I was reading something the other day and it made me realise that I haven’t a clue, couldn’t even hazard a guess, as to how many courses I’ve played in a long and largely undistinguished golfing life.  Well, that’s not quite true, a lot of the courses and some of the playing partners have been distinguished in the extreme, so perhaps there’s distinction by association….

Anyway, the person who wrote the piece had just chalked up his 750th course and it transpired that there were quite a few of his readers who were galloping towards 1500 and more.  They all seemed to have meticulously documented their rounds, how they’d played, who they’d played with, what the weather was like, how many pitchmarks they’d repaired, the works.  Blimey, how casual had I been!   I used to collect the scorecards, intending to file them neatly but eventually I accepted the inevitable and got rid of all but a few.  There are enough boxes of photographs to sort without adding to the clutter and guilt mountain.

The first course I played will have been the Old Course at Portstewart, the wee course, which is still going and is really the sort of place you should play wearing a helmet.  The first few and last few holes are squeezed into a narrow strip of land between the sea and the main road into town from Portrush and when you’re a beginner or an occasional player, you soon learn what Fore! means and how to shout it loudly and duck quickly.  You wouldn’t be allowed to build it now.

The most recent course I’ve played is Whittington Heath, where, after nine holes, I thought I might be in with a chance of winning the Tripp Trophy.  Who knows where the decent scoring came from?   My training consisted of loading several sacks of soil into the boot of the car to take to the tip post golf.  I must have engaged what passes for my core effectively enough because I was able to walk and swing the next morning.  Perhaps the low expectations helped.  The back nine, as the temperature rose into the highs 20s centigrade, not ideal for someone brought up on Ireland’s windswept north Atlantic coast, saw my scoring rise too.  Triples and doubles proliferated and thoughts of glory evaporated.  Ah well, gallons of tea and an egg mayo sarnie restored what passes for my equilibrium.

I went to the tip via a posh dress shop that I only dare visit during the sales and came away empty-handed, with my credit card and nails intact.  The card survived the rest of the day ok but the nails suffered soil and rubble damage because I’d forgotten to take the gardening gloves with me and dumping all those bags was not a white collar job.  I was revived with tea, wine and chat at the in-laws round the corner – and came away fortified with home-grown string beans and, even better, the best raspberries I’ve had for years.  Janet and David haven’t been wasting their time on the allotment.

Moving on to proper golf, it’s lovely to see that Rory, weighed down with dollars and kudos after his victory at East Lake last week, is playing at Crans-sur-Sierre, giving the Omega European Masters an extra sprinkle of stardust.  I always think of Crans as a magical place.  It was one of Dai’s and my favourite venues – even though I could never quite afford one of the Max Mara coats I coveted.  Rory is there with his wife Erica and her parents and that’s just perfect; it’s that sort of place.  The golf course is right in the middle of things, so if you’re there with a non-golfer, you have no need to worry about them – unless they’ve got your credit card.

Rory, who’s got his sights set on overtaking Brooks Koepka as world No 1, will be playing in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth towards the end of next month and has also signed up for the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship the following week.  If you get a chance to see him play in the flesh, do; he’s a special talent. (Which reminds me, I should really be heading up the road to Derby to watch Steve Smith bat for Australia.  He’s another one of a kind.  Ben Stokes, I hope, is having the week off.)

Keeping track of what golf’s on where is a full-time job and hard for a part-timer like me.  Did you know, for instance, that the Astor Trophy is taking place in Canada as I write?   It’s played every four years and when Maureen played in it, it was called the Commonwealth Trophy but that changed and now GB has become GB and I and they’re taking on Canada, Australia (the defending champions), New Zealand and South Africa at Royal Colwood GC in Victoria, British Columbia.  Olivia Mehaffey, Lily May Humphreys, Emily Toy and Alice Hewson sat out the first day but will be in action (foursomes and singles) from now on.  They’re playing South Africa first and I eventually found some details (via randa.org) on something called golfcanada.bluegolf.com.  As for the state of all parties, well, I’m sure I’ll work it out, given time.  It seems to be a thing of the past to start with the day’s results and work from there….

