It’s not usually my job to do the tips around here but since I’m keen on recycling and my friends and family, with more than a hint of sarcasm, call me the eco-warrior, I’ve decided to match Mo’s tip with one of my own:  plastic bottles are not trash.

That’s the slogan on the side of the collection skip at the local tip, which we’ve been visiting regularly, depositing bags of plastic, including bottles and lots and lots of bottles of the glass variety, an inevitable consequence of a load of wine drinkers visiting an area awash with vineyards, cellar doors and wine shops selling at cellar door prices.  If people are going to put all that hard work and expertise into producing something delicious, it would be rude for a visitor not to have a taste.

We were directed to our particular tip by a woman at the Saturday market who helps local women make a living from old plastic bags.  The women crochet them into baskets of all shapes and sizes and it’s hard to believe that the lovely stuff they produce started out as rubbish.  The Plastic Project aims to transform trash into treasure, gives the women an income and any excess goes towards a feeding programme for disadvantaged children.

The Plastic Project makes good use of all those carrier bags we used to throw away willy-nilly.

One of the things I love is how endlessly creative people are here, with artists and crafters making use of anything and everything that comes to hand.  You’ll find bracelets and earrings (no, I haven’t added to my collection yet) made from safety pins; marvellous, multi-coloured heads of rhino, elephant and kudu made from drinks cans; place mats made from old crisps packets; giraffes made from papier-mâché and painted in gaudy colours; not forgetting the amazing jewellery made from little pieces of ostrich egg, painstaking work to the outside eye.

We had a road trip before this week’s golf and headed east for a couple of days, along part of the Garden Route.   We stayed at the very different towns of Oudtshoorn and Knysna, getting some idea of just how vast and varied the country is but always with mountains, mountains everywhere.  We passed through George, Ernie Els territory and saw the signs to the fabled Fancourt and to George GC, one of the oldest courses in the country.

There was no room for golf clubs on this jaunt but we had brought our bathers and had a dip in the Indian Ocean at Victoria Bay on the stunning (that word again) coastline just south of George.  On the way home we made a stop at Mossel Bay, where everyone assumed we’d come off one of the cruise ships.  How could they have known that Mo would rather walk the length of Africa than spend time on a boat, no matter how grand and stable?  It’s all she can do to get on the Holyhead to Dublin ferry and she will NEVER, EVER, EVER set foot on the Scillonian again, having had to take it from Penzance to the Isles of Scilly because it was too foggy to fly from Land’s End.

Anyway, back to the golf.  We did see a sign to Mossel Bay GC, whose most famous son is Louis Oosthuizen, Open champion in 2010.  He’s also been runner-up in all four major championships, perhaps not the Grand Slam he’d dreamed of but quite a feat nonetheless. We gave a wave and carried on.

We hadn’t been watching any television or listening to the radio, so we were shocked to see charred bush and lots of smoke as we approached the Franschhoek Pass, a few spectacular miles from our digs.

The smoke from the forest fires in the hills above Franschhoek. They’ve been burning for several days now.

There were helicopters trying to douse the flames and fire fighters trying to cope with difficult terrain and fires that were hard to get at.  Families of frightened baboons gathered at the side of the road and a couple of the babies were lucky to dive out of the way of a truck negotiating the bends at speed.  The driver gave a blast on his horn and the baboons all survived that encounter at least.  The heat and the wind have made it difficult to control the fires and there’s a red halo around the peaks at night.

So far, in the town, life goes on, albeit with a wary eye towards the hills and the smell of smoke in our nostrils.

Golf of the week was at Pearl Valley, where one of our number was making her debut.  Mo was hors de combat because of her back and Gillian took the money with a spectacular birdie three at the 8th, our 17th hole.  A warning to all those looking to take her on at Castle Stuart this summer – make sure you get plenty of shots.  We were just sorry that Geoffrey Boycott, whom we’d bumped into at the halfway house and who had given us the benefit of his advice, was not there to see the coup de grace.

Pam playing her first shot at Pearl Valley on a cool morning.

Gill, eagle-eyed, lining up a putt at picturesque Pearl Valley.

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.

Ruth and Jackie, rules gurus, but more importantly, great club members.

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?

This drop gets a thumbs up for accuracy, but not for speeding up play, methinks. And if you don’t want to get your trousers dirty and put a towel down……is that allowed? Or is it building a stance? Oh dear…..!

Does this drop really deserve the thumbs down? Yes, Anne is on her hunkers, but she’s dropping the ball from slightly higher up. Is this OK? Answers please……..

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.

This may be correct under the new rules, but it’s a potential back tweaker. Have your physio on speed dial!

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.

The new Rules are in play at last. Will they speed us up after a slow start thumbing through the book, searching for our reading glasses and pondering procedure?

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.

Could a crane take the creak out of the drop?  Might slow play up a bit though….

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.

Nothing like a few diggers and some high viz jackets to brighten up a grey winter day.

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….

Suzanne Rundle (right), a force to be reckoned with, presents me with a lovely, unexpected trophy: Final Medal, silver division.  Those curtains’ll have to go!

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…….

My effort to capture the much photographed 10th hole at Augusta. Taken with an ipad mini in under three seconds.  No slow play for me!

Everyone knows about the coveted Green Jacket, but here’s the actual Masters Trophy awarded each year to the champion. Probably one of the least recognisable trophies there is in the world of sport.

Portrush’s Ricky Elliott bags his second major of the year. The guy on the right , Brooks Koepka, who finished the year as world No 1, accompanied him through thick and thin.
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Patricia and the great Peter Alliss at the Women’s British Open, doing what they both do best….talking!

Media centres were Patricia’s workplace for so many years.  Now my home for the majors.

Catching up with the great Dame Laura Davies, fresh from her victory in the first US Senior Women’s Open Championship. [Thanks to Sarah Bennett for the pic]

A joyful Johanna Gustavsson jumping skywards after clinching the bronze medal for Sweden in the mixed team event at Gleneagles. [Frank Kruger]

All ease and grace. Patricia’s turn to jump for joy….on discovering the removal of the three ill-placed gorse bushes that had for years gobbled up numerous tee shots at the 8th hole at Whittington Heath.

Still in the game:  Tiger Woods at the USPGA in St Louis. He would win on the PGA tour for the 80th time before the year’s end.

My favourite victory of the year:  Becky Morgan, pride of Wales, wins for the first time after 18 years as a professional. [Tristan Jones LET]

Paris in autumn time.  An unforgettable Ryder Cup in so many ways.  Allez les bleus!

The European Club is one of my very favourite places in golf and I love the whole golfing experience there. My pal Gill Stewart, however, wasn’t that impressed with their club fitting service!

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.

Royal Portrush – a warm welcome awaits the world of golf next July.