The Olympics, for all the faults, including overblown self-importance and corruption, are a global phenomenon like few others and now that golf is in, it has to up its game and work damned hard to stay in.  Rugby sevens was brilliant, with Fiji fantastic, who wouldn’t want to play; golf was ok.  It was saved by the passion of the South Koreans for its women; the excellence of the indomitable Inbee Park, who defied injury and huge criticism at home not only to compete but also to stride away with the gold medal; and the proper battle between Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson for top of the podium.  Those coming second and third beamed from ear to ear.  That’s special.

Maureen thought amateurs should take centre stage but that’s not an option these days; the Olympics are a professional environment, with the successful athletes well funded and putting hours of work in every day, all proper jobs, if any, on hold.  Jessica Ennis-Hill, Katie Ledecky, Laura Trott, Usain Bolt, Mo Farah, Michael Phelps et al are not amateurs.  They might all become golfers though and that is one of the game’s strengths.  It’s addictive.  It’s alluring.  It attracts athletes and competitive animals as well as us abysmals.

The Japanese are mad about golf and will turn out in droves to watch in 202o but please, please do something about the format.  (We won’t mention the dire commentary large parts of the TV watching world were lumbered with.  See Twitter for details.)  Perhaps the IOC wanted golf to play it safe in Rio but in Tokyo there must be a team format and it must be mixed.  Don’t give us a load of blah-flum about ‘growing the game’ and keep the men and women apart, playing individual stroke play.  I sat cheering at handball, rugby sevens, even water polo because it was team stuff, nation against nation and golf, a sedate spectacle mostly, needs that extra element to spice it up.

There are plenty of formats to draw from:  World Amateur team championships, European team championships, Dunhill Cups:  stroke play with two or three scores to count; stroke play leading to match play; medal match play.  Women and men in the same team, playing at the same time, perhaps even in mixed groups, shock, horror.  They all, the women especially, have four years to learn how to play quicker.  Perhaps we could have a shot clock or, my favoured method, a set time for a round, say, four hours.  The stopwatch is clicked when the first member of a group is called forward and clicked again when the last member of the group putts out.  For every minute or part thereof over the time, every player in a group is penalised a shot.  If they’re under the time, they can donate something to a designated charity or, for Olympic purposes, subtract a shot from their total.  Referees could tear up their ridiculous, useless timing sheets and concentrate on monitoring the punch-ups as the speedsters were agitated beyond endurance by the snails.

When it comes down to it, golf is a game for everybody and that’s what we’ve got to get across.  The Olympics, by their very nature, take golfers out of their comfort zone, so go further, mix it up, literally, show the world that it’s competitive, fun and inclusive.  Isn’t that the whole idea of being part of the five-ring circus?

If the golf in Tokyo is still 72-hole individual stroke play, with the men playing one week and the women the next (what happened to ladies first anyway!), it’ll be a travesty and we’ll have to put on the hard hats again and keep banging against that brick wall……

In the meantime, congrats to Maria Verchenova, one of the few Russians competing in Rio, who not only won the hat-wearing gold but had a round of 62, to show that she could play decent golf as well.  And congrats to Leona Maguire, who did herself and Ireland (and Duke University) proud in Rio and received the 2016 Mark H McCormack Medal (awarded to the No 1 player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking) from Lydia Ko (No 1 in the Rolex Rankings, the women’s world rankings).  Maguire also won the women’s McCormack Medal in 2015.

And, far away from Brazil, at the Pete Dye Course at French Lick Resort in Indiana, England and Arsenal Solheim Cup stalwart Trish Johnson got the better of Juli Inkster at last, winning The Legends Championship (presented by Old National Bank) at the 6th hole of a not-so-sudden-death play-off.  Even a Spurs supporter like me could not forbear to cheer.

Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson and Matt Kuchar ensured that golf returned to the Olympics with more of a bang than a whimper and they’re now bona fide Olympic medallists.  The great thing is that they were watched by a lot of people, who created an atmosphere and the players served up a ding-dong battle worthy of the occasion on a course that was a credit to architect Gil Hanse, Amy Alcott and the team that created it.  Let’s hope that the International Golf Federation and the Brazilians keep their promises and run it as a public facility, open and accessible to all, awash with girls and boys keen to get in the swing and grow the game.  When the Games are over, the teaching pros should be parachuted in and the clinics and games should begin the serious, long-term business of growing the game.