Over in Oregon, many of the world’s best women professionals are playing in the Cambia Portland Classic at Columbia Edgewater Country Club.   A lot of the players are trying to hone their games for the Solheim Cup at Gleneagles next month, including Marina Alex, the defending champion and Suzann Pettersen, whose golf disappeared off the radar after she gave birth to her son more than a year ago.  The Norwegian was champion in Portland in 2013 and 2011, so the vibes should be good.

Closer to home – and gleaming at the top of the page – there’s the Jacques Leglise Trophy (GB and I under-18 boys v Europe) at Aldeburgh Golf Club and the oldish codgers (50 and over) of the Staysure Tour are contesting the Sinclair Invitational at Hanbury Manor Marriott Hotel and Country Club in Hertfordshire, where Joakim Haeggman, the first Swede to play in the Ryder Cup – as one of Bernard Gallacher’s picks at The Belfry in 1993 – is making his senior debut after turning 50 a couple of days ago.

He hasn’t played competitively for several  years and spent time as a sales rep for John Deere in Sweden but decided he’d like to have another go at competitive golf and has been in training since last November.   “It’s great to see everyone again and have a chat,” he said.  “I think the Staysure Tour will offer me a lot of enjoyment, a chance to play golf and hopefully I’ll be able to make a living out of doing this.  I’ve said to myself I’ll play this year and then at least a couple more years, so we’ll see where I get to.”

Good luck Joakim.  Play well.

 

It’s Thursday night and that means it’s blog night and I have to think of something to write.  Mo’s done a tip and I wish I’d read it earlier because I’d like to go and test it out right away but my clubs are all in the locker at the golf club – when you don’t have a garage, your shed is so small and crammed that your bike is in the lounge and your car has a small boot, a locker is a good idea.

The other day we at Whittington Heath all got an email from Mike Raj, our lovely pro, suggesting that we might consider investing in a new set of clubs.  I think it said that after about five years clubs start getting a bit beyond their best and you might consider an update.  I hear that there are people who change their clubs every year – don’t think I know many of them – but when I asked Mike how old my Ping Eye 2 irons might be, we came up with something like 20 years.  They’re classics!

My take is that when you play golf at my lowly level, with a swing speed that barely registers on any known scale and bones that are starting to creak off the scale, it really doesn’t make much difference what you’re using – a manufacturers’ dream NOT.  And it’s probably not true.  Maureen and her mate Gillian went on a coaching course at The Belfry not so long ago and came away astounded at how much difference new wedges made to the quality and accuracy of their pitching.  Apparently, the top men change their wedges every three weeks or so, maybe even more often, so no wonder we can only wonder at their skills……

Anyway, Mo tells me that I’m not to change my clubs until she’s given me a few lessons and sorted out my swing, so I’ll be one of the many members not making Mike a rich man.  Given that most of my lessons are in the garden or on the patio and last less than five minutes, it could be another 20 years before I’m eligible for a new set of clubs.  That’d make me more than elderly, given I last that long.

As usual, there’s lots of golf going on all over the world and I have to admit that for me the least interesting is the stuff that’s going on at East Lake in Atlanta, Georgia, where the big boys (or most of them) are playing in the Tour Championship, the culmination of the FedEx Cup.  They’ve tweaked the format this year but you know what, I really can’t bring myself to care about it, it’s just a load of multi-millionaire golfers playing for shedloads more money, which is great for them – they’re professional players after all and that’s what they do, play for money – but matters not a jot to the rest of us.

