I’m sitting waiting for a call from one of my Sirius XM colleagues from the States, Taylor Zarzour, to do a slot on his radio show.  We’ve been trying to set this up since you-know-who won the Masters and, so far, have failed to find a mutually convenient time to connect.

I thought we’d blown it yet again as I arrived home from my exercise class to find I was locked out of the house.  I had omitted to take a key as I was expecting the place to be still full of people on my return.  But, no – the husband AND the kitchen floor layers had all scarpered, quite naturally expecting a sane body to take a key with them.  And no, we don’t have one hidden in the garden under a plant pot for such an emergency.

Anyway, there was a small window open which enabled me to open a larger one and hey presto, in I glided like a veritable cat burglar!  That’s a bit of an exaggeration – it really was anything but ease and grace but I have realised we need to rethink the defence of our castle.

So, I’m recovering now with a cuppa in hand and wondering if Taylor’ll want to talk about golf in general as well as Rory in particular.  If he does he’ll be disappointed.  Despite being only present at the Masters through the TV screen I am suffering a reaction to McIlroy’s win and his attainment of the grand slam.  The effort of heaving Rory over the line has left me feeling saturated with the game and I’ve been happy to potter about with a warm fuzzy feeling of contentment, paying scant heed to the various goings-on in sundry tournaments.

Knowing, however, that this interview was imminent I did make an effort to check in on Scottie Scheffler in the CJ Cup Byron Nelson played in McKinney, Texas, just down the road from where he lives.  Any interest was soon dissipated when I saw he had an eight-shot lead going into Sunday, a margin he maintained for his first win of the season with a record-equalling total of 31 under par.

I’ve been spoiled my whole life by being able to watch (and be present at) some exhilarating golf performances that stir the blood.  Sublime as Scottie’s was, this was not one of those occasions.  When forty-seven players are ten under par or better I usually can find something more interesting to do than watch dartboard, one-dimensional, golf that results in just about everyone putting for eagle or birdie on every green.  The skill set required for the golf course, saturated by torrential rain, is not hugely varied but kudos to Scheffler for maintaining his mental edge right to the finish of a boring tournament.  He’s not No 1 for nothing.

In a week’s time the spotlight will be on the PGA Championship and the Wannamaker Trophy (pic at top).  It is the men’s second major of the year and will be held at Quail Hollow in North Carolina.  The course is a particular favourite of Rory’s (he has won four times there), Scottie is obviously on form, Justin Thomas has won again after a three-year drought and Jordan Spieth is beginning to look a bit like his old self.  And Bryson has just won on LIV.

It all appears to be bubbling up nicely – a good golf course, top players in form and lots of different storylines.  I wonder how Jordan will cope now he’s the solo next in line to take that giant leap into the Grand Slam club?  It will be intriguing.

Taylor has just phoned and we have done the interview.  It was all about Rory, thankfully, going back to his early days and when I had first seen him play and moving right on up through his career.

There are certain things that stick in your mind for ever – for example, the 2005 Open at St Andrews.  Tiger was romping home victorious, seemingly oblivious to the awful weather we were assaulted with from time to time, when word came through that Rory McIlroy had shot 61 round Portrush in the North of Ireland Championship.  In those days the final couple of holes were fairly straightforward (and a little boring) and often players out for a fun round could peel into the clubhouse from the 16th green – a good ploy in particularly inclement weather.  Upon hearing of the 61 I asked had Rory left out the last two holes.  It seemed unbelievable that a 16-year-old could fashion that score round the Portrush links.

Ten years later, in 2015, I was back in St Andrews – but Rory wasn’t.  He should have been defending his Open title at the Home of Golf but had gone over on his ankle playing footie with his mates.  Who could have dreamt then that it’d be another ten years, in 2025, before he won his next major?

And I reckon we’ve got another ten years to see what this extraordinary human can achieve.  No one knows how he’ll react to joining the Grand Slam club.  No one else has taken over a decade between achieving the third leg and the final leg.  Who knows what it may do to him – he may be like a punctured balloon.  He doesn’t know, we don’t know.  Perhaps winning majors will become easy-peasy again for him.  He doesn’t know, we don’t know.

But it’ll be fun finding out.

