Money is very important, particularly if you haven’t got any – and it’s probably also really, really important if you’ve got a lot of it but these days I no longer pay much attention to the money on offer at golf tournaments.  Shedloads.  That’s the shorthand.  Lots.  (I’m talking about the main men’s tours, especially the US PGA Tour.)  It’s a bit like top, top footballers – two tops seem to be the minimum these days – whose earnings are so off the charts that one can only wonder how many Lamborghinis one person can drive or how many pairs of ripped jeans or cashmere beanies one man can wear.

It’s another world.  And a consumer society does need consumers after all.  At a vastly lower level, admittedly, I confess I’m also doing my best to keep the economy moving.  I’ve splashed out on a new telly, having consigned my last model, a cast-off for which I was very grateful, to a charity shop.  I’ve also just signed up to Sky Sports for the next three months – £20 per month via NOW TV – and it’s beginning to look as though there’ll be hardly any live sport on offer as events are postponed or cancelled or moved behind closed doors.  Any chance of my money back?

If you’re a professional player, golf, or whatever it is you play, is your job, so the money is important to you.  It’s your livelihood after all, not just a game – not a game at all, probably.  So the top, top golfers will undoubtedly be inclined to think that bigger and bigger purses will mean that things are getting better and better.  And bigger purses are just what they’re going to get after the PGA Tour announced “landmark domestic media rights deals” with ViacomCBS, Comcast/NBC Sports Group, Disney and ESPN+.

No numbers were disclosed but Jay Monahan, the commissioner, said, “We were extremely pleased with the interest we received from the market….The nine-year deals [from 2022-2030] will put us in a position to significantly increase player earnings, deliver more value to our tournaments and sponsors and ultimately allow us to continue to grow our charitable footprint.  Additionally, we are now able to reinvest in our sport in a way never before possible, including production, personnel and technology and are well positioned to best serve and grow our fanbase in the years to come.”

The proposed Premier League Golf project, not welcomed by the tours, who are unsurprisingly in favour of the status quo, also seems to be about more money for the few and I’m not convinced that’s the best thing for the game in general.  All in all, I’m agin a massive gap between the rich and the rest.  And while we’re on this subject:  why do the poor have to be always with us?…..

This train of thought all stemmed from watching the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week.  Conditions on the last day at Bay Hill were so tough as to be almost brutal and unlike some other viewers I was captivated; it was compelling stuff, watching some of the best players in the world coping (or not) with conditions they rarely encounter.  They were having to play proper golf, not an outdoor version of darts.  Marc Leishman, an affable Australian who is a very, very good player, holed a sizeable putt for a par 4 at the last to finish second on his own.  It earned him a million dollars.

A million dollars.  Blimey.  I really hadn’t been paying attention, had I?  One million.  For coming second.  No wonder players keep working away, plodding on when, years ago, they’d have moved on and earned their living somewhere else.  Now, if you can reach the right level, the money’s so good, you don’t have to win too often to be more than comfortably off.

I don’t know how much Tyrrell Hatton made for winning – my head was spinning at the thought of a million for second – but he’s now 22nd in the world rankings and that’s a bit of a money-spinner in itself  He also earned himself a precious red cardi and a couple of years exemption on the world’s most lucrative tour, so he should be made for life as long as he keeps his victory celebrations within bounds…..

I played nine holes at Whittington Heath last Friday and won £1, so I’m very grateful that my state pension kicked in on the same day.  If I’d been a drinker of water throughout my life, I’d have been a much richer woman but I like to think of The Wine Society, a not-for-profit organisation, as a good cause and I’m sure that Harry Vardon, winner of six Opens and one US Open, once told a woman from the Temperance Society that he’d never been beaten by a teetotaller….

I think the first prize this week at the Players Championship at Sawgrass is $2.7 million, the biggest purse in PGA Tour history but the atmosphere will be a bit muted because there’ll be no spectators from today onwards – coronavirus precautions.  They’ll probably allow the telly cameras in to record proceedings, not least because, as Bobby Jones said, there’s not much point performing great deeds if there’s no one there to report it.  And it’s not nearly as much fun if there’s no one there to applaud.