I’ve just started reading Matt Cooper’s book about the rise and fall of Tony O’Reilly, the dashing Irish rugby star who became the boss of Heinz, a man of immense talent who over-reached even himself and eventually crashed and burned.  At the height of his powers he travelled the world in a private jet, oblivious to the queues and searches endured by lesser mortals.  It made me think of all our favourite golfers, who’ve got so used to the high life that they may be in danger of treating 15 million dollar first prizes as the norm, just one of those things, just wanting more of everything.  Ah well, at least the game itself, infuriating and unpredictable as it is, may help to keep them grounded.

Pop stars are probably even more stratospheric than golfers but a lot of them are keen on the game – though Alice Cooper used to keep his obsession quiet for fear of ruining his wild man image – and Niall Horan, who’s big in the music business, has undoubtedly confused some of his fans by founding Modest! Golf Management.  They presented the ISPS Handa World Invitational Men|Women at Galgorm Castle Golf Club, in Northern Ireland, where the men and women played in their own events but for the same prize money.

Stephanie Meadow held on for an emotional victory on home turf, finishing one shot ahead of Charley Hull, the highest ranked woman in the field and Jack Senior won the men’s title, beating fellow Englishman Matthew Baldwin in a play-off.  Meadow, who’s had her struggles as a professional, said, “It’s unbelievable to win here really.  I’m so excited and honoured…..to come home and compete at home – and win at home.  It’s very, very special.  Hopefully I can take this win and use this as momentum, it’s big for my confidence.”

Meadow is playing in the CP (Canadian Pacific) Women’s Open in Aurora, Ontario, this week, where Brooke Henderson, the pride of Canada, is defending the title she won last year.  She has no worries beyond playing well but  it’s a particularly tense time for the Americans who are trying to make the Solheim Cup team to play Europe at Gleneagles next month.  This is their last qualifying event and the US captain Juli Inkster has two wild cards in her gift.  She admitted that she’s been having some sleepless nights as she mulls over her options and the next few days are unlikely to be the most relaxing of her distinguished career.

 

 

The first match isn’t due to tee off until the morning of Friday the 13th of September, weather permitting – and given the current volatile climate that’s no idle proviso – but I’m already getting excited about travelling to Gleneagles for the Solheim Cup.  For the non-golfing reader that’s the biennial match between the women professionals of Europe and the United States of America.

Tim Glover, a Welsh journalist with a way with words, described it as “the Ryder Cup with lipstick”.  It’s a phrase that some people loathe but I still love it, it has a touch of genius, even in these oh-so-correct times that ban ads featuring Dads being distracted enough – by what?  Cars, chocolate, betting on football, washing machines? – to lose the kids.  Nowadays, there’s often face paint as well as lipstick but the rivalry is real and the play as intense as any Ryder Cup.

Celine Boutier, of France, one of Catriona Matthew’s four picks, will be making her debut for Europe and said, “I have been dreaming of playing Solheim Cup since I was a little girl and it really is amazing to know that my dream will come true in a month’s time…..”

That should make me feel old because I was at the first Solheim, a hastily arranged affair at Lake Nona in Florida, in 1990.  It doesn’t seem that long ago but it must be if it’s got to the stage where little girls dream of playing in it.  It also means that Louise and Karsten Solheim’s dream of making a lasting difference to women’s golf has become a reality.  Whatever their other contributions to the game – and there are many – the Solheim Cup has established itself as one of the world’s great sporting contests,  a lasting memorial to two great people.

A star-studded (no exaggeration) United States team had little trouble beating an overawed and outclassed Europe in the first match and some commentators reckoned it would be 100 years before the match became competitive.  It took two.  Well, maybe a little longer before it became seriously competitive but Europe upset all the odds at Dalmahoy in 1992 and won handily.  It was one of the great sporting upsets.

“This has to be one of the sporting achievements of the century,” said Europe’s captain Mickey Walker (who’ll be in charge of Europe’s Junior Solheim team this year).  An exaggeration maybe but not by much.  “It’s unbelievable,” she said in the euphoric aftermath of an amazing victory. “We didn’t just beat them.  We outplayed them totally.  I really believe that when they came over here they thought they would win comfortably.  Now I think they’re in shock.  So am I, for a different reason.”