 

It’s a funny old thing having an Australian manager (albeit with Greek origins) and playing like a load of wimps.  If they’re anything at all, Aussie sportspeople are tough, gritty, stubborn, hard to beat but, my goodness, it’s taking the sainted Ange a very long time to get that through to his/my tottering Totspurs.

You may have noticed that there wasn’t a mention of football in the blog last week but this week I’m hot, weary, a tad disillusioned and up crops the not-so-beautiful game at the forefront of my thoughts.  On Sunday, I watched us help Liverpool celebrate their latest title in grand style at Anfield.  We scored first – “that’ll be 6-1 to you, then,” sez I to my Liverpool-supporting viewing mate – and I wasn’t far wrong. They won 5-1 and we dutifully faded from the scene to leave the Reds to their joyous celebrations.

How we Lilywhites (does that moniker have to make us lily-livered?) long for something to cheer about.  Will we ever again win even an egg cup?

Yesterday (Thursday night), in the first leg of the semi-final of the Europa League, we were 3-nil up at home against Bodo/Glimt of Norway but failed to be ruthless and kill them off.  Instead we did that hideous Spursy thing of falling asleep, allowing them a moment of skill and conceding a late goal.  Now we have to trek to their place, north of the Arctic Circle and play them on their artificial pitch, where they don’t lose many matches and feel completely at home.  It might even be snowing.  At least we managed to beat Tamworth, the mighty Lambs, on their artificial pitch earlier this season.  Is that an omen?

I wasn’t there last night and I won’t be in Norway and I think I’m even more down in the mouth because earlier in the week I marvelled at the skills of Paris St Germain, Barcelona and Inter Milan.  If we win the Europa League (come on girl, be optimistic), we’ll be in the Champions League with the big boys, so at least we’d see some of the world’s best at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Word is Ange will be getting the sack whatever happens but I’m not sure that’s a good idea.  We’ve been very good at sacking managers over the last few seasons, not giving anybody a chance to lay solid foundations and build a decent team.  We’ve mostly been pretty dreadful this season after early flashes of brilliance but I’d be inclined to back our Aussie and help him sort us out.  I think I’m in a minority, though, possibly of one.

It’s not often that I feel sorry for Arsenal fans, our biggest rivals and much more successful than us recently with quite a lot to crow about.  They looked very good beating Real Madrid home and away to reach the semis of the Champions League but then PSG made them look ordinary on Tuesday night at the Emirates.

Mo and I were at Belfast International having a Guinness waiting for our flight back home and I’d noticed a fair few Arsenal shirts in the bar.  They were heading for the match, via Stansted and it wasn’t a relaxing experience.  Their Ryanair flight, scheduled to leave at 1545, had gone to “Est 1700”.  Oops.

Now I was starting to feel uncomfortable for them and hoping that the pilot wasn’t a Spurs supporter.  A couple of the younger fans were getting a bit upset and agitated and getting to the ground for kick-off at 2000 was beginning to look like a big ask.  It takes about an hour and a quarter from Aldergrove (aka Belfast International) to Stansted and the flight was still on the ground at 1730.  It landed about 1848, so if they made it to the ground via Tottenham Hale and Finsbury Park in time for the first and – luckily for Arsenal – only goal of the game (O. Dembélé – 4 mins), they’d have done brilliantly.

However, this is how some of us seasoned travellers choose to relax at an airport…

You know those days when you wait in for the electrician, the gas man, the broadband installer?  Well, the trick is to phone a friend and ask them to do it for you.  So, profuse thanks to Mike for being kind enough to say yes to my request and wait around all day to oversee the installation of my new, fast fibre broadband.  The phone still has to be sorted but the internet seems to be all systems ago – impossibly long password having been tapped in successfully.

And there’s nothing like a jigsaw to pass the time, so the Isles of Scilly monster is well on its way to completion; well done Michael.

 

Mo and I had a great time in Ireland, enjoying sea, sand and reconnecting with old friends.  The weather was very good and here are some pics to prove it…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m still in the recovery position after last week’s tortuously exhilarating career-grand-slam-dunk of Rory McIlroy’s in winning the Masters.

I crawled to bed about 2.30 in the morning – I defy anyone to come down to a normal heartrate quickly with so much adrenalin rushing around through the ole system.  Rather to my surprise, and really before I was truly awake, I found myself in a challenging exercise class, some seven hours later, attempting to lift each of my legs over a pillar the size of the Eiffel Tower.  I hadn’t remembered the tower being so tall in previous classes, but neither was each leg weighed down by a couple of bottles of red wine.  It was not a pretty sight – and not a pleasant experience.