Anyway, on a more domestic level, you’ll be glad to hear that now that my floor seems to be sorted, the boiler has started leaking, so who knows whether I’ll be around to blog again next week.  Life’s a gas.

I include this pic because it always makes me smile.  Bill, a fellow member of the AGW and a very good golfer, died a week ago.  He knew golf inside out – instruction was his forte – and he was the inspiration behind Today’s Golfer magazine.  Condolences to his family and friends.

 

 

Paul Azinger, who now commentates for NBC, is that rare being in the modern world:  a winning US Ryder Cup captain.  He is also a wind-up merchant par excellence but the worrying thing is that he might well have been serious on Sunday when he intimated that Tommy Fleetwood, in contention to win the Honda Classic in Florida, would be making a big step up by winning on the US tour for the first time.  Fleetwood, a winner of significant events elsewhere and runner-up in the 2018 US Open, played some ropey shots towards the end, to finish third behind Im Sung-jae, a South Korean who looks like a major winner in waiting.

More of Azinger later but this week’s blog has a confession to make, a shameful admission for someone who was brought up in Portstewart, on a coastline battered by Atlantic winds, a place where trees were in short supply (probably still are, even with global warming) and where gardeners were stubborn, determined people not to be messed with.  How our neighbours, keen, diligent, ever-optimistic gardeners, put up with Hamlet, our adorable but wayward, untrained golden cocker spaniel, rampaging through their lovingly-tended patches, is beyond belief.

I cringe at the memory.  Hamlet – Dad was fond of Shakespeare – would turn three circles in our front garden, then set off on his circuit.  He’d leap over the low wall, across the road into the field opposite, tear round it, then back up the road and into a garden two or three doors up, round, through the fence – just three wire strands in those days – and down through more gardens, completing the loop several times.  There were some complaints I believe – that nearly came up as complants and, my goodness, more than enough plants were compromised if not uprooted.  Mortifying, as even our mother, who loathed that word, had to admit when we looked back in horror years later.

That thoughtlessness – not overlooking the lack of canine control – is pretty shameful but what I’m admitting to, reluctantly, is that I fear I’ve become a fair-weather golfer.   It is, I’m assured by Mo, obligatory to mention golf in this blog, so that’s what I’m doing, even though there’s been very little golf in my life recently.  There’s been a fair bit of golf elsewhere, of course but since my telly has now gone to the charity shop, I haven’t seen a lot of it – nothing of the telly, if you’re being picky and pedantic and very little of the golf.

It’s been mostly wild, wet, cold and pretty miserable weatherwise, my swing’s been more dodgy than ever, with a turn that’s non-existent and I’ve being thinking about other things.  Friends, some of them a lot older than I am, have been out there swinging womanfully, a couple have even won through to the next round of the Daily Mail Foursomes, winning away at Beau Desert, at the 20th.  Proper, competitive golf, in Staffordshire, at this time of year!   Australia, California, Florida, Oman, OK but middle England?  In March?  Blimey, well done girls.

Mo did persuade me to go with her to the driving range at Clays, in Wrexham, last Saturday and we shared a bucket of balls as she worked on sorting out her backswing.  I videoed her swing for her and as usual she gave me some sage advice and made me think that even I could improve, given time, a bit of sun and, most important and unlikely of all, a smidgeon of commitment.  Now, where did I put those clubs?…..

For those of you who follow the blog (is that the right terminology?), you know that not remembering where I put things is one of my specialities.  It’s not a particularly useful skill (?) but I’m good at mislaying things that are of some importance.  My passport is one of those items.  After we came back from South Africa last year, at about this time, I had my passport.  Obviously.  I must have had it.  I got home.  Then it disappeared.

I hunted and hunted, checking box after box, drawer after drawer, ignoring my brother-in-law’s suggestions to report it lost and apply for a replacement.  It MUST be in the house somewhere.  Eventually, in September or October, with a rather unedifying screech of triumph, I found it.  Hallelujah.   Later I looked more closely.  It had expired in July…..

