spinning off towards the rough, with the bit in the ground vibrating wildly.  My beloved’s temper was not helped when he saw me in a stomach-clutching, shoulder-heaving heap on the ground.

It took him some time to extricate the buried bit because it was hard to get a grip of the shattered, spiky-edged half of shaft but he managed it and hurled the two pieces into the trees behind the green never to darken his golf bag again.

You may not have seen the comment from Des O’Reilly on Maureen’s post about our golf at Portrush and it bears repeating here.  Mention of Lilian Starrett (nee Malone) brought the memories flooding back.  “I remember my first introduction to Lilian at the Hermitage Scratch Cup (circa 1978),” Des said.  “As a starry-eyed new boyfriend, I was cadddying for Therese [Des’s late wife, the incomparable Tiny], who thought Lilian was ‘great craic’.

“She was warm and friendly until after a couple of poor shots on the 6th or 7th hole she turned to her clubs and caddy car and quietly but with intent beat the living daylights out of both with a 4-iron. This scared the living daylights out of me. I never uttered a word for the entire rest of the day!  In fact, it took a good few years before I felt at ease in the company of ‘the Starrett’!…..”

Not long after writing this, Des received a phone call from a woman puporting to be a solicitor ringing on behalf of said Starrett, mentioning defamation, libel and the like.  It was, of course, Lil, insisting that she was a reformed character and would be battering her new TaylorMades only on the practice ground.

Even the sainted Bob(by) Jones had to learn how to curb a fiery temper.  Famously, the man who received the freedom of the Burgh of St Andrews in 1958, picked up his ball and tore up his scorecard in the third round of his first (British) Open, at St Andrews, in 1921, describing it later as “the most inglorious failure of my golfing life”.  He did win the Open on the Old Course in 1927 and the Amateur there in 1930, the year of his Impregnable Quadrilateral that also included the Open, the US Amateur and the US Open.

Jones also had an inglorious moment at the US Open in 1920.  As a precocious 18-year old paired with the venerable Harry Vardon, aged 50, Jones made a mess of the 7th hole after thinning a straightforward pitch over the green into heavy rough.  Vardon wasn’t much of a chatter and the pair hadn’t exchanged a word until Jones, embarrassed and nervous, said, “Mr Vardon, have you ever seen a worse shot?”

“No.”

Neither of them won that championship – Ted Ray, an Englishman, was the champion – at Inverness in Toledo, Ohio and 101 years later, in 2021, when the club hosts the Solheim Cup, some of us hope that it’ll be another foreigner, a Scot, holding the trophy aloft.

To no one’s surprise, Catriona Matthew, who led Europe to victory at Gleneagles a few weeks ago, will be captain again at Inverness.  She was at home in North Berwick, cooking dinner, when the call came asking her to do the job again and she was delighted to accept.

“Being captain of the winning team was the highlight of my career,” she said.  “Capturing the Solheim Cup in Scotland, an hour’s drive from our home, with my close friend Suzann Pettersen making the clinching putt on the last hole in the last match on the course…..you can’t top that.”

It’ll be different away from home, with the crowd cheering the Americans on but Catriona relishes the challenge:  “I love Toledo and Inverness is such a Scottish name, I’m hoping that’s a good omen!  Winning the Solheim Cup in Scotland was a dream come true but backing that up with a win in America would be even better.”

 

 

 

“Why on earth are you driving all the way up to Cairnryan?” my friends asked, puzzled beyond belief.  “Shortest sea crossing, ” sez I.  “Herself doesn’t want to be on the water too long at this time of year.  And apparently they put on the slow, old ferries now that the season’s over.”  Trouble is, if you live in England, Cairnryan’s a long way up but we made it in plenty of time for the boat, even with a couple of stops, including one at the Cally Palace, one of Mum and Dad’s favourite hotels, in Gatehouse of Fleet.

Mo and I called in for old times’ sake and the place didn’t seem to have changed a bit.  Staff just as pleasant, grounds just as beautiful, with a golf course that’s well worth a visit.