Donald Trump, who knows a bit about golf, trumpets about the importance of exclusivity in the game, some guff to do with encouraging people to be aspirational I think – and perhaps to justify prohibitive green fees – but the real beauty of the game is its inclusivity.  Lots of lucky kids are introduced to golf by their grandparents and they can keep playing together as long as the oldies can totter round a few holes.  At last, golf seems to be wising up to promoting itself as the game of a lifetime, a healthy pursuit that’ll help you clock up thousands of steps without a problem.  Local munis should be multiplying not dying.

The one thing that will kill the game is slow play.  Cycling is thriving, despite the dangers of pedalling on British roads, not just because of the success of stars like Wiggins, Hoy, Pendleton, Trott and numerous others but because it’s quick and simple.  Golf, which within living memory took about three hours for 18 holes, is miring itself in a slough of measuring devices, multiple practice swishes and in the pro ranks summit meetings with caddies or partners, the results of which often lead to the whole process being repeated before a shot is committed to.  Heaven only knows what Pat Ward-Thomas, a sometimes irascible golf correspondent of The Guardian (which once did a good line in irascible golf correspondents), would make of today’s slouches.  He was so exasperated by a pedetentous putter of his own day that he cried out, “Doesn’t he realise my life is ebbing away?”

The men took about five hours a round in Rio; the women, who may still be under way after the closing ceremony, upped that by about 35 minutes.  Marta Figueras-Dotti, like most of our Q&A participants, has trenchant views on the subject and is worth listening to.  As I type, I have on the desk a ball marker that reads 3:57.  It was given out by the LGU or the R&A to encourage people to “hurtle” round in under four hours and is now an antique, hopelessly outdated.   The truth is that the players, for all their complaints, don’t care enough to change.  They’re out there for the day, it’s their job, they’re taking it seriously, being meticulous and professional and anyway, it’s the others who are the slowcoaches…..Trouble is, they’re infecting the rest of us.

In the meantime, let’s speed up and enjoy the cosmopolitan nature of a game that stars Ariya Jutanurgarn of Thailand; Inbee Park of South Korea; Lydia Ko of New Zealand; Brooke Henderson of Canada; Charley Hull and Catriona Matthew, Olympian Brits at opposite ends of the age spectrum; Shanshan Feng of China; Aditi Ashok of India; Stacy Lewis, newly married, of the United States; the amateurs Leona Maguire of Ireland and Albane Valenzuela of Switzerland; not forgetting the Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Spaniards, Russians, Australians, French, Japanese, South Africans, Italians, Colombians, Brazilians and numerous other nationalities who demonstrate that golf, for all its faults, is a genuinely global game.

 

 

The Madills have always been fond of Peter Alliss.  As a commentator you’re either loved or loathed, people are rarely indifferent.  We, a household of wordy smart aleck golf tragics, loved Alliss, who had a wonderful eye and way with words and a wicked sense of the ridiculous.  He was also helpful, replying in his own handwriting to viewers who felt they knew him.

In 1972, just before I headed off to university in Edinburgh, Mum wrote to Alliss asking him if he could recommend a decent coach in the area.  He wrote back suggesting John Shade at Duddingston, father of the famous Ronnie, who had a rugby international’s clutch of initials – RDBM – and was known as Right Down the Bloody Middle.  John had less success with me but we laughed a lot and Maureen came over and learned a lot and won the Ladies’ British Open Amateur Championship at Nairn in 1979.  So, thank you Peter.

When I worked at Golf World magazine in London in the early 1980s in a streamlined editorial department consisting of Peter Haslam, the editor, engaging, enterprising and globe-trotting; Neil Elsey, the skilled deputy editor, who died far too young; Dave Oswald, the art editor, a talented but irascible Scot who is now besotted with his allotment; and me, the dogsbody with licence to learn.  One of my tasks was to write Alliss’s column and that was an education in itself.  He’d send in his thoughts on cassette and the transcript would meander hither and yon, covering life, the universe, everything, with a bit of golf thrown in.  It was never dull but often led to swearing (the Oswald curse haunts my language to this day) and it was only a few years later that I realised what wonderful training it had been.  Knocking Alliss’s musings into readable shape and making it sound like him was a skill that was hard won.  Thank you Peter.

A lot of years later, when Maureen started working with him and the rest of the incomparable BBC team, he couldn’t have been more supportive of a raw, broadcasting rookie.  He’d always loved the Irish – the late, great Christy O’Connor, Himself, was a close friend – and Maureen, who was keen to learn, was astute enough to know that she was in the presence of a master.  Alliss, observant and improvisational, was astute enough to realise that she always did her homework and they became allies.  Thank you Peter.

