Not having played in a proper golf tournament for at least a couple of decades means that I have not had the need to crack the spine of the Rules of Golf with any great intent for ten years and more.  In the last week, however, that has changed hugely – not because I’m going to join the Seniors’ Tour – but because of the introduction of the New Rules.  I had familiarising myself with the NRs down as one of my December jobs but, alas, other stuff seemed to get in the way and I was pretty much unaware of many of the nuances until last Monday.

Hosts of clubs up and down the country are holding Rules get-togethers to help folk understand just what has changed and to aid the members in getting to grips with new terminology and procedures.  At Delamere Forest the dubious honour of guiding the women members through this fell to Ruth Whitehead and Jackie Roper.  The hours of reading and preparation they had done so the rest of us wouldn’t have to was immense and they did a great job with a power point presentation, numerous hand-outs and off-the-cuff (and often hilarious) demonstrations.

Apparently there are now 24 rules, all designed to fulfill the stated aim of making golf Faster, Fairer, Simpler, (FFS for short).  That’s a noble aim but I wonder if the powers-that-be have left any room for further tweaking, if required, at a later date?  I ask this with particular reference to the new way to drop a ball, which seems to be the most discussed and most practised of the NRs.  Patricia’s slight knees-bend which she was pondering in last week’s blog is, I understand, a no-no – or at least a careful-careful.  The rule requires the player to drop from knee height and knee height is the height of a player’s knee when in a standing position, so I suppose you could bend your knees as long as you drop the ball from slightly higher than said bent knee?

And what about dropping when standing on a severe slope?  Is the drop from knee height where the player is standing or where it would be were you standing right on the spot where the ball is to be dropped?  Hmm!  I now understand better the herculean and complicated task of trying to simplify something.

And, of course, joking aside, the physical difficulty of dropping from knee height with straight legs is not to be underestimated.  Having undergone back surgery 30-plus years ago I have been consistently exhorted by health practitioners of all persuasions ALWAYS to bend my knees.  So, another dilemma arising from a seemingly straightforward change in the rules.

All in all, the FFS aims of the ruling bodies are admirable and, it seems to me, will be largely successful.  The current chat and general interest stimulated by the rules changes have brought clubs and players together in their collective desire to get their heads around the changes.  I do hope there is room for some slight alterations.  For instance, I’d just change the dropping height of a ball to “from anywhere between knee and shoulder”.

One final point.  As long as I’ve played the game we have done our measuring on the course in the currency of number of clublengths and this has always struck me as odd as we all play with different lengths of clubs.  Why do we not have a standard measure?  Then every player gets the same distance in terms of relief, which strikes me as eminently more fair.  It’s very easy to have a light alignment-stick style measure in your bag for the purpose.  That surely would fulfill one of the stated aims – to be fairer?  Just a thought.

 

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.