I used to travel week in, week out, passport in travel wallet, always to hand.  I’d found the passport but where, oh where, was the travel wallet?  No sign of it.  Strange.  These days I don’t wander too far, so I wasn’t in a rush to replace the passport, plenty of time to do that – unless I was the unlikely winner of ITV’s comp to go to Rome for the England/Italy match at the end of the Six Nations.  Lovely hotel, oodles of spending dosh, three nights in Rome, goodness gracious me, worth watching England for……Good thing I didn’t enter now that the coronavirus is disrupting everything.

I’ve been very exercised recently with the saga of my floor, as all my long-suffering friends and family know.  Much-vaunted Karndean rippling like the ocean wave, making me feel a bit queasy, like Captain Pugwash ( I don’t think there are any younger readers so no need to explain).  John Lewis, my insurers, Which? recommended, weren’t interested but, eventually, I had to give in and arrange for the whole lot to be replaced.  Different flooring, from Howdens, beautifully laid by Stacey and Simon (B E Central Construction), looks like a real success, fingers crossed.

Anyway, the furniture had to go into storage and that’s when I found the travel wallet, under the cushion on my Ikea rocker – no longer the hiding place of choice, potential burglars please note.  And in the travel wallet there was a passport, expiry date 2028…..

Thursday is meant to be blog day but yesterday included tai chi (and tea), washing machine de-gunging (furniture and household appliances returned on Wednesday), bridge in the afternoon (what was I thinking – and we were stuffed; didn’t get the cards) and Tom Lehrer (irresistible despite the day) in the evening.  That’s life, thank goodness.

Finally, I will just say that Azinger, who really shouldn’t wind nice (but competitive) people like Fleetwood up in a Ryder Cup year, is a bit antediluvian if he thinks that to be regarded as really good you have to win on the US PGA Tour.  It’s a good idea if you want to be disgustingly, mega, mega (in golfing terms) rich and guaranteed shedloads of world ranking points and some decent weather occasionally but not vital otherwise.

Of course, the PGA Tour, which likes to exert a Kremlin-like control over things – and it’s not the only organisation guilty of that – will probably lay claim to all the majors because they’re on its schedule even though they’re not its responsibility and are run by somebody else.

On reflection, though, nothing much has changed over the years:  all non-Americans have to win in America to prove  (to the Americans) that they’re better than just good because that’s where three of the majors are played – and don’t forget, it’s only a small percentage of Americans who have passports….

Tom Lehrer could write a song about it.

This is not really the best way to start a blog that you’d like people to read but I’m cream-crackered and can hardly keep my eyes open to write.  Also, I’ve just sent the fortifying red wine flying over the adjacent jigsaw puzzle – 1000 customised pieces, unique, unobtainable anywhere else; a bit like defiling an original artwork.  A less committed blogger would give up the ghost and head to her bed but I’ll plough on.

Also, there’s the last-thing-round-the-block-pee-and-poo dog walk to undertake.  Whatever the weather, however frail the trainee dog-sitter is feeling after a few days in charge of the sainted Alice, out we must go.  It took three circuits for Alice to do the business the first night – we came in after two, frozen, then tried again half an hour later.  Whenever owner Sue is in charge it’s one circuit max but Alice knows when there’s a novice at the end of her lead….

She’s sweet, she’s delightful, she’s very well trained – and she’s running rings round me.  “You’re like the grandparents or the baby-sitter,” a sympathetic friend said, “you’re there so she can push the boundaries.”  Alice, a lean, speedy working lab, isn’t interested in chasing squirrels, ducks, swans, gulls or pigeons – and, sensibly, she also drew the line at a monstrous cat we encountered on one of our nighttime sorties; it was almost bigger than both of us put together and even in the dark you could see that it oozed attitude.

Alice’s thing, whenever she’s with owner Sue, is to chase the ball and bring it back, drop it and chase it again, time after time after time…..With me, Alice might retrieve once, perhaps twice, just to tease, then head off, ball in mouth, wherever the scents take her.  She’ll check every now and again to see that I’m trailing in her wake and zigzag to the far reaches of the park, giving me the heebie-jeebies as her nose takes her ever nearer the dreaded A51, a busy road that is no respecter of distracted dogs who are off the lead.