It had been a bit wet and worryingly windy round about Shap on the drive up but the weather improved the further north we got and, wonder of wonders, the crossing was flat calm.  Even Maureen, far from the world’s best sailor, sat playing patience without feeling ill and was able to drive us off the boat and to our destination (via an annoying diversion that gave us a tour of previously unexplored countryside) without any need to call on the reserve who had been sacked by her advanced driving group at the end of last year.

It was still flat calm when we played Dunluce the next day, perfect conditions for four oldish dolls taking on one of Harry Colt’s masterpieces – don’t forget that Whittington Heath is also a Colt course, less majestic than Royal Portrush perhaps but it has also stood the test of time and is a joy to play.  I digress, as usual but one of the reasons I fell in love with Whittington the first time I played it was because it was fast and hard-running, conditions that reminded me of the links courses I’d grown up on.  Admittedly, Lichfield and Tamworth, distinguished though their history is, are about as far from the sea as you can get but you can’t always have everything.

This week, I, a resident of landlocked Staffordshire, have been getting a life-giving fix of sea air on golf courses that rank with any anywhere in the world.  Yesterday it was the Strand course at Portstewart, the club where Mo and I started the game.  There’s a gala dinner tonight to celebrate the club’s 125th anniversary but busy though they were everybody had time for a chat and it felt as though we’d never been away.

The view from the 1st tee still puts it in the running as one of the most scenic in the world – though the weather was a bit grey and gloomy for it to appear at its most majestic – and the dunes are as massive as ever.  Like Portrush, it’s not a course for the faint-hearted.

All the apps and the forecasts had predicted rain about lunchtime but it swept in for elevenses and a chilly wind didn’t help.  We struggled womanfully to play some canny golf as our hands got colder, our grips wetter and our determination to play 18 holes dwindled to nothing.

Kath Stewart-Moore, whose golfing pedigree is unsurpassed – her father skived off school all week to watch Joyce Wethered win the British at Portrush in 1924 and it would take a whole book to list the extensive achievements of equally extensive S-M clan – parred the 8th and birdied the 9th to square the match, so we took that as a sign to head for the clubhouse.  Time for a Guinness and a toastie or celeriac soup with wheaten bread and a glass of red.

It wasn’t so much the course as the weather that brought us to our knees and when we saw the state of the intrepid souls (or stubborn eejits) who’d played 18 holes, dripping into the lockerroom on the verge of hypothermia, we knew we’d made the right decision.

Another good thing is that I now know that my waterproof trousers are still sound; my waterproof shoes are getting to the stage where the toes are letting in just enough to relegate them to the dry-days-only corner; my water-resistant top can cope with quite a lot of water; thermal underwear is a gift from on high; my bag’s claim to be waterproof is not yet in contravention of the Trades Descriptions Act (is there still such a thing?); and if I will insist on playing golf in the rain, I should stop being so squeamish and invest in some contact lenses…..

Oh yes, and I’ll never again pour scorn on American golfers wearing ear muffs or insulated coats.  Promise.

 

 

 

Well, the attempt at dressing up wasn’t necessary and the dearth of black lipstick and a witch’s point to the black hat didn’t matter at all because there wasn’t a single, solitary knock on the door on Halloween, All Hallows’ Eve.  Not a single, solitary trick or treater brightened my door and practising my haka/gurning was all for nothing – confirmed as I struggled to take the selfie and saw with horror that the double and triple chins were massing, no messing….Aaagh.

I rushed to find my copy of Wake Up to Yoga by Lyn Marshall and turned to pages 52 and 53 for instructions on The Lion (roaring) and the Jaw Lift (self-explanatory) but it’s probably too late, too late, as one of our Sweaty friends used to say in an exaggerated Glaswegian accent, to the amusement of us all.  In-jokes always fall flat when you try to explain them [Sweaty Socks=Jocks=Scots=Sweaties, the sort of thing that’s probably not very politically correct but usually quite acceptable between good friends who specialise in insults and would be horrified if anyone took them too seriously.]

