Well, where to start?  With the US PGA golf I suppose.  Nothing too deep.  The PYP (Pick Your Pro) reminder came out, I double-checked my picks and burst out laughing.  You get three for the majors and mine are, in order, McIlroy, Theegala, Koepka.

Bear in mind that these choices were made many months ago and there was no way I was ever going to pick Rory to win the Masters but I had to choose him for one of the biggies.  So Quail Hollow, described by some of his peers as “Rory’s Country Club” because he’s won there so often, was a bit of a no-brainer.  And after his Masters win there was, of course, talk, not just of the career Grand Slam but of the all-in-a-row, in-a-year slam, the Holy Grail above and beyond all others.

So Rory, at odds with his driver, his Excalibur, hooking it towards the water on far too many occasions but not getting wet, just in difficulties that left him floundering well behind the leaders, had a round that almost equalled my excrescence in the Tuesday medal.  Almost, but not quite.  I had more double bogeys and a triple or two and he did at least start with a birdie.  Just in case you’re interested (ho! ho!), I did manage three pars that’ll do nicely for the eclectic, especially since one of them was at my least favourite hole at Whittington Heath.

Back to the main event, the sainted one is not quite out of the championship – a lot depends on how he gets on in round two – but even though he’s my chosen one, I’m not holding out much hope.

At least he made it to the first tee, unlike Sahith Theegala, who withdrew before the off with a neck injury.  Alex Smalley, his replacement, took full advantage of his opportunity and opened with a 67, four under par, well in contention.  Rory had a 74 and my other choice, Brooks Koepka, three times a PGA champion, had a 75.

Strange things happen but I’d look elsewhere for this year’s PGA champion if I were you.

Last Sunday, a friend and I went to watch the mighty Spurs – Europa League finalists in case you hadn’t heard – play Crystal Palace – FA Cup finalists, who take on Manchester City at Wembley tomorrow (Saturday 17th May).  My mate, a true Tottenham tragic, had flown in from Dublin (easier than trekking from Lichfield) as a treat and we were treated to – dross.

We were abysmal and well beaten but hope springs eternal for our final against Manchester United in Bilbao on Wednesday. Goodness knows why!  COYS.  Come on you Spurs. I’m not going to Bilbao but I’m still having anxiety dreams about not getting there – or anywhere else – on time.

My being late won’t come as any surprise to any number of people but I can’t remember being late for a tee time – and I think I only ever missed one deadline, which was something to do with thunderstorms, power cuts and things well beyond my control.  I still felt sick and thought I’d be sacked but survived, somehow.

Mo’s the one with the dreams but a few nights ago I had one so vivid that I had to get up and write it down.  It still doesn’t make any sense but here goes…bear in mind that reading on is not obligatory.

For some reason I was playing Bernhard Langer.  We’re both on the green and  he holes for a three.  I’m closer to the pin but my ball is buried below the surface in the kind of strangling spaghetti stuff that Harry Potter and his mates and yer man from Raiders Of The Lost Ark get entangled in.  For some reason best known to herself Mo, my caddie, hands me a 5-iron – I don’t even own one these days.

I’m standing over the ball, waggling this club, knowing I haven’t a hope in hell of making contact when I realise that I can declare an unplayable lie and take a drop.  It’s an interminable time before that light-bulb moment  and then, thank goodness, I wake up – and write it all down.

This is ridiculous.  I don’t have dreams like that.  Every now and again, I’m trying to get somewhere and can’t find something crucial – car key; passport; accreditation; house key; whatever.  The sort of thing that reminds me why Dai always packed his work bag the night before and put it by the front door with his badge (accreditation) on top.  All ready to go, no panicked scrabbling about in the morning.

All pretty mundane, absolutely nothing blockbusterish, no monsterish octopus-armed, woman-strangling  plants.  Where on earth did that come from and why on earth was the sainted Bernhard dragged in to the whole gruesome scenario?

In the end I put it down to eating cheese so smelly that it made the fridge unplayable, then the house, then the garden.  It ended up in a bin in the park, several hundred yards/metres away.  Phew.  All visitors can breathe again.  Double phew.

You know I’m always going on about decluttering and sorting the place out, much to the amusement of my friends and family?  Well, this week, somebody who was checking out my electrics (the house’s, which are at least, it turns out, in some sort of working order), remarked that they’d never seen an attic with so little in it…

Validation of sorts, surely…

 

And most of these are going too.

