I doubt there’ll be a more emotional event anywhere in golf this week than at Chicago Golf Club where some of the greats of the game gathered for the inaugural US Senior Women’s Open and JoAnne Carner, aged 79, hit the opening drive.

Carner, who had a long and distinguished amateur career before turning professional at the age of 30, always played golf for the fun and the challenge and as usual she had everyone in stitches at the welcome dinner with her growling, deadpan, throwaway delivery.  “I’ve waited 29 years for this,” she said, “and I don’t want to have DNF (did not finish) beside my name – but I might have ROB (run out of balls).  It’s tough but I couldn’t pick a better golf course.”

Chicago GC dates from 1894, which makes it OTC (older than Carner).  It was one of the five founding clubs of the USGA (United States Golf Association), an organisation that tends to get more than its fair share of stick when it comes to US Opens, as at Shinnecock a few weeks ago but has been praised for getting everything right this week.

“We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else for this historic event,” said Mark Newell, president of the USGA, “and I want to congratulate and thank all of our competitors.  This week is for you.  This championship exists because of you.  You built the women’s game of golf and have inspired so many of us with your phenomenal talent and wonderful sportsmanship.  We are thrilled and hono(u)red to provide you with this new opportunity to play in golf’s ultimate test – a US Open championship.”

Carner, who had a birdie at the last hole to match her age in the first round, wasn’t overly impressed with her score but it must count as a sterling effort by someone who until this week hadn’t walked 18 holes since 2004!  That’s known as the curse of the golf cart.  And the woman known as Big Mama did have one criticism of the location:  “We go by the cemetery [to get here],” she said.  “They didn’t think of that…..”

Maureen and I spent a memorable evening with Carner when we were at Muirfield Village in 2009 and she was one of the two professional hono(u)rees at Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament.  When she realised that Mo knew Marlene Streit, the diminutive Canadian who had been Carner’s friend since their tussles at the US Women’s Amateur, nothing would do JoAnne but to phone Marlene – it was after midnight – and say, “Hi Marlene, I’ve got someone here who’d like to talk to you….”

There are no flies on JoAnne, who’s as shrewd as they come but she’s open-hearted, generous to a fault and will talk to anyone, play with anyone, offering advice and sharing her knowledge whenever she thinks it’s needed.  She’s been an inspiration to many, not least Suzy Whaley, who may not be the most distinguished player competing at Chicago but found her niche as a teacher and has the distinction of being the incoming president of the PGA of America, the first woman to take on that role.

Whaley was a 20-year old amateur playing in her first US Women’s Open when Carner joined her for a practice round and gave her a playing lesson she’s never forgotten:  “She taught me shots.  She was amazing.  She was preparing for the US Women’s Open and she’s helping an amateur around the golf course.  My grandfather loved her and she sat with him on a bench while he waited for me.  Stories like that you don’t forget…..

“I cherish her.  I cherish what she’s done for golf.  I cherish the fact that she’s here.  She’s 79 years old and she is still fighting for women’s golf and that to me is something that is inspiring.  She’s paved the way for the rest of us and I hope to do the same.”

Nearly 40 years ago, a 12-year old autograph-hunting Whaley was also inspired by the class and kindness of rookie sensation Nancy Lopez (nine wins, including five in a row, in 1979), who is the championship’s honorary starter.  Lopez was unable to play because of knee surgery but was revelling in the occasion and even threw the first pitch at a White Sox game earlier in the week.  Baseball’s not one of my strengths so I hope that’s the correct terminology – and team.  At least Nancy was on familiar ground, having once been married to a World Series winner.

There are 120 over 50s competing in Chicago, taking on a course that is famous for its huge, square greens – have a look at the USGA’s website to learn a bit more about those – and only a few of them will have a realistic shot at making history and becoming the first champion, the first name on the sparkling new trophy.  It’s come too late for the likes of Carner, Lopez, Pat Bradley, Sandra Palmer and Jane Blalock, a tireless, passionate advocate of a legends tour for women but at least they’ve lived to see it and play in it.

Elaine Crosby, of the United States, led the chase after a first round of 70, three under par, one shot ahead of a trio of very familiar names:  Trish Johnson, Liselotte Neumann and Laura Davies, with Helen Alfredsson a shot further back on 72.

Should they still be in with a chance on Sunday, at least none of them need be distracted by the World Cup final between France and Croatia.  No need for Laura to take a telly out on the course with her this time, as she did many years ago at Evian.  All our yesterdays indeed.