Lyn Marshall, who trained as a ballet dancer, was one of many telly fitness gurus, mostly women (remember the Green Goddess), who got us thinking about health and fitness and what was considered, in those far-off days, exotic – things like yoga.  She made it sound simple and achievable – if you couldn’t do the Lotus position, you didn’t have to, you just did what you could.  That’s why I kept the book.  Sadly, Lyn Marshal died of cancer, far too young.  But her spirit lives on.

The fact that I could lay hands on Wake Up To Yoga without scrabbling through umpty-ump boxes and mounds of paper was, surprisingly, entirely down to me.  For some reason, it was in my easily accessible basket, along with my singing (?!) file and a few other things (not including my passport).  It pre-dated Mo’s boot camp at the beginning of this week.  Honest.

It’s time to get my house and affairs in order and I accept that it’s a task that’s beyond me on my own – too much prevaricating, reading, havering, being distracted by gardening, dusting, golfing, shopping, eating, drinking, card dealing, blogging, chatting, almost anything.  Mo, being a professional, is much more disciplined.  She came over for a couple of days and ran a tough regime – Eddie Jones would have approved.  There was down time but no slacking.  No wonder I’m exhausted; the whole thing was emotionally draining as large lumps of my life were chucked into the recycling bin or the shredder and black bin bags.

There were birthday cards, anniversary cards, Valentine cards – Charles Schulz and Beryl Cook were family favourites – wedding cards, engagement cards, condolences cards and letters – thanks again to everyone for their kindness – newspaper cuttings, magazine cuttings, illegible scribblings on scraps of paper, scorecards from golf courses near and far – and we haven’t taken on the photos yet.

In my defence, Dai was probably even more of a squirrel than I am – and he had a 20-year start.  Mo and I did send more than 100 boxes to the archivists at the British Golf Museum in St Andrews but there’s still work to be done.  We’re helped by the fact that most of my notes are illegible – to Maureen certainly – and if decipherable, they’re no longer of interest, even to me……(I exaggerate but not by much……)

Being otherwise engaged, I had to miss out on a couple of AGW events on two of my favourite courses – Delamere Forest and Hoylake (Royal Liverpool).  Congratulations to Rob Perkins, who retained his AGW ETIQUS ‘Race to Hoylake’ Golfer of the Year title and to Derek Lawrenson (of the Daily Mail), who won the AGW Championship for the fourth time (equalling my record!)

Derek, a lefty and a handy golfer – single figures in his heyday, not sure of his current handicap – is a Liverpool supporter who once won a Lamborghini for a hole-in-one.  He lived round the corner from us at the time and drove round so we could admire his prize before he sold it.  He was followed by a guy in a brand, spanking new 4-wheel drive, who’d seen the Lamborghini – it was a sort of aubergine colour – and turned round to follow it down our road.  He didn’t believe us when we told him how Derek had come by it….It’s a great story, which involves Paul Ince and Steve McManaman and you won’t have any difficulty looking it up.

Goodness knows what my golf will be like next time I venture out.  Most of the sorting was done standing up, which may not add anything to the step count but doesn’t count as slothful, so the ageing joints are creaking even more than usual.  Bit like Wales, who seem to be held together by Elastoplast and take on New Zealand in the bronze medal match at the Rugby World Cup in Japan today (Friday).  Then, on Saturday, it’s England v South Africa in the final.  Epic.

Finally, so much for my take on Tiger, who confirmed his amazingness by winning the Zozo in Japan and will probably have to pick himself for the Presidents Cup in Oz.  Will he then hand over the captaincy?

 

It was raining yesterday morning when I got to the golf club, that mizzling stuff that’s not heavy but persistent and very, very good at making you feel damp and miserable.  I used to call it ‘wetting rain’, much to Dai’s irritation.  “All rain is wetting,” he’d say.  So I was gratified when a friend – English, not Irish – described it that way.  I think she also called it “that Welsh rain”, which was even better.  Perfect, really, because Dai, who was born in Crewe, felt very Welsh.

I believe it was a rugby master at school who first called him Dai (the Welsh diminutive of David) and, with a paternal grandfather who was born in Swansea or thereabouts, that was it, the deal was done, the boy was Welsh.  His sister and brother were afflicted differently – they’re English but there’s no accounting for taste.

