Happy New Year everybody.  Here’s to an exciting 2019.

But first a quick look ahead to 2020 and the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.  Congratulations to Padraig Harrington, the pride of Stackstown, on being appointed Europe’s captain.  [Photo by Getty Images.]  We’ll be hearing millions of words from the Dubliner, a man of singular mind if ever there was one, so for the time being we’re just saying well done and we’re really looking forward to the next couple of years in your company.

New year, new Ryder Cup captain, new Rules of Golf.  Yes, they’re here and in play at last and we’ve all got our about-to-be-well-thumbed wee books, our crib sheets and our questions.  And on the greens, there’s at least one extra question:  Pin attended?  Out?  Or just in?  After a whole 22 holes under the new regime, I think that most of the time I’ll be going with in, unattended.  If it’s good enough for Bryson James Aldrich DeChambeau, who’s well up there with Harrington in the Bundesliga of meticulousness, it’s good enough for me.

DeC is a student of physics, among other things and reckons that leaving the pin in will be a help most of the time.  Of course, the fact that golf is played outdoors in conditions that are not always consistent or controllable often does the young Californian’s head in.  Seeing his bewilderment and mystification when something goes awry, scuppering his best laid plans, the disbelieving rechecking of his double-double-checked data, is one of the delights of modern tournament golf.  His expressions are priceless.  In Kapalua in Hawaii the other week, it was very, very windy and that had to be factored in to the putting equation in an unexpected way:  if the flag was left in and unattended, it made a hell of a noise, whipping to and fro and disturbing the equilibrium.  How nice to know that even physics buffs can be discombobulated.

Apparently Jordan Spieth – remember him, young lad, going to be winning everything for ever before a season as a relative mortal? – is not a fan of the new drop from knee height.  And neither am I, though not, I suspect, for the same reason.  It’s just a bend too far for those of us coming to terms with varying degrees of decrepitude as a fact of daily life.  If I’d paid closer attention during the prolonged consultation period, perhaps I’d have realised that a more sensible option would have been to be less prescriptive and allow a bit of leeway between shoulder and knee.  Surprising really because it’s not as though the R&A and the USGA are bodies stocked with lissom youngsters – or supple Sam Sneads (look up what he could do to a door lintel well into his 70s) – without a creak between them.

Perhaps it’s just my dropping technique that needs work, a loose arm, a modest lean and a slight flex of the knees might do the job without making my genius osteopath Kay work harder than she already has to.  It’s early days after all.

It’s also an exciting time at Whittington Heath GC for another reason:  the diggers have arrived, the heavy plant is crossing and our transformation is under way.  We have to check the board outside the pro’s shop for the course du jour and someone suggested that the flag should be at half mast, to mark the end of an era, that we should be in mourning.

On the contrary, since being optimistic always beats the alternative (are you with me, Padraig?), I think we should be rejoicing and looking forward to a new era, whatever the inconveniences.  There have been a lot of changes in the club’s 133 years (founded 1886) and a golf course is a living thing, always a work in progress.  We’re blessed with a rare bit of Staffordshire heathland, ideal for golf and playable all year, not mud up to the eyeballs or flooded and we benefitted from a bit of Harry Colt magic in the 1920s.  Our job now is not to stuff that up!

Finally, good luck to our new ladies’ captain, Suzanne, Zany Zanny, Rundle.  She was welcomed into office at the ladies’ AGM on Tuesday and, barring the unexpected, will be confirmed at the club AGM tonight.  There’s quite a year ahead and if her brilliant (I exaggerate not a jot – Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn would have listened and wept, even Boris would have recognised a rival of substance) call to arms is anything to go by, we’re in for quite a ride.  Let’s hope we can do her justice.  My road to hell is usually littered with good intentions but I’m doing my bit by getting an early night….

 

 

 

 

The European Tour newsletter plopped into my inbox on Wednesday and I was interested to see they were showcasing the European Tour Photo of the Year, highlighting the top two dozen pictures taken at ET events throughout 2018.  What’s more, they are supplying a little explanation from each photographer telling us how they set up the picture, waited for the right light and shadow and how sometimes it’s just a photographer’s instinct that leads them to be in the right place at the right time.  It’s well worth having a look.  And so I decided, in this final blog of the year, to select a handful of our blog pictures that reflect and remind me of the somewhat haphazard journey this blog takes throughout the course of twelve months.  So, here goes…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, I just had to finish my pictorial blog round-up with a little look to the future and the exciting hosting of next year’s Open at one of my clubs, Royal Portrush.  Put it in your diaries and I’ll see you there.  In the meantime, have a very happy festive season and good golfing in 2019.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think it was the BBC’s Iain Carter – like Mo no fan of the Woods v Mickelson boost for Gamblers’ Anonymous – who mentioned that the World Cup of Golf was overshadowed by the over-hyped PGA Tour-sanctioned shindig in Las Vegas.  Well, in recent years, the World Cup has tended to limp along in the shadows whatever else has been going on.