 

There is a patio there somewhere…

 

And if it all gets too much and you feel overwhelmed, take a step back and reset.

Well, Maureen’s worst nightmare has come to pass:  it’s Manchester United against Tottenham Hotspur in the final of the UEFA Europa League; Brian (husband) against Patricia (sister).  “I think I’ll emigrate,” she said in a message complete with emojis laughing hysterically.

Last week I was cross with Spurs for conceding a late goal at home to Bodo/Glimt, who were relishing the second leg at their place north of the Arctic Circle.  They’re hard to beat there and fancied their chances despite being 3-1 down from the first leg but my lot, ever unpredictable, managed a composed, professional 2-nil win.  Who’d have thunk it?

The players, soaked from some persistent fine Norwegian wetting rain, celebrated wildly with the 400 or so drenched supporters who’d made the trek north.  Their section, like most of the neat wee stadium, was uncovered – no brollies allowed – but they didn’t care; it had been worth the detour.

United, like us woeful in the league, beat Athletic Bilbao 4-1 at Old Trafford, 7-1 on aggregate.  Bad and all as they are, they’re more used to finals than us and are due a win, having lost to us three times this season already…This is the big one and I don’t want to be the unhappy one.

I really, really want to be one of those fans jumping up and down like demented eejits as her team lifts a trophy.

Should have gone to Tamworth.

I did buy a ticket (cost £5 plus booking fee) with the intention of going to watch the mighty Lambs play Burton Albion in the final of the Birmingham Senior Cup but I hadn’t done the blog in time, I had logs to unload (special offer that proved irresistible but unwise when I’m the only lumberjack) and I thought I’d better have something to eat and suffer with Spurs after all.

Anyway, Tamworth won 4-nil and my mate Chris (not playing but watching) got to jump up and down like a demented eejit and lift what’s reckoned to be one of the oldest trophies in world football, dating back to the 1880s or thereabouts.

Unkindly, I hope Chris, a Man Utd fan, is not smiling in a couple of weeks, on Wednesday 21st, the date of the final.  To add to the complications, his wife Essie is a Spurs fan,  so there’ll be a bit of family tension there too.

And there’s very, very bad news for Mo because I’ve just checked the diary and on that date she, Brian and I are all  due to be away together, at the Cambridge Beer Festival…Oops.

Moving swiftly on, I was walking back from the post box the other morning when I was greeted by a woman (unknown to me) walking her dog:  “Do you have naturally curly hair?” she said, without preamble.

“Yes,” sez I, resisting the temptation to burst out laughing at the thought of finding myself in a Peanuts cartoon alongside Charlie Brown, Snoopy and friends.

“I have to have a perm for mine to be like that,” she said, a touch mournfully.  “I’ve got naturally straight hair.”

“Nothing wrong with straight hair,” I said, having often longed for just such a thing.  “Mine just goes this way.”

And we continued on our separate ways.

The exchange, completely random and unexpected, still makes me smile.  It’s one of the joys of getting older:  she didn’t think her opening gambit the least bit odd; she was just curious; and I thought it perfectly reasonable to reply and not think it strange at all, just funny.

Our post is now collected at 0900, so I’d dutifully tootled round to send a birthday card, only to discover that there was no rush because the intended recipient had taken himself off to Paris for two nights.  He and a couple of mates were there to watch their beloved Arsenal play Paris St Germain in the semi-final second leg of the Champions League.  It was a joyous occasion – but not for the Gunners, who lost 2-1, 3-1 on aggregate.

Back to the drawing board, a journey familiar to most of us.

It was back to the fairways for me as I re-discovered the golf course this week.  Having had an annoyingly dodgy knee for a while earlier in the year, I found it easy not to play golf, especially when the weather was manky and uninviting.  Then, a friend sent a message regaling me with details of his latest round, including a hole-in-one (only his second ever in a long career):  “a 6-iron like a missile and a kindly kick off the back of a bunker”.  For the record, it was the 13th at Cairndhu, 156 yards.

Suitably inspired, I played ten holes early on Monday morning   with a friend and 18 in the Ping 4BBB on Tuesday.  My partner and I had a respectable 36 points and we brought in the winners, with a whopping 47 points.  They both played beautifully and would have given a Rory/Scottie combo a run for their money – off handicap of course.

