Last Friday, in St Andrews, a little bit of golf history was made – well, quite a big bit really, for some of us.  Claire Dowling, née Hourihane, drove herself in as the latest captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, an august body that took a couple of centuries – and more – to admit women to its ranks at all.

Claire, a Dubliner who has lived in England for years and has close ties with Woodbrook, Copt Heath and now East Devon, negotiated the most nerve-racking drive of her distinguished career with aplomb.  “I was just hoping to get the ball airborne,” she said after coping without a practice swing – not allowed on this occasion, presumably to accommodate the ancient club cannon (not canon, though there are probably a few of those in the ranks) that is fired to coincide with club hitting ball.

The incoming captain, with the look of a person being led to the gallows even though they know that the worst that can happen is embarrassment, is led from the clubhouse by the outgoing captain, looking cheerful and chirpy sans club and followed by the honorary professional, who will be teeing up the ball and offering an encouraging word.  Historic occasion or not it’s all done with the minimum of fuss and if the new captain is wise, they’ll be concentrating on their breathing, negotiating the well-wishers and the steps down to the 1st tee and won’t be paying any attention to where exactly the caddies are hovering down the fairway.

Ah, the caddies.  They’re there to retrieve the ball and it’s a competitive business because the person who returns it to the captain receives a gold sovereign in exchange.  The ball is then cast in silver and displayed on the Silver Club.  No doing things by halves in this neck of the links.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The new captain is in for a busy, peripatetic year as the randa.org website outlines:  “Claire will be an ambassador for the Club and The R&A, engaging with Members at events around the world and championing the sport as The R&A brings its new Opening Golf to the World strategy to life.  Throughout her year in office Claire represent the Club at many of The R&A’s professional and amateur championships and international matches, meeting those who contribute to golf at every level.”

Quoting further from the website:  “The R&A’s purpose is to open golf to the world.  As custodians of the game, our aim is to unite golf and golfers through common rules and governance, inspire through the staging of world class championships including The Open and AIG Women’s Open and lead through working to shape the future of golf with our partners.

“As participation numbers continue to rise, we want even more people playing and engaging with golf in all its forms across the globe.  Golf is in our DNA and we firmly believe the sport has a transformational impact on individuals and communities.

“In the next five years we will work with our partners to attract 22 million additional golfers, generate more than £1.5 billion in economic benefit through our championships, create more than £25 billion in social value, establish more than 200 strategic partnerships and generate more than 5 billion fan interactions.”

There’s more but that’s plenty to be going on with.  It’s an ambitious programme and it’s the Open that generates the bulk of the money but just how many spectators will St Andrews, next year’s venue, traditionally top of every golfer’s bucket list, be able to cope with?

There’s no denying it’s a magical place but the Old Course is, if truth be told, a horrible watching course and the double greens make for some tediously long rounds, even if the weather is kind.  Admittedly, I’m not one of life’s organisers and some of the world’s best are in charge of it all but it sounds like a logistical nightmare to me.  Good luck everybody.

And, if you’re hoping to see anything, don’t forget your periscope and binoculars.

Or nip along to the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship this weekend for a pre-Open recce without the hordes.

 

 

It’s hard to imagine just how many airports I’ve been through in my lifetime, jetting here, there and (not quite) everywhere without a thought to the carbon footprint or the toll on the body. Nowadays, if you said to me, “You’ll never see another terminal building, anywhere, ever again,” I think I’d be delighted and relieved and then gutted – but only briefly.

Gutted simply because there are a lot of places I haven’t been to and a lot of them are hard to get to without flying but airports these days are much more hard-edged, unforgiving places than they were when I was flying every week.

However, some things are irresistible and the Walker Cup at Lahinch in the west of Ireland, followed immediately by the Solheim Cup at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands fell full square into that category. Consecutive weekends of team match play against the mighty USA, what could be better? Golf at its most compelling. Events worth flying for.

I still don’t know quite how GB&I overhauled the Americans at Lahinch to pull off the unlikeliest of comebacks.  Europe’s Junior Solheimers, also well adrift going in to the final singles, gave their US opponents, seemingly home and hosed, the heebie-jeebies, before falling short and losing 13-11 in Holland. That’s the way it usually works – if you’ve given the opposition too big a lead going in to the final day, you rarely claw it back because everything, absolutely everything has to go your way. There is no margin for error.