[With thanks to Jane Crafter, Aussie commentator, player and wine buff extraordinaire and the USGA’s website, in particular Ron Driscoll and Ron Sirak, for some of the tales.]

The older I get, the more I realise how lucky I am, how lucky I’ve been, for reasons that have absolutely nothing at all to do with me (parents; place of birth; proximity to world-class golf courses; playing those world-class golf courses).  I’ve touched on this subject before but it was brought home to me again this week when I heard that the R&A had unveiled “a new Women in Golf Charter as part of the organisation’s drive to increase the number of women and girls participating in golf and to encourage more opportunities for women to work within the golf industry”.

The event, which took place in London at The View from the Shard (standard scratch?), included representatives of the myriad golf organisations who have signed the Charter so far:  the European Tour, Ladies’ European Tour, European Golf Association, Professional Golfers’ Association, European Disability Golf Association, Golf Australia, Golf Canada, Golfing Union of Ireland, England Golf, Irish Ladies Golf Union and Scottish Golf.  That’s a good start and I wish them well, bearing in mind that where all these initiatives to get people, women or not, into golf tend to falter is when it comes to keeping those people involved.  Golf has to make itself accessible, affordable and enjoyable as well as inclusive.

I played the New Course at Walton Heath on Saturday – no scoring involved, thank goodness, because the heather and rough are tough and the greens take a bit of knowing – and there was scarcely a tree in sight.  Dad, who grew up on the links at Rosses Point and played most of his adult golf at Portstewart, where trees have to be tough, stubborn and resilient to root, would have been in heaven (apart from the hell of carries that test the shorter hitters to their limits).  Playing at home at Whittington Heath on Tuesday,  I looked at our trees – the oaks in particular, bitter enemies of heathland – with renewed malevolence.  Sadly, hard though I concentrated, I lacked the Potterish wizardry to vaporise them on the spot.  That’ll take a lot of hard work and persuasion but heathland is increasingly rare and it’s worth persevering to preserve it.

I’ve also, not to put too fine a point on it, taken a scunner agin rough in almost all its forms.  Just what is it for?  It’s probably responsible for more slow play than the slowest of slowcoaches and causes the sort of frustration and despair that make people give up the game when, really, they should still be pottering happily around the course with their friends, getting their fresh air and exercise and the occasional par, even the odd birdie.  Contrary to popular opinion, rough is not required to make a course a good test of golf and wasp-waisted fairways should be even rarer on a day-to-day members’ course than a wasp-waisted member.  You want people to play golf and keep playing?  Make the golf courses playable.  And the golf clubs welcoming.

Anyway, that’s enough fulminating for one blog.  What’s going on this week?  Lots, is the answer.  There’s the Jabra Ladies Open at the Evian Resort Golf Course in Evian-les-Bains, where the rewards include two places in the Evian Championship, the 5th major of the women’s season and a place in the Ricoh Women’s British Open; the Brabazon Trophy, more formally known as the English Men’s Open Amateur Strokeplay Championship, at Frilford Heath, near Oxford; the Memorial, at Muirfield Village, Jack’s place in Columbus, Ohio, where Maureen and I had the golfing experience of our lives, not least because we spent the week in the room next to Tiger Woods and hobnobbed with Barbara and Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Padraig Harrington and David Feherty, among others; the Maguire twins, Lisa and Leona, are gearing up for their professional debut at the ShopRite LPGA Classic Presented by Acer in New Jersey next week; and there’s the US Women’s Open Championship at Shoal Creek in an Alabama made super soggy by Tropical Storm Alberto (5 or 6 inches of rain in a night anyone?)

Back in Europe, in Denmark, Laura Davies, the first Dame of golf, continues her trailblazing career by becoming the first woman to compete against the men on an over-50s tour.  She’s playing in the Staysure Tour’s ShipcoMasters promoted by Simon’s Golf Club in Kvistgard (there should be two little dots over the ‘a’ but not sure where to find them on my keyboard).  It’s a bit of a stellar field, featuring former Ryder Cup captains Ian Woosnam, Jose Maria Olazabal, Paul McGinley and Colin Montgomerie.  They’ve all won the Ryder Cup – as captains and players – but they’ll be terrified of finishing behind LD in the 3-round event that starts today.