Dai used to win a lot of rugby bets with an English friend who persisted in backing England during the then Five Nations even though Wales were in their pomp.  Year after year Dai won the money by backing Wales and then, when the tide turned and England started punching their weight and making proper use of their resources, he stopped backing Wales and still won the money.  His friend was aghast, horrified, mega annoyed at this treachery and his failure to win back any of his money.  Where was blind national pride when you needed it!

Well, both England and Wales supporters are in for a nervous weekend, with England playing New Zealand, the defending champions, in the semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup in Japan and Wales playing South Africa.  I’d like Wales to win the whole thing, not because I am, as Dai used to say, Welsh by insertion but simply because they’d be a new name on the trophy but I won’t be putting any money on it.

I’ll have a relatively relaxing weekend because Ireland, world No 1, according to the rankings, a few weeks ago, were taken to the cleaners by the All Blacks, outplayed, mangled, stomped upon, however you want to describe it.  Funnily enough, a hammering is much easier to take than a BBU (brave but unavailing), a narrow loss, where you know there were moments that could have made all the difference….if only, if only.  There were no if onlys for us last weekend.  We could have lost by quite a lot fewer points if we hadn’t made some crass errors – unforced they’re called in tennis but they weren’t unforced, they were forced by the excellence, the relentlessness of the opposition; our minds had turned to mush.  Ah well, given our resources reaching the quarters is pretty good.

Rory McIlroy, a keen rugby fan, was at that match against New Zealand because, in a smart bit of scheduling, he was in Japan to play a skins game against Tiger Woods, Hideki Matsuyama and Jason Day.  Day, an Australian, won most of the money but Rory got to watch the rugby and play a bit of golf with BOD, Brian O’Driscoll, one of Ireland’s greatest ever rugby players.  Nice work, even when Brooks Koepka is reminding you that you haven’t won a major since he came on tour…..

I’m not convinced that Brooks’s jibe, gentle enough though it is, is a good idea.  Rory’s no Tiger, a single-minded obsessive intent on world domination – which he achieved at no little personal cost.  But Rory is a competitor and Brooks might just have ignited a slow-burning fuse.  Let’s hope there are plenty of fireworks for us to enjoy.

At a vastly lower, more or less subterranean level, I once won a long jump competition because one of the other competitors got so far up my nose that I jumped two feet further than I’d ever jumped before.  She had jumped further than anybody else and was going round asking everyone what their best jump was, knowing that she was way ahead of us all.  She was an arrogant little sod and inspired me beyond my capability.  Two feet is a hell of a long way, the sort of improvement that would have the drug testers knocking at the door the next day.  Except that we had no drugs testers at schools level in those days and no drugs cheat would be idiotic enough to improve by that much in one go – surely?

Anyway, I’d like to see Rory win more majors, perhaps even a Masters, though that may be the one that eludes him, simply because he wants it so much.  Barring accidents and injury he’ll be competing for an Olympic medal in Japan next year and he’s confirmed that he’ll be representing Ireland.  Being from Northern Ireland, he could choose GB or Ireland and he avoided making a decision by not competing at the last Olympics in Rio because, he said, of the danger of the Zika virus.  Justin Rose won the gold and the whole event took on a different aura.

Rory has now committed to playing for Ireland, the country he represented throughout his amateur career and the thought of him and Shane Lowry, the Open champion, teaming up is mouth-watering.  Except that Olympic golf is not a team thing – yet.  Individual strokeplay has its place but Olympic golf needs to be different and introducing a team element would be a good idea.  Even better, make it a mixed team event.  You could still have individual events for men and women but a mixed team event would pay more than lip service to the mantra ‘growing the game’.

Japan is a country so golf mad that it inspired Tiger Woods to a first round of 64, six under par, in the Zozo Championship the other day and encouraged all those who think the former world No 1 should choose himself, the US captain, to play in the Presidents Cup in Melbourne in December.  Fine.  If Tiger chooses himself he consigns the Presidents Cup, which is currently less competitive than me against Tiger head to head playing level from the same tees (I exaggerate but not by much) to eternal nothingness, a non-event sans pareil.

Your choice Tiger.