Is it any wonder that I’m a nervous wreck, emotionally exhausted?

I’ve tried the “I’m in charge” farrago/Farage/fraud – no dictionary to hand to check correct usage, sorry and when I picked up what I thought was Roget’s Thesaurus, I found it was a novel by Rosie Thomas, called Lovers & Newcomers.  Might be worth a read though:  “…..beautiful, effortless prose….shows a rare compassion and a real understanding of the nature of love” according to The Times;  Marie Claire called it “a treat”; Emma Lee-Potter (Express) said, “I read it in one delicious go, tears pouring down my face.  You cannot fail to be moved.”  To such tributes does the blog aspire.

Anyway, back to Alice, who dismissed my attempt at assertiveness and kept going her own way.  Distraught – and blooming tired after a week (a slight exaggeration but it was at least two days) of early morning walks, afternoon walks and the strain of evening trots – I sat down in the middle of the park and put my head in my hands wondering how I was going to explain the whole sorry saga to owner Sue.  Would emigrating be the only answer?  I looked up to see Alice hurtling towards me, perhaps anxious that I’d fallen or was ill or whatever but, hallelujah, she came close enough for me to grab her collar and put on her lead.  We lived to fight another day – though whether that trick will work again, who knows?

Dog-training Sue (there are a lot of Sues in my life) is a no-nonsense woman who clocked me at once for the dilettante, dithering, will-I-won’t-I?, it-might-be-nice – possibly – would-be dog-owner that I am but I think I’ll brave her scorn and see if she’ll train me up sans chien.  If this week’s taught me anything, it’s that I need to know more about dogs!!

Mind you, this hands-on stint has been an eye-opener, a bit of a crash course in canines and I now know, for instance, that Alice, who loves carrots, is also a fan of McKenna bread (oats, pumpkin seeds and yoghurt), two slices nicked when my back was turned;  I may be dozy but I’d just put the bread back in the fridge and the knife was beside the bread board, so, no, it wasn’t my imagination.

Alice also likes a cuppa after her afternoon walk but it has to be at the right time.  On Wednesday, because I had an appointment with the osteopath at half past three, we had an early afternoon walk and I made us both a cuppa when we came in about two o’clock.  I drank mine but Alice looked at hers, turned up her nose and left the bowl alone.  Wrong time.  Yesterday, presented with a bowl of tea about half past three or just after, she lapped it up with gusto.

Another must is never to leave the house without at least three poo bags in your pocket and a couple of treats – just in case.  Life is one long learning curve.

Alice takes top billing this week but I’ll pay proper tribute next week to the great Mickey Wright, who has died at the age of 85.  The Californian was widely regarded as one of the best golfers ever to play the game, with a swing to die for – Ben Hogan was an admirer – and she won 82 tournaments, 13 of them majors, before leaving the stage in 1969, at the age of 34, although she did come back to win the Dinah Shore in 1973.

If anyone was a legend, Wright was but although she never sought the limelight when she retired, she was kind and courteous and not averse to talking.  I rang her once, about what I now know not – Annika perhaps – and was so captivated by her voice, deep and mellow, that I barely took in a word she said!

Imagine how chuffed Maureen and I were when Doug Forde, a man of golf and a friend of Mickey’s, said that he used to send her our blog every week and that she loved reading them…..Gobsmacked; chuffed; astounded…..No words begin to cover it.

Apparently Mickey sometimes had to reach for the dictionary to check a word or two, so, in her memory, here’s a word, from Wordsmith’s word of the day.  I doubt Mickey would have known it because it’s the antithesis of how she was.  It’s ‘fanfaronade’, meaning either bragging or blustering behaviour or, more simply, fanfare.  She certainly deserved the latter – and perhaps that’s why she retired so early, worn out with all the expectation and adulation.

Our condolences to her family and friends.