After that, it was on to pick up a friend and treat her to her 85th birthday lunch.  No, perhaps I’ve got that wrong – I was treating a friend to lunch to celebrate her 85th birthday.  There is a difference, I’m sure.

Next on the agenda was a trip to Delamere Forest golf club to help the ladies’ section prepare for the surfeit of matchplay they would be facing in the approaching season’s team matches.  I had promised the lady captain Maria that I’d endeavour to impart a few words of wisdom but when I arrived I had lost 90% of my voice and was only able to croak out a couple of  “pearls”.  Perhaps that’s why they seemed to enjoy it so much but something worked because the girls won their opening team match two days later with a bit to spare.

That was the Monday after THE Sunday.  Since then I’ve been lying relatively low, recovering both my voice and my sanity, and I have watched NOT A SINGLE SHOT OF GOLF the entire week.  It’s been bliss.

Apologies, therefore, and congratulations to Justin Thomas, who won at Hilton Head, bringing to an end his three-year absence from the winners’ circle.  The same goes for the Swedish rookie Ingrid Lindblad, who won in her third start as an LPGA member.  Garrick Higgo and Ashun Wu also had weeks they’ll never forget but this blogger doesn’t have the bandwidth at the moment to take all that on board – but well done, one and all.

By the time you read this I’ll be back in the wee north (of Ireland) for a few days visiting family and friends and for a wee golfing ceremony, more of which next week.  I’m looking forward to being back at Portstewart and Portrush again and having the sister with me means we can indulge ourselves with reminiscing over our early lives in this magical place where the golf courses, beaches and long summer holidays stand out in my memory.

This is the first year since lockdown that I’ve had the pleasure of a diary filled with trips.  Sure, I’ve had a couple of work commentary outings booked in over the last couple of seasons, but there was always a degree of angst lurking as to whether I’d be well enough to manage the travel and do a decent job.  Sometimes I was and sometimes I wasn’t.

It was my task to book our flights, which I did quite a while ago, along with lots of other travel I had coming up.  As expected, a reminder email thudded in the other morning telling me I could now check us in – just go to “manage my booking” and take it from there.  Sounds easy, should be easy, IS easy, but when following the instructions it became apparent I was the only one on the booking – no sign of Mrs Patricia Davies whatsover.

Too soon to panic, I enquired of Patricia had she booked her own flight.  To describe her response as “vague” would imbue her answer with a tad too much urgency.  Basically, she had no idea but said it had been my job.  Deep down I knew she was right and continued to search for any sign of her on the booking.  There was none.

Next a mad scramble to see if I could now get her seats on my flight but the clunky website wouldn’t let me book a return for some reason.  I had to book two singles and my session kept getting timed out.  By this time I was ready to hurl the laptop out of the window but passed it instead to my better half, who smoothly did what was asked of him and booked Patricia on to the same flights as me.

Phew!  Crisis averted.  Something, however, was niggling away in the recesses of my very small brain and I eventually delved back a few months through the finances to see what payments had been made – and there it was, two separate outgoings to the airline in question.  I HAD bought two tickets and now we had three, two apparently in Patricia’s name.  At this rate she’d be able to lie down both ways.

Then it came back to me as to why exactly we weren’t on the one booking.  We had decided to share a suitcase that would go in the hold and that meant we needed one ticket with that requirement and another that was essentially a ticket with no luggage at all and for some reason that I cannot now recall we couldn’t easily put that on one booking.

By this stage my hubby was urged to take over and hurriedly cancelled the flights we had just bought, all of course carrying a hefty penalty.

This whole debacle took up a morning and boy, does it put you in bad humour.  And then I remembered that special Sunday, and I remembered Rory………..and I smiled.  It didn’t matter.

And so, to Ireland.  I’m sure we’ll pick up a celebratory party or two back home – they’re still going on apparently.

 

The good thing about watching Spurs away at Eintracht Frankfurt last night was that, agonising as it was, it was as nothing after four emotional, gruelling, rollercoaster rounds at Augusta National last week.