Alliss is quick-witted, with an eye and an ear for the bon mot but he is also master of the pause, a skill learned from his years as apprentice to Henry Longhurst.  Radio abhors a silence – my God, has the line gone down, has the presenter died? – but telly has the pictures and each one is worth a thousand words, isn’t it?  People coming from radio have to learn that you don’t have to witter on when the pictures can do your talking for you.  “It was a privilege to be next to him,” Maureen said.  “I particularly remember the Women’s Open at Sunningdale in 2008; it was Annika’s last appearance and she was coming up the 18th, with everyone applauding and all the emotion and Peter just held up his hand to me and stopped me trampling all over a very special moment.  He knew it didn’t need any words.”  Thank you Peter.

As well as listening to the Alliss Q and A with Maureen, search out the speech he made when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012.  He was a very good golfer, who played in eight Ryder Cup teams and once won three national Open titles in a row (not the big one, admittedly) and he became a giant of a broadcaster.  He left school early and has never forgotten his last report from the formidable headmistress Mrs Violet Weymouth, a short, stout Welshwoman who was a chain smoker with a nicotine-stained chin.  “Peter does have a brain,” she wrote, “but he’s rather loath to use it…..I fear for his future.”

His Hall of Fame riposte ends with the gesture doing the talking.  Classic Alliss.  Revenge is sweet.  Thank you Mrs W.

 

 

Last week’s Ricoh Women’s British Open at Woburn gave the lie to the notion that there’s no interest in women’s golf in this country, with roughly 52,000 spectators tramping the fairways during the championship and many more watching on television on the BBC, where golf is about to become a distant memory.

The best women golfers in the world gave a demonstration of ball-striking at its best and the new champion Ariya Jutanugarn was little short of awesome, giving the ball a mighty Thai tonk and holding nothing back.  She played with Catriona Matthew in the third round and it was a wonderful contrast in styles, with the Scot, who will be 47 later this month, having to plot her way round the Marquess course in a more canny fashion altogether.  Matthew was the leading Briton, sharing 5th place on 279, 9 under par, seven shots behind the winner.

Charley Hull, the local heroine, lagged behind her Olympic teammate on 283 but showed glimpses of her best form in a final round of 69.  The week before the RWBO Hull was playing for England in the UL International Crown team event in Illinois and had to sit out one of the days because of illness.  She was then in great demand at Woburn, for tea party photo shoots, interviews, chats with the GB Olympic golf captain Jamie Spence, selfies, what have you and she even experienced first-tee nerves, a rarity for the insouciant 20-year old, as she prepared to perform in front of her family and friends.

Rio will provide another challenge and will be nothing like a normal tournament, despite the familiarity of the 72-hole stroke play format.  Hull, who suffers from asthma, will have to make sure that her inhaler is properly vetted and all the competitors will have to be extra careful about what they take for any sniffles and snuffles, aches and pains, to ensure they don’t fall foul of the drug testers.  There’ll be a lot to take in and the golf will be intense because most of the best women in the world will be there, anxious to secure a medal and make a unique mark in the game.

Apologies to Spence, a lovely man despite being an Arsenal supporter, who was kind enough to do a Q & A with madillgolf.com.  He even agreed to start again after the klutz operating the iPad realised that she had it in photo mode instead of video.  Then halfway through, said klutz noticed that the seconds were no longer ticking up……the machine had had enough, it had run out of capacity and Jamie’s words of wisdom ended up as so much air instead of on air.  Sorry captain and the best of luck to team GB (Danny Willett, Justin Rose, Matthew and Hull).  May you all be spared from media klutzes and hitches and glitches, technical or otherwise.

Good luck also, of course, to team Ireland, captained by Paul McGinley (whose Q & A was conducted by Maureen without a hitch).  Padraig Harrington is the leading player, with Seamus Power, Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow also in the line-up making golfing history.  This will be one of the highlights of their life, let alone their career.

On a less elevated, more prosaic golfing note, the ladies’ captain of Whittington Heath took more than a score of swingers to Southport, England’s Golf Coast, where we played Hesketh – and saw the Hitler Trophy displayed in all its glory (see a previous post for more details) – and Formby Ladies, where they can boast 250 (female) playing members. Wow. Let’s get recruiting girls.