Dottie Mochrie (nee Pepper and now Pepper again), the world No 1 at the time, said that she barely spoke on the flight home.  The Americans, with 147 titles and 21 major championships between them, had been taken to the cleaners.  Golf, as some underdog once said, is played on grass not on paper and on this occasion the Europeans shredded the form book.

At The Greenbrier two years later, the favourites, still hurting from the humiliation in Scotland, justified their status with a commanding performance, inspired by a ferocious Mochrie, hair dyed red for the occasion.  The home side, captained by the iconic JoAnne Carner, were tense, fearing losing again more than anything but they played outstanding golf when they needed to and regained the trophy.

The Americans will be favourites as usual this year and they’re going for three wins in a row under the captaincy of Juli Inkster, as ferocious a competitor as you could hope to find anywhere.  However, it’s always hard to win away from home and Catriona Matthew, Europe’s captain, a Scot from North Berwick, is also a competitor par excellence.  She may be understated but she should never be underestimated.

She’s already made an interesting choice by announcing Suzann Pettersen as one of her picks.  Pettersen, who has hardly played any competitive golf since the birth of her son Herman nearly two years ago, was due to be one of Europe’s vice captains but finds herself playing instead.  “Catriona knows that match play brings out the absolute best in my game and that I will be ready to deliver points for her come September,” she said.  “I honestly believe that my best contribution to our Solheim Cup campaign will be on the course and I am very grateful to Catriona for having the confidence to choose me for this year’s team.”

Well, almost every captain makes a contentious choice – Matthew herself was a surprising omission from Dale Reid’s team at Loch Lomond in 2000 – and they stand or fall by the result.  Win and you’re a genius, on a par with the luckiest generals, lose and you’re an eejit, incapable of seeing the obvious hitting you in the face.

Pettersen, a Norwegian who has played in eight Solheims, is a competitive animal to her fingertips and her social rounds probably have the ferocity of a Solheim or Ryder Cup decider but it’s quite an ask to throw her in at Gleneagles so lightly raced.  Whatever, I gave up questioning captain’s picks a long time ago because that’s what they are:  the captain’s pick.  Not mine, not yours, not anyone else’s.  Every captain follows his or her gut instinct and they usually plump for the tried and tested, the players they know and feel they can rely on.  As a captain, the only thing I’d want is for my players to be playing well on the match days and putting the lights out.  If that wasn’t enough to win, so be it but I couldn’t ask for any more.

Bring it on.

To end on a winning note, congratulations to Barb Waite and Mike Jones (below) on their victory in the Whittington Heath Senior Open last Sunday.

Oh, just one last thought on captaincy.  I read somewhere that Tiger Woods might pick himself for his U.S. Presidents Cup team to play the Internationals at Royal Melbourne in December because he can no longer qualify as of right.  Surely not.  He may be Tiger Woods but he can’t be that arrogant or stupid.  Unless, of course, he thinks it’s only fair to give the opposition a chance of winning what has become a hopelessly one-sided contest.

That must be it.

 

It did my heart good when a friend at the golf club started waxing lyrical about the Open and how much he’d enjoyed it.  He’d only been to the first day and he loved it, revelling in the atmosphere and the quality of the golf.  His daughter and granddaughter were with him and the latter collected all the autographs she wanted, most of them delivered with a smile.  They watched the rest of the championship avidly on the telly and cheered the smiling, joyful champion at the end.

Yes, you guessed it, they’d been to the AIG Women’s British Open at Woburn and this man, a proper golf nut, was raving about a women’s event.  He’s already planning his trip to Royal Troon next year and perked up even more when he realised that the AIGWBO will be at Royal Porthcawl in 2021.  By then we’ll know more about the unexpected new champion Hinako Shibuno, who’s only 20, was playing in her first major championship and had never before played competitively outside Japan.  She’ll have to learn to cope with the attention, adulation and expectation.  Let’s hope she’ll keep on smiling and bashing her putts up to – and in to the hole.