I’d love Anna Nordqvist’s Europeans to give Angela Stanford’s Americans a pasting over the next three days – we’re always the underdogs and I, never the favourite whatever the game, am a great fan of the underdogs.  But, Donald notwithstanding, I still like the Americans and count many of them as my friends and this year, this week in particular, it’s hard to pull against them. In fact, it’s hard to think that the result of a golf match matters a toss.

Why?

Well, today is the 25th anniversary of 9/11. The attack on the Twin Towers.

Both Maureen and Dai were in America that day, Mo at Fox Chapel in Pennsylvania doing a recce for the Curtis Cup the following year and Dai in St Louis for a WGC (World Golf Championship) event – remember those? – that never took place. They were safe but they never forgot that day – and neither have I, desperately trying to establish that Mo and her mate Benetton weren’t sight-seeing in New York at the wrong time.

It wasn’t just an American tragedy – I always think of Cantor Fitzgerald, who lost hundreds of people that day. They sponsored a women’s tournament at Brocket Hall one year, hosted by Laura Davies, if memory serves me right. It was never going to last – the boss, presumably persuaded by the firm’s highest-ranking golf nut, knew nothing about the game; his heart wasn’t in it; think he was a theatre buff.

And he was right: there are much more important things than golf.

Finally, from the beyond serious to the utterly ridiculous but intensely irritating and a bit of a self-indulgent rant about my least favourite recorded message: “Your call is very important to us….”

Well, isn’t that good to know. Just imagine if they didn’t give a toss.

I started trying to contact the Spurs ticket office (by phone; wonder of wonders there is a number) before going to Lahinch for the Walker Cup. No luck. Then I tried giving it another go this week and after several days I’m still in the queue being told how important my call is to….whom? The ether presumably.

On Wednesday, just before heading off for the minibus to Stansted (not an airport to revive a love of air travel) and the Solheim Cup, I made one last concerted effort to get through. The phone was on speaker so I paid bills, washed dishes, finished packing, cleaned the loos, put the bin out, then after the guts of an hour in some sort of never-ending queue, I had a bright idea: I’ll try another tack.

So I rang off and tried again, selecting a different option from the list in the hope of persuading someone somewhere that I was going to be spending a lot of money….I think I selected Experiences – stadium tours, formula 1, something like that. Anyway, I was pottering by the kettle when something strange happened; I heard a noise; or was it just the audible equivalent of a mirage?

No, it turns out I’d connected to a Sue, who was, miracle of miracles, a real person. Trouble was, of course, that when Sue realised what I wanted, she wanted to get rid of me, to transfer me to the correct department.

“ Just a minute, Sue,” sez I. “I’ve been trying to get through for weeks (felt more like months as my life ebbed away), will you be passing me to a person or back to a queue?”

“The queue,” sez Sue.

(“Och no,” thought I.)

“Sue, are you in the same building as the season ticket people?”

“Yes but I’m not allowed/able/whatever to pass you over.”

And with that Sue had had enough and without another word returned me to my never-ending listening brief…

I’m just so glad my call is important – no, VERY important – to the oh-so-invisible ticketing team at Tottenham Hotspur Football club. There’s only one word for it….

BOLLOCKS.

COYS.

The golf swing is a thing of beauty.  No, let me qualify that.  The golf swing of a good player is a thing of beauty.  (I’ve just witnessed a host of players hit off the tee at a local golf club.)

I was struck by my initial thought when watching the last knockings of the Ladies’ European Tour event last weekend at the Centurion Club, the PIF London Championship.  Watching those women makes it easy to appreciate the sheer athleticism of the action, the build-up and storage of power and the smooth rhythm of the transition as the clubhead accelerates at great speed through the ball.  It’s powerful and takes an inordinate and deceptive amount of strength and, as with all things done well, it looks easy.

When watching some of the men professionals you will still see the occasional “lurcher” – i.e. a player whose strength allows him to attempt to overpower the ball and one who relies on phenomenal hand/eye co-ordination as well as a fair degree of brute strength. That is less common amongst the women who need every last bit of the chain to be synchronised in order to produce the strongest, most accurate results.  They completely understand the concept of swinging through the impact area at speed, gathering the ball en route.  That’s completely different from trying to hit at the ball.