Finally, to finish, another Charles Schulz classic – he was a keen golfer.

 

 

Goodness, where to start?  What a week the sister and I have had back in the ole country.  I’m beginning to wonder why we wait for a reason to plan a trip back to Portstewart and Portrush, the places we grew up and the places that now seem to be a bucket-list venue for anyone in the world who has ever swung a golf club.

I don’t know why, but I’m always amazed at the number of folk we both still know back home.  Perhaps it isn’t really so peculiar to be amazed – after all Patricia hasn’t lived in Ireland for forty-five years and I’ve been in England for forty, but the golfing family is a nomadic one and, seemingly at every turn at those two famous old clubs, we were running into friends and colleagues from both sides of the Atlantic, never mind both sides of the Irish sea.

First things first, however.  It was a special occasion that enticed us back, namely the unveiling of an Ulster History Circle Blue Plaque at the Ladies’ Clubhouse at Royal Portrush golf club.  The plaque is to commemorate the astonishing exploits of May Hezlet, a teenage sensation, who won the Irish Championship five times between 1899 and 1908 and also added the extraordinary tally of three British Championships to her resume.

A trailblazer for women in every way, May retired from championship golf at the age of 27 to pay more attention to her wifely duties to her clergyman husband, but she continued to pack a great deal into golf, giving back at club level and remaining as President of the Ladies’ Branch of Royal Portrush right up until 1951.

When Patricia and I were introduced to this grand, thoroughly irritating, old game in the mid-to-late sixties there was (and still is) a flourishing junior golf programme at Portrush, so Dad joined us as members.  I think I was nine, but I clearly remember all the fun in that iconic little clubhouse with a portrait of May Hezlet looking down on us from one of the walls.  So, in a way, I always knew of her and her amazingly talented golfing family.  I never dreamed, however, that one day I’d receive a letter from her sister, Violet, who at the time of this correspondence was 97 years of age.

The year was 1980 and Violet was sending her congratulations, through me, to the Irish team, of which I’d been a member, on winning the Home Internationals.  That was our first win in the Home International series since 1907 when Violet and her famous sister May (by then Mrs Ross) had both played.  She was so excited at our victory and I was privileged to have a little bit of correspondence with this wonderful woman before her death in 1982.  One of the two letters I received from her is shown below.

Having treasured my small, but tangible, connection with these extraordinary golfing women for almost half a century I was delighted to meet up again with Susan Hezlet, a great-niece of May, who had flown over from Edinburgh for the blue plaque ceremony.  We had been in the kindergarten together and I was thrilled to be able to present my two precious letters, complete with envelopes, stamps and postdates, back to the family.  For me it was a full-circle moment.

There is quite rightly a lengthy and arduous process to go through in order to be awarded a precious blue plaque and many, many folk from the Ladies’ Branch of Royal Portrush put in long hours of work to ensure a successful outcome.  Our pal Kath Stewart-Moore acknowledges she is considered the “history nerd of the Ladies’ Branch” and while she will be uncomfortable at being singled out there’s no doubt her research into May Hezlet went a long way to bringing her character alive for golfers and non-golfers alike….And isn’t it always fun to make your friends a little uncomfortable anyway?!

So, very well done to Kath and all at the club for a brilliant day and the successful culmination of more than five years of work.

Patricia and I had our usual, delightfully busy time on our return to the Emerald Isle with various rendezvous planned with friends and family.  We surpassed ourselves on this occasion, however.

Beaches walked – check.  Four in total:  Portstewart, Castlerock, White Rocks, Portballintrae.

Courses and clubhouses visited – check.  Three in total: Castlerock, Portstewart and the two at Portrush, so I guess you could say there were four.

Irish delicacies sampled – check.  There were several:  veda (a malty bread for the uninformed), Tayto crisps, Guinness and Black Bush.  Hmm, perhaps not our healthiest diet but an absolute requirement when back home.

Most savoured of all, however, was the craic.  It runs like a seam through the people of Ireland and is magnified when groups of pals get together and it was so much fun to be back with those friends.  I did ask Patricia at one stage – “shall we move back here?”  She didn’t say no.

I think the first move is to plan more frequent visits and then the second may be to work on my Scottish better half.

We’ll start in July with the Open.