The competition, which started in 1953 as the Canada Cup, at Beaconsfield in Montreal, was won by Roberto de Vicenzo and Antonio Cerda of Argentina and the following year, at Laval-sur-Lac, also in Montreal, Peter Thomson and Kel Nagle of Australia won.  In 1955, with home advantage, the United States won for the first time, represented by Ed Furgol and Chick Harbert.  The USA triumphed again in 1956, at Wentworth, with the more legendary pair of Ben Hogan and Sam Snead wowing large galleries.  And, of course, in 1958, in Mexico City, Harry Bradshaw and Christy O’Connor won for Ireland.

As far as I could see, this year’s event, officially called the ISPS Handa Melbourne World Cup of Golf, was not listed in the European Tour’s media guide but, fortunately for me, all the results were and the names on the immense trophy include some of the greats of the game – Palmer, Nicklaus, Player, Trevino, Ballesteros, Faldo, Els, Woods.  In Hawaii, in 1987, Wales won with David Llewellyn manfully supporting an imperious Ian Woosnam.  They beat Scotland, represented by Sandy Lyle and Sam Torrance, in a play-off.  Llewellyn, known as Lulu, could play a bit and should have become the first man to break 60 on the European Tour, as long ago as 1988, but three-putted the last at Biarritz.

There was a new name on the trophy this year, with Belgium winning at The Metropolitan Club in Melbourne.  Thomas Pieters and Thomas Detry held off Australia (Mark Leishman and Cameron Smith, supported by a huge crowd) and Mexico (Abraham Ancer and Roberto Diaz), to win by three shots.

This year the format was two rounds of fourballs and two rounds of foursomes and I have to confess that over the years covering the World Cup was not always the most exciting gig.  Watching the Scots one year in Florida (I was the Daily Record’s Dale Rankin No 302, or thereabouts; if their own man wasn’t there, the bod sending in the golf copy was given the byline Dale Rankin) and the most noteworthy thing was a chat with Jim Milligan, the quiet Scot who’d helped GB and I win the Walker Cup at Peachtree and was on his holidays.

I think that was the year that I also had to do The Times unexpectedly and Ian Woosnam ended up writing to the sports editor to complain that he had not, as I reported, been up until three in the morning playing the piano. It turned out to be a combination of rushed writing, changing editions and inexact sub-editing and Woosie was mollified by a bit of grovelling on my part and some nifty diplomacy by the golf correspondent.

I finally cracked how to cover the World Cup when I was doing the Scots again, in Italy this time and they were playing uninspired stuff, well down the leaderboard and losing interest by the stroke.  We were staying in Rome, about an hour’s coach journey from the course, which was pretty well in the middle of nowhere and some people moved out of Rome to cut out the commute.  It was worth every second on that coach to be able to enjoy Rome and one morning Dai and I joined Kaye Kessler (read his stuff when you get the chance) and his wife Roe on a memorable tour of the catacombs, guided by an ebullient priest from somewhere like Hong Kong.

If memory serves, we had a delicious lunch and hitched a lift in a courtesy car summoned by the formidable and well connected Kesslers (distinguished Americans merited priority treatment), arriving at the golf course just as the Scots were approaching the 18th green, five or perhaps nearer six hours after they’d started.  Perfect!  Even better, I managed to intercept one of the Scots as he legged it out of the scoring hut by the back door, trying to evade having to say anything at all about their dire performance.  Oh happy days!

No jetting off to Australia, Hong Kong, Mauritius, the Bahamas, Vegas, or wherever for me these days but I’m hoping to be at Woburn next year to see Georgia Hall defend her Women’s British Open title.  Ricoh have finished their stint as sponsors and yesterday it was announced that it’s now the AIG Women’s British Open, with American International Group, Inc (NYSE:  AIG) becoming the title sponsor for the next five years at least.  AIG is a leading global insurance organisation (I quote the press release but prefer organisation to organization) and this is the company’s first title sponsorship in professional golf.  More on this all, no doubt, in due course but let’s welcome what I hope will be good news for women’s golf worldwide.