 

 

 

As I write this [before Storm Brendan got to work – ed.] the sun is streaming through the window as this unseasonal mild weather continues. The resultant hotbed of germs and endless weeks of a bad throat and racking coughing has left me feeling more than a little washed out and my normal New Year get-up-and-go has, well, got up and gone.  Feeling a little under the weather is a great conscience-salver for someone like me who feels guilty at lazing about and doing very little.  Thankfully, the golf world, for me, is endlessly fascinating and I’ve filled the hours with catching up on all things golfy, including compiling a bit of a personal wish list for golf in 2020.  For what it’s worth, here it is – and in no particular order.

1  Rory to win at Augusta.

Only five players have won all four majors, thus completing what has become known as the career grand slam.  They are Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.  It’s nine years since Rory blew a four-shot lead at the Masters (the only major currently absent from his CV), imploding in spectacular fashion on what many consider to be a course that is tailor-made for his game.  This will be Rory’s sixth attempt at annexing this reluctant major to his haul.  Imagine that 18th green at Augusta were this most personable of Irishmen finally to conquer his Everest!  There’s more than a degree of self-interest in this item on my wish list as I will, once again, be on  Augusta’s green and pleasant grounds in April.  So, a green jacket for Rors in 2020 with me having a front row commentary position – oh, yes please!

2  A healthy and prosperous Ladies’ European Tour.

Towards the end of last year the LPGA (Ladies’ Professional Golf Association) and the LET (Ladies’ European Tour) formed an alliance to drive women’s professional golf with the principal goal of increasing playing opportunities in Europe.  This good news has been further supplemented by the latest announcement that the R&A, as well as the men’s European Tour, have committed to helping this newly formed joint venture.  The R&A have long been supporters of the women’s game in Europe, quietly funding the tour through some very lean times.  This, however, is different.  We now have several of the game’s major bodies committing to opening doors to influential contacts with a view to increasing prize funds, television exposure and opportunities for women and girls in golf in Europe.  This news gladdens my heart and Marta Dotti, the chair of the LET, has steered an admirable course to get this far.  Already highly regarded in the game for her playing, coaching and administrative roles at the highest level, Marta is facing arguably her greatest golfing challenge yet.  I feel more optimistic about the future of the women’s game in Europe than I have for decades.  Go Marta!

3  A Curtis Cup victory for GB&I over the USA at Conwy in June.

The bad news is the Americans have won nine out of the last eleven contests.  The good news is that GB&I have triumphed the last two times they have hosted the event and the stunning links at Conwy, a very un-American layout, should be the perfect backdrop for the home team for the contest.  Never underestimate your opponents but it’s unlikely too many of the visitors will be familiar with the type of golf required by this gem of a course.  For anyone fortunate enough to have played Curtis Cup there is always the opportunity to rekindle friendships that were made eons ago.  It’s a lovely feeling to have a connection with so many of the greats of the game and to feel part of a very special club.  I’ll be there cheering from the sidelines.

4  Repair pitchmarks.

If you’re lucky enough to be able to hit a green with a shot good enough to make a pitchmark,  please repair it and mend an extra one as well.  It really does make a huge difference to the course – the greenkeping staff will love you – and it is a courtesy we should all be extending to each other.

5  Reduce maximum number of clubs to 10.

It’ll make you a better player as you will have to learn how to play half- and three-quarter shots and you should be quicker – fewer options in the club selection department.  A win-win.

6  Ban golf carts/buggies.

Unless you have a medical condition that means you cannot play without a cart, get out and walk.  I don’t care that your golf facility wants cart revenue.  See the bigger picture here.  Encourage people to walk and get fitter – they’ll live longer, be members for longer and spend more in the club and the pro’s shop.  This is not a country that suffers from intolerably high summer temperatures so it isn’t essential to have a freezer chest of your favourite beverage along for the duration of your game.  And carts make the pace of play drop like a stone.  An additional bonus is that without carts there is no need for cart paths, which are a blight on the golfing landscape.  Dai Davies, my late brother-in-law and golf correspondent of The Guardian,  once described cart paths as the “condoms of golf”.  In his opinion neither increased the pleasure of the activity involved!

Play well in 2020.  You don’t have to be as fit or as fierce or as talented as Leona Maguire (who’s got her game face on in the featured pic), just get out there and enjoy the game.