Watching 17-year old Anna Huang (top pic) lift the title was impressive.  Less than a year ago she was wondering should she take the giant step of turning professional at such a tender age.  Eleven months later the young Canadian has four LET titles to her name, eclipsing the early exploits and record of her heroine Lydia Ko.

With her father on the bag she withstood the assault on her lead and on the title by Charley Hull, the home favourite, and ultimately was the one who refused to blink when one behind after seventy holes.  A par, eagle finish – it was the fourth consecutive day that she’d eagled the last – saw her home by two shots.

What a player!  Technically sound, mentally strong and seemingly impervious to pressure.  It was only when she came off the final green and saw her Mum, who was seeing her win for the first time, that Anna burst into tears and fell into her arms.  And that’s when I thought, “My goodness, she’s just a kid!”

Her composure when under the cosh couldn’t be faulted.  Perhaps that will change as her career unfolds and she inevitably suffers some scar tissue but it’s impossible not to marvel at the assuredness, on so many levels, of young players like Anna.

It all leads me to conclude there must be a number of factors contributing to the exceptional skill sets of such young players.  The quality of the coaching is an obvious starting point.  Don’t get me wrong – there have always been great coaches but back in the day they were less likely to share their “secrets”.  I think the advent of specialised strength and conditioning coaches who understand how to develop these young athletes is key.  There was no such thing in my day when I was seventeen.  My “fitness” advice in the early days was to run along Portstewart strand and as for any mental skills input – that came from Dad who simply said, “Never, ever give up.”

Granted my playing and coaching careers spanned an enormous and seismic change in golf instruction and how it is delivered and there’s no doubt that this digital age we all now inhabit means that even the youngest aficionados of the game can gaze all day every day at the best swings in the world, imprinting as fast as their brain allows.  Don’t underestimate the power of simply copying.

The popularity of what was once considered a game for fuddy-duddies is definitely on the up.  In this 21st century there are now thousands and thousands more folk than ever before making a living from the game.  That includes players, instructors of every discipline, mental and physical, equipment companies, tour officials and administrators at all levels from local to international, amateur to professional.

The lure of making lots of money at something can be quite the driving and motivating force and this, to a large extent, spearheaded the rise of the game, particularly the women’s game, in Asia and the Far East.  Successful female golfers there are followed like pop stars and in many cases the players have single-handedly lifted their families to an elevated standard of living.

For lots of casual players the relative ease of international travel means some of the game’s oldest and most venerated courses, as well as some phenomenal new designs, are now more accessible.  The result is that golf tourism is very big business indeed.  After all, who amongst us doesn’t have a bucket list of venues to visit?

I’m willing to bet that the majority of readers of this blog are middle-aged and upwards.  No longer in the first flush of youth, it’s certainly easy to wonder what relevance the swing of such as Anna Huang has for you.  Well, you could do worse than try to assimilate some of the smoothness, balance and rhythm – at your own pace, mind.

Remember, your body has undoubtedly changed over the years and be sure to allow your swing to adapt to your changing shape and years.  That may mean relinquishing a decades-old swing thought that may have served you well………but now it may cause you pain – so let it slip into the ether.  Your golf swing mustn’t hurt you.  Your task is to swing through the impact zone with a reasonably square clubface and we’ll all do it slightly differently depending on our bodies, strength and age.

With a bit of luck your golf swing has given you more than you could ever have believed possible.  Hours of exercise, enjoyment and fulfillment;  it has helped you make friendships, undoubtedly caused hilarity now and again and perhaps provided you with unforgettable trips to lovely places.

Yes, indeed – a golf swing is a thing of beauty.  I’m now going to modify my opening thoughts.

YOUR golf swing is a thing of beauty.

Love it no matter what – it’s given you so much…

 

The other day, playing a few holes with a friend, I gave them ten questions to guess who presented the trophy at the Senior Open at Gleneagles last Sunday.*  It was a bit mean I admit but I didn’t want them working their way to the right answer, unlikely though that was and I thought the traditional Twenty Q too generous.

Today, I’d be tempted to give you all a lot more goes at guessing  the opening topic of this week’s blog.  Admittedly, there’s a substantial visual clue at the top of the piece (providing there’ve been no technical glitches) but tortoises are not really an area of  interest in these parts, let alone an area of expertise.  The expertise is still lacking but thanks to a visit by Ducky (pictured), there’s a lot more interest.