In a highly unusual move, this bit of the blog is starting with golf.  It’s not golf that has anything at all to do with me – except in a roundabout family heritage sort of a way – but it was irresistible and many thanks to Brian Keogh’s indispensable Irish Golf Desk for providing the details and to Ben Brady of Inpho for the photos; can’t have been easy keeping the camera lenses fit for purpose, as you’ll see.

In this neck of the fairways we’re always interested in the West of Ireland Championship (sponsored these days by the Connolly Motor Group) because Dad grew up playing at Rosses Point – officially known as The County Sligo Golf Club and one of the world’s great courses (no bias here).  God’s Own Country it was called at home and the weather was always glorious, sun beaming down on Ben Bulben and never a cloud in sight and never a gale to make standing upright well-nigh impossible.  No mention of the home internationals there when the wee bit of a breeze nearly ripped the car door off its hinges…

Well, I had to laugh – and read on – when the report of this year’s final a few days ago started:  “Schoolboy Dylan Holmes overcame APOCALYPTIC [my captials] weather conditions and a spirited comeback from the battle-hardened Colm Campbell to become the youngest winner….since a 16-year old Rory McIlroy [whatever became of him!] in 2006.”

Dylan, tousle-haired but dry in the clubhouse with the precious trophy, is 18 and a member at Greystones GC and posted a series of firsts with his 2 and 1 victory over his seasoned Warrenpoint opponent:  it was his first men’s championship, so his first West and he became the first Greystones member to win the title.  “It’s incredible,” he said.  “I didn’t really have any expectations coming in this weekend.  I am just so happy.

“That was a brilliant match.  I was really nervous coming down the stretch there.  I am so happy it’s over.”

The youngster was 4 under par and 4 up after 11 before the weather deteriorated and “heavy rain and 50 kmph gusts lashed the finalists from the south-east for the final six holes of a memorable final that will only add to the lore of  ‘The West’.”  Campbell, a veteran of 37, fought back to set Greystones nerves jangling before succumbing on the 17th.

In years to come, they’ll all probably struggle to remember the rain – or perhaps their memories will remain sharper than mine.  Every morning of the Ryder Cup at the K Club, I got dressed and put on my waterproofs and didn’t take them off until we got back home at night;  but it’s not the rain that I remember, it’s the emotion and the excitement and then, oh yes, I think it was a wee bit wet…

Talking of rain, that brings to mind mud, mud, glorious mud and a wee item spotted in the easyJet Traveller mag on the flight over to Belfast – flying from Liverpool you’re just about up in the air long enough to flick through a few pages.  It was about an exhibition at the London Museum Docklands called Secrets of the Thames and it’s about mudlarking and the treasures unearthed at low tide over the centuries.  Wonder when they’ll find the original Henry Cotton Salver, flung into the river in a bin bag many moons ago…It was solid silver so will probably be melted down not put on display.

Anyway, the exhibition is on until March 2026, so there’s plenty of time to book ourselves in, though remember:  Time and Tide wait for no man – or woman.

The salver is undoubtedly lost for ever but another iconic piece of golfing silverware was on display at Portrush recently, reminding everybody that the Open Championship will be back in Antrim this July.  We can’t wait.

I haven’t been a devotee of previous iterations of Race Across The World, not sure why but had to tune in from the start this time around because Brian Mole, a member of Whittington Heath, is competing alongside his brother Melvyn against four other couples.  They started from the Great Wall of China, just north of Beijing and are heading for the southern tip of India, cash and maps (paper) in hand but no mobiles and no credit cards.  It’s quite an undertaking  – don’t know how people get chosen – and Brian and Mel weren’t last to reach the first checkpoint, despite deciding on an interesting, inland route that provided brilliant, never-to-be-repeated family snaps.  Brian admitted to being used to a 5-star lifestyle and Melvyn had opted for a wheeled suitcase instead of a rucksack but they got stuck in and ended up laughing like drains together.  Fantastic. I’m now addicted.  It’s on BBC1 and iPlayer.

Finally, I can’t resist using this fantastic photograph by Michael Dunn, who was a finalist in the sports’ section of a recent comp.  It was liberated from the Sunday Times mag by a friend and is just brilliant.  The caption reads:  “Martha and Teresa, maintenance workers at La Paz Golf Club in Bolivia, spend their Mondays off in traditional ‘chola’ clothing and get a round in at one of the world’s highest golf courses.”