Meanwhile, lower down the swinging order, it was Christmas jersey day at Whittington and I leave you with one trio’s offering.  We got 13 holes (the designated number at this time of year) in before it started lashing with rain and didn’t have to cover our jumpers with waterproofs.

 

I don’t know what sort of week you’ve had but I suspect that Justin Rose, his inestimable caddy/caddie (I can never decide which I prefer) Mark Fulcher and their family and friends have had a lovely week, very contented, after Justin, the defending champion, won the Turkish Airlines Open and went back to world No 1.  He beat Li Haotong of China in a play-off, at the first extra hole.  Who knows how much Justin and Futch are worth these days but it’s lovely to see that nice guys don’t have to finish last – they can finish first too.  And second.  Li is, by all accounts, a lovely lad and he and Shanshan Feng, a former women’s world No 1 and Olympic bronze medallist are so good for golf.  They are world class, so even those who see golf as a selfish, bourgeois, imperialist non sport that is injurious to the health of the people have to hold their whist – bite their tongue.  In the meantime, more and more Chinese hear about golf and think it might be something to try.  In China, even a small percentage is a lot of people.

Who knows how long the world No 1 will last this time – was it a week last time? – what with the logjam at the top but it’s not going to be dull keeping up with the twists and turns.  Rose won in Turkey and later that day, a few time zones back, in Las Vegas, Bryson DeChambeau, an intelligent, inventive man who has the courage of his convictions, won the Shriners Hospitals For Children Open.  It was the young American’s third win in five starts – a scarily good strike rate – and he is now No 5 in the world.

DeChambeau, he of the same length shafts, applies physics (which, I’m told, is the key to understanding the world, which is therefore destined to remain a mystery to me) to his study of the game of golf and sometimes it works.  He had a pretty poor Ryder Cup, in terms of points – nul, zilch – but don’t bet against him having worked that thing out by the next match in 2020.

You don’t have to be the world No 1 or a Ryder Cup player to make a good living out of golf but the luckiest golfers are those who just love the game and get a lot of pleasure out of it for as long as they can swing, staying more or less upright – the balance goes as you get older – and walk at least a few steps.  If you’re a member of a club, even if you no longer play, you can go up and sit in a corner with your paper and a glass of wine, watch the golf – or the cricket, or whatever – and chew the cud with your friends, putting the world and the club to rights.

At Whittington at the moment we’re trying to put the club to rights – not just in whispers or complaints in corners between friends – but properly, seriously, taking soundings from everyone who wants to talk or has an opinion, a complete overhaul of how we operate, to drag us into whatever century it is we’re in and set things up for the next few generations.  We’re lucky because our prime asset, our course, is playable all year, frost and snow permitting and the sainted Harry Colt had a large hand in re-designing it in the late 1920s.

We’re also lucky that we have a person who is not only willing but able to undertake the review of our modus operandi, who has the skills to do the job properly and the support of what is beginning to look like a majority of the members, not least because they’ve been asked to make their views known, to share their expertise and realise that they have a say in how the club is run.  There’ll be disagreements on details, of course – whatever you do, don’t get embroiled in dress codes or changing shoes in car parks, that’s not the object of this exercise – but, whisper it quietly, there may be a consensus………

Late though it is, I’ve just looked that word up in the dictionary because as I get older I realise that nothing is certain, that the things I thought I knew, the words I was sure I was using correctly, so that other people understood exactly what I meant, led, more often than not, to confusion and misunderstanding.  According to my dictionary (Chambers, 2003), consensus means “agreement of various parts; agreement in opinion; unanimity…..”  Phew.  I think that’s what I thought I meant……

Anyway, yesterday afternoon I spent two hours in a meeting being briefed on what was going on and the time whizzed by!  It’s amazing what you can learn when the right person is doing the teaching/explaining.  At university, I fell asleep in the classes that dealt with administration, how things worked; the practicalities just weren’t my thing but, of course, if the teacher had been more inspiring, even I might have perked up and appreciated that this stuff was important, not boring.  Though there’s no pretending that organisation would ever have been my forte.

I’ll never be the world’s best bridge player – even starting in the womb wouldn’t have helped – but rather to my surprise, after a false start when I thought the game was not for me, I’ve recently become hooked, helped in no small part by the right teacher and the right school, small, relaxed, a bit noisy, rude, funny.  That’s right, bridge is fun, who knew!

Whatever it is, keep persevering.