Chances are if any of them finish ahead of Paul Broadhurst, they’ll win the title.  The Atherstone man won the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship in Michigan last Sunday by four shots, his second senior major, to add to The Senior Open Presented by Rolex that he won at Carnoustie in 2016.  He said, wryly, “I just wish I was playing like this on the main tour 20 years ago!”  Better late than never Paul.  Many congrats.

 

Well, this is a first for the blog:  it’s being written in the car as I hurtle – at a legal speed, natch – along the A55 in North Wales towards the Conwy (Caernarvonshire) Golf Club or, in Welsh, Clwb Golff Conwy (Sir Gaernarfon).  It’s where we’ll be heading for the Curtis Cup in 2020, a treat in store.

You’ll be glad to know that I’m not driving and being able to clack away on the keyboard while someone else attends to the important task of getting us to the do on time and in one piece just confirms my view that having a chauffeur is one of life’s great luxuries.  If I had unlimited funds that were not quite so unlimited that they rose to a helicopter of my own, I’d have a chauffeur.  Bliss.  Perhaps that underlying lack of commitment and enthusiasm explains why I’m still in the remedial class (the longest-serving and sole member) at the Lichfield group of IAM, the Institute of Advanced Motorists.

Don’t tell Mo but my latest observer (the brave soul who cowers in the passenger seat and assesses your competence), to whom I confessed my chauffeur fantasy, is also a biker and he and his pal, dressed in their leathers and brimming with joie de vivre, gave a very entertaining and hair-raising talk to the motoring group on the joys and perils of taking to the road on two wheels.  Perhaps I’ll ditch the car and get a motorbike, not so much a mid-life more an end-of-life crisis.

There’s a lot of talk about golf being in crisis, hence initiatives like GolfSixes, a speedy two-person team matchplay competition over the short sprint of six holes. This year the men were kept on their toes by two women’s teams – the England pair of Georgia Hall and Charley Hull and Mel Reid, another Englishwoman, who was playing with Spain’s Carlota Ciganda – and a mixed team featuring Solheim Cup captain Catriona Matthew and Ryder Cup captain Thomas Bjorn.  The weather was great, from what I saw on the telly everyone at the Centurion Club, just west of St Albans, was having a lot of fun and the competition was fierce.

The captains looked a little rusty but Hall and Hull and Reid and Ciganda made it through the group stages before losing in the quarter-finals.  Hall and Hull lost to Ireland’s Gavin Moynihan and Paul Dunne, who went on to win the whole thing, while Reid and Ciganda were beaten by the Australians Wade Ormsby and Sam Brazel.

“We got a lot of exposure and that’s what we need,” Reid said.  “We don’t get that.  So it’s been really, really good for women’s golf, which hopefully helps it because it needs help….

“We’ve hopefully opened a few more eyes to women’s golf and that we can compete and that we are pretty good at what we do…..Hopefully, it’s inspired not just a few more young girls but young guys and men, women, all over to take up the game.  That’s ultimately what we want to do.”

It’s not so much getting people into the game that’s the problem, it’s keeping them there.  And what’s the point of getting loads of kids and adults interested if there’s nowhere for them to play, if, when push comes to shove or pull comes to slice, it’s just too hard for them to get a game?   That’s a conundrum that remains to be solved – and remaining solvent is also a big part of the problem.  The game has to be accessible in every sense of the word.

By most measures, the Centurion Club is an exclusive, high end joint – that’s how it promotes itself in the stuff I’ve read – and in my naive way I always thought it was a bit of an odd choice for a swinging, allegedly populist shindig like GolfSixes.  There’s still something jarring about that match but I don’t suppose there was a local muni or 9-holer that fitted the bill.

Instead of closing local munis we should be nurturing them and enhancing them but that takes money, time, effort and will.  It’s not a cheap option but at its best golf is a game for a lifetime, with health and social benefits that have been widely touted.  We’re testament to that but how lucky were we to grow up within (short) walking distance of one of the best courses in the world and have easy access to many more at affordable prices?  I read somewhere recently that everything in life comes down to luck and looking around it’s hard to argue.

Talking of luck, I took part in a flashmob singalong in amongst the market stalls on the Parade in Sutton Coldfield last Saturday – not a sentence I ever thought I’d write and not something the friends who know me as a tone deaf standing at the back and miming will believe.  It was great fun in the sun and was enjoyed by young and old.  Roll on the next one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been niggling me for a while, this announcement of the grandly titled Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship, hailed in some quarters as a massive breakthrough for women’s golf.  Perhaps it is.  Fred Ridley, Augusta National’s rookie chairman, who has three daughters, is by all accounts an intelligent man with his heart in the right place, who undoubtedly means well.  But did he really think through all the implications?  He’s buggered up the ANA Inspiration for a start – or at best thrown the first women’s major of the season into a bit of a tizzy.