She’s an Eastern Hermann’s tortoise, about four years old, “a medium-sized herbivorous reptile native to the Balkans and southeastern Europe” according to Google’s AI overview.  It also revealed that they can be great pets because “they stay small, have a gentle personality and eat a simple plant-based diet”.  Leafy greens are the food of choice – they’re good for us humans as well – so nothing too exotic is needed on that front.  However, they need fresh food and water daily, heat lamps and sundry other accoutrements and can’t just be left to their own devices.  They’re not an easy pet option.

I read somewhere that they were slow moving but Ducky showed quite a turn of foot (claw?) when given a roam in the garden; a moment of inattention and she would have been in the bushes.  Inquisitive outings and accidents permitting, she’ll outlive her owners, so a tortoise really is for life – and beyond.

This week, at Royal Lytham and St Annes, one of the world’s great golf courses, a couple of golfing anniversaries are being celebrated at the AIG Women’s Open.  It’s the 50th anniversary of the championship, which was won by Jennie Lee Smith, now Lucas, at Fulford in 1976.  She was also a member of the Curtis Cup team that played at Lytham that year.  The Americans, who included future legends Beth Daniel and Nancy Lopez, won, as they usually did but ten years later it was a different, unexpected story, the stuff of legend.

At Prairie Dunes, in the blistering heat of Kansas (100 degrees F in old money, almost too hot even for tortoises), Diane Bailey (née Frearson, then Robb) led her team to a comprehensive victory (13-5) that beggared belief.  At Muirfield, two years earlier, under Bailey, GB and I had come agonisingly close, losing by a single point – 9 1/2 – 8 1/2 and the captain, having proved that the mighty Americans were beatable, made it her mission to do the impossible:  win on US soil.

It was something that no visiting team had done – there’d been a draw at Brae Burn in 1958 (following home wins in 1952 and 1956) – and the Curtis Cuppers weren’t expected to break a run of THIRTEEN consecutive defeats.  “We always win this thing, don’t we?” one of the Americans, Danielle Ammaccapane, said to her captain, the incomparable Judy Bell, a future president of the USGA (the first woman pres), and who could blame her?  They always did win the thing.

Amazingly, I was there, along with Dai, Michael Williams of the Daily Telegraph, Elaine Scott from Golf World (later of the LPGA) and photographer Keith Hailey.  We’d travelled more in hope than expectation and Prairie Dunes, a wonderful golf course in the middle of nowhere, was a big draw.  Anyway, I seem to remember that Dottie Pepper (who’d just become Mrs Mochrie and had been on honeymoon) duffed her opening drive…Blimey…Americans never did that, did they?  (I believe, a few years previously, one American, overcome with nerves on the 1st tee, had to hiss at her foursomes partner:  “Get up here; I can’t do this….” but I digress, as usual.)

It went from bad to worse for the home side:  Ammaccapane was penalised for building a stance in a bunker under the eyes of the USGA’s P.J. Boatrwright,  a formidable figure and undoubtedly the world’s chief rules guru and it wasn’t until the second day that the USA managed to win the first hole.  By then it was too late and I think GB and I only needed half a point from the six singles to win.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody amazing and paved the way for the Ryder Cup team to win at Muirfield Village the following year and the Walker Cup team to win at Peachtree in 1989.  They really were trailblazers.

All hail to Lillian Behan, Karen Davies, Claire Hourihane, Trish Johnson, Mary McKenna, Belle Robertson, Vicki Thomas and Jill Thornhill.  And, of course, Diane Bailey and her strong right arm and support Elsie Brown.

Two years later, at Royal St George’s, I suggested in my preview for The Times that it might have been the most outrageous fluke and, apparently, Jill Thornhill, incandescent, threw the paper to the floor, leapt out of bed and set off to prove me wrong.

Now, I used to think that that was probably my best, most effective intro in that it certainly caught the attention of the reader but, on reflection, it was a bit pants because that reader never read any further!  She completely missed the bit at the end where I suggested that it wasn’t a fluke and GB and I could win again.

And they did.

 

* The answer:  David, now Lord Cameron, the plonker I hold mainly responsible for the Brexit debacle.  The reason:  he’s an ambassador for ISPS HANDA, the sponsors of  the championship and staunch supporters of all things golf.