It’s taken me the whole week to recover some sort of equilibrium and catch up on lost sleep but there’s also a wonderful feeling of calm, of satisfaction and the delightful realisation that Aprils will never be the same again.  They – and the seemingly endless, months-long run-up to the Masters – will be angst free, without anxiety, a place of peace, perfect peace, a time to admire the blossom and smile in the spring sunshine.

Thank you Rory.

The only downside was hearing myself pulling against Justin Rose and Fooch/Futch, his caddie Mark Fulcher; I never though I’d see the day.  Two lovelier men it would be hard to meet, consummate competitive professionals who are class personified.  Proper human beings.

Justin had ten birdies in his final round of 66, including one at the last, to give himself what proved to be a bit more than a sniff at the title.  Losing out wouldn’t have been so gutting if Rory had done the decent, expected thing and put his second shot at the 72nd hole on the green not too far from the hole for a routine, if history-making par.

What a ridiculous thought!  Where’s the drama in that!

Instead we had hopes raised, dashed, raised, dashed, then, for one man, smashed, for the other man and his long-suffering fans, soaring up, up and away into the stratosphere.

We’re still up there somewhere.

As for the footie, well, of course – well, not “of course” because we’re talking about Totspurs here, tottering our way through a season best described as dire, crap really, with the team displaying as much defensive nous as a dead gnat….

So, of course, we go to Eintracht Frankfurt, in a cauldron where they rarely lose, in rubbish form (well beaten, 4-2, at Wolves on Sunday; I brushed it off with a resigned shrug, preferring to concentrate on the agonies of Augusta) and we win 1-nil.  Ridiculous.  That meant we won 2-1 on aggregate and are now in the semi-finals of the Europa League.  Blimey.

It was agonising, though not as agonising as Augusta and certainly not as bonkers as the quarter-final at Old Trafford, where Manchester United (arguably even worse than us this season) were playing Lyon or the one in Rome, where Lazio were playing the Norwegian side Bodo/Glimt, rank outsiders despite winning the first leg 2-nil.

Against all the odds Glimt, who now play Spurs, won 3-2 on penalties.  Lazio took the game into extra time with a goal in the 93rd minute.  Than they went ahead on aggregate in the 99th minute, only for Glimt to score in the 109th!  You can imagine the din and the mayhem – and the disbelief when Lazio lost.

Even so, it would have been as nothing to what was going on in Manchester.  Sir Alex “Football Bloody Hell” Ferguson, the master of the late, late, late show, was there, scarcely able to believe what he’d just witnessed.

It was 2-all after the first leg in France, United go 2-nil up just before half-time, then Lyon score twice to level things up but have a man sent off in the 89th minute.  Ridiculously, the visitors score twice in extra time and lots of United fans give up the ghost and head out…You must never, ever do that….

Out of nowhere United score three goals in six minutes, to win 5-4 on the night, 7-6 on aggregate and their old stadium, scene of many a manic match, was in danger of disintegrating altogether as the fans, put through the ringer this season, self-combusted.  They play Athletic Bilbao next after the Spaniards – oops, apologies, Basques – saw off Rangers 2-nil.

So, it’ll either be Bilbao versus Glimt in the final (which is in Bilbao) or Man Utd v Spurs (unlikely but not impossible).  Watch this space.

Oh, and while I’m on the subject of football, congrats to Birmingham City on winning promotion to the Championship.  Also, come on Wrexham, who could go up too.  It’s beyond the comprehension of some of the blog’s devotees that football could be of interest to anybody but there are a lot of us tragics out there, including Blues and Red Dragon (previously Robins) fans.

Down here on earth, away from the highs and lows of elite sport, my main concern is changing my car.  People do this sort of thing every day but it’s doing my head in.  Having tootled around in my solid, reliable Ford Fiesta for ten years, no bells, no whistles, road tax nil (though you do still have to pay it as I discovered when I did nothing, then got a red bill insisting that I owed nought pounds and nought pence!), it’s a bit of a shock to see how different more modern cars are – and how expensive.

Taking advice from more savvy friends, more car buffy than I’ll ever be, only adds to the confusion.  Electric, hybrid, petrol.  How difficult can it be?  Confusion reigns as I start consulting Which reviews, discover Honest John and others, endlessly on and on.  How’s a woman to make a decision?

Perhaps I should just stick to the bike, very eco-friendly but with me on board the mileage will be so limited as to be impractical.

And there are the golf clubs to consider too.