From what I saw I doubt that Shibuno left a putt short all week on the treacherous, sloping Marquess greens that made many of her fellow competitors a little tentative.  She was unfazed when she four-putted the 3rd green on Sunday, a result of the fearless approach that won her the title.  There’s no word for ‘lag’ in her vocabulary and she bashed the winning birdie putt into the hole with such abandon that we didn’t know whether to laugh or gasp at her audacity – so we did both.  Then we cheered.

“Give her 10 years, she’ll learn,” said Laura Davies, the dame of the gung-ho approach, who moved to the Sky commentary booth after missing the cut on her 39th consecutive appearance in the WBO.  Davies won the 1987 US Women’s Open as a raw youngster, defeating JoAnne Carner and Ayako Okamoto in an 18-hole play-off, not really realising the enormity of her achievement.  She went on to have a wonderful career but never won another Open.  If Shibuno wins half as much, she’ll be doing well but growing up in the limelight is never easy.

Lydia Ko, the former world No 1, was a teenage sensation but the New Zealander seems like a bit of a lost soul at the moment, changing coach, caddie, clubs, pretty well anything that can be changed on what seems to be a regular basis; or perhaps she’s just experimenting, trying this, then that, perhaps the other and learning as she goes along, doing what most of us do when we’re young.

It must be tough when a game that once seemed so easy becomes more of a trial and the titles stop flowing and you start thinking about the cut and are asked time and time again about what’s going wrong.  With luck, the advice has been good – and listened to – and the money has not been frittered away but professional golfers are judged solely on results, on scorecards that don’t list the bad bounces or poor lies or aching wrists or knees or backs.  It is, in many respects, a brutal business and an unrelenting grind.  Lose your edge and you’ll be trampled into the turf by the latest wave of ambitious club wielders, who’ll grasp their trophies and eulogise you, saying how much you inspired them…..

There is, of course, life in golf after the wins dry up and the broadcasters at Woburn included Davies, Trish Johnson, Karen Stupples and Ken Brown, to name just a few.

The Women’s British Open may be relatively young but it has its own identity and the people in charge, namely the R&A, must be careful to avoid the temptation to turn it into a smaller version of The Open.  The WBO has plodded on, forging its own unique history and it shouldn’t forget that just because it’s come into a bit of money and security. Integration is all very well but let’s continue to vive la difference!

Nothing’s perfect of course and slow play continues to be a plague on the game, with even the players starting to get fed up.  It’s a bad habit that has filtered down to those of us who don’t play golf for a living, so have other things to do with our days.  What happened to rounds that took 3 hours or less?  When did we become so slow?  Surely two players playing a match should be able to get round their home course in nearer 3 hours than 4 without feeling remotely rushed?   We don’t have to mimic the pros when it comes to pace of play.

They’re just lucky that golf spectators are a stoic bunch with a talent for amusing themselves in between shots and hardly anyone follows the example of the sometimes irascible, frequently impatient Pat Ward-Thomas, a former golf correspondent of The Guardian, who once complained very loudly when a player took too long to take a shot:  “For God’s sake get a move on….Doesn’t he know that my life is slipping away?”

No diggers in this week’s blog but the photo at the top is the current state of WHGC’s new clubhouse.  There are lots of changes afoot and yesterday we had a bit of a do for Trevor Morris, who’s retiring as head greenkeeper after more than 50 years at the club.  He’s the one third from left, all scrubbed up and accepting the plaudits with admirable panache.  If you’re playing against him, make sure you negotiate plenty of shots – there’s not a blade of grass or a borrow he doesn’t know.

Finally, congrats to the Midlands Vets, including Whittington’s own Sue Spencer and Debbie Warren, who won the Jamboree at Northamptonshire County GC yesterday, finishing ahead of the North, the South and Scotland.