The leading women amateurs who used to think that an invitation to Mission Hills Golf and Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California, the week before the Masters was as good as it got must now think again.  Some of the leading women professionals are saying that they might apply to regain their amateur status just so they can have a chance of playing at Augusta National.  They’re only joking but their thunder has been well and truly stolen without so much as a by-your-leave.

I don’t know how widely Ridley consulted before making his announcement but from what I’ve read Mike Whan, commissioner of the LPGA, wasn’t involved in long and detailed discussions; I’m not sure who was.  “We are always looking for new ways to benefit and impact the game,” Ridley said in his inaugural chairman’s address on the Wednesday of Masters week.  “We start with the premise and reality that we are very blessed to have the resources to do that…..I thought this was the right time to do this, right time for the women’s game.  I wanted to do this and I wanted to do it here.”

‘This’ is a 54-hole event for 72 of the top women amateurs in the world.  The first 36 holes will be played at Champions Retreat Golf Club in Augusta, a course with which I am unfamiliar, with the leading 30 players moving on to Augusta National for the final round on the Saturday before the Masters, the day before the Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals.  That’s a lovely event for juniors, who have the time of their lives mixing with the game’s elite and competing at a venue that has now gained iconic status.

The golfing world is in awe of Augusta, regarding it as some sort of cross between Mecca, the Vatican and the Kremlin and the danger is that the members of Augusta National, a disparate but privileged bunch, start to believe their own publicity, forgetting their humble origins and overlooking the fact that their exclusive, invitational field makes it arguably the easiest of the four majors to win – unless you’re Rory McIlroy.

Now the women are salivating at the thought that 30 of the best of them will get to play one round on the hallowed turf.   That’s 18 holes, as a tag-on, not just before the Masters itself but before the Drive, Chip and Putt.   Thank you Fred, that really helps us know our place.

Eight women – well, some of them are still girls – who will fancy their chances of making that trip to Augusta, will be heading to Quaker Ridge, Scarsdale, New York, at the beginning of June to represent Great Britain and Ireland in the Curtis Cup.  They and their captain Elaine Farquharson-Black will be trying to retain the trophy won at a soggy Dun Laoghaire two years ago.  Winning in America is not easy.  By my reckoning, we’ve (I’m going to be shamelessly partisan here) only done it once – at Prairie Dunes in 1986 when we mangled the Americans 13-5 in the middle of Kansas in 100-degree heat (Fahrenheit in those days).  It was wonderful and I thank Diane Bailey and her team for one of the best golfing experiences of my life at a fantastic golf course that is more than worth the considerable detour.

 

So good luck to Elaine and her team:  India Clyburn (Woodhall Spa), Annabell Fuller (Roehampton), Paula Grant (Lisburn), Alice Hewson (Berkhamsted), Lily May Humphreys (Stoke-by-Nayland), Sophie Lamb (Clitheroe), Shannon McWilliam (Aboyne) and Olivia Mehaffey (Royal County Down Ladies).  We’ll be cheering you on.  We’d rather not have a BBU (brave but unavailing) but would settle for a draw – there’ve only been two of those in America, at Brae Burn in 1958 and the Honors Course in 1994.

And good luck and congratulation to Suzann Pettersen, the combative Norwegian who has been one of Europe’s Solheim Cup stalwarts for many years.  She’s expecting her first child and has withdrawn from next week’s GolfSixes shindig at Centurion Club on medical advice.  “This is a very happy time for me and my family,” Pettersen said, “but my pregnancy hasn’t been the most straightforward.  I have taken the advice of my doctor and will sadly not be able to compete in GolfSixes this year, which is a real shame as I know it would have been a lot of fun.”

Carlota Ciganda, of Spain, has been drafted in to partner Mel Reid and they’re in a group that includes the formidable Thai pairing of Thongchai Jaidee and Kiradech Aphibarnrat.  England’s Georgia Hall and Charley Hull are also playing and they’ll be taking on their compatriots Eddie Pepperell and Matt Wallace in a needle match.  Should be worth watching, not least because there’s no hanging about in a 6-hole sprint.