Ask me about dreams and I’ll usually look at you blankly (not unusual admittedly, especially not now that I can blame lockdown brain for my habitual doziness).  Maureen often regales us with tales of her dreams, vivid, ghastly, ridiculous, incomprehensible but I’m inclined to insist that I don’t dream because if I do, nothing remains; on waking the mind is blank.

 

 

Except the other morning, in the run-up to The Masters at Augusta.  We’d been playing bridge via Zoom – more chaotic than usual because the hands had been out of synch from the start – and the chat had turned to sleep.  Two of our number had to manage on a few hours a night if they were lucky, the Margaret Thatcher quota of five or so – or was it four? – and one, a mother of two, was out for the count from the moment her head hit the pillow.

Normally I’m somewhere in the middle but that night I had to get up, turn on the radio, footer about and stop worrying about being awake when I didn’t want to be.  There’d been chat about what Dustin Johnson was serving at the champions’ dinner – the reigning champ gets to choose the menu – and I’d come across a lovely picture of Dai with Woosie at a trial run for the latter’s main course of Welsh lamb cooked in hay.  Perhaps that was the catalyst.

Whatever, later that morning when I woke up, I wasn’t at home in bed but still in a restaurant somewhere, chatting to Woosie, Freddie Couples and another Masters champion who swirled off into the ether to remain nameless, ungraspable.  I think I was imparting some words of wisdom, not on the swing (an unexpectedly good decision on my part) but on the need to be chirpy or chipper at all times, particularly on the golf course.

As I was leaving – late for wherever it was I had to be (nothing unusual there) – I half hopped over a vaguely familiar figure. immaculately dressed, sitting quietly on a bench at the end of the table.  As I was leaning on his shoulders to propel myself out the door I said, “Sorry Tom”, having realised that it was Sir Tom Jones, the pride of Wales.  Must mention to Helen, our singing teacher, that he should be one of the celebrity guests of choice next term.

Across the road, in another restaurant, a couple of chefs were sitting having a snack, waiting for me to turn up.  Others, who included Mum and Dad, had already eaten and I remembered wondering what Dad was doing there because he had no taste buds to speak of and would have been happy with beans on toast.

“We’ve just had the best meal we’ve ever had,” they said, extolling the delights of some sort of pizza with a potato base and telling me that we were all booked in again for the next night.  What the occasion was who knows – perhaps it was inspired by the thought of being able to eat out again at long last – but I remember thinking that I’d have to ditch the ISA (start of a new tax year, message from the financial adviser) because the place was mega expensive and there were a lot of us.

The main reason I’m regaling you with all this is that I wrote it down – more scrawl than copperplate so I’m making a lot of it up but in my defence I was still groggy with sleep and dreams are hardly fact-filled anyway.  I used to have a pair of dream-catcher earrings, bought in Arizona, Sedona I think but they disintegrated long ago….

Some dreams of glory at Augusta National this week already lie in tatters after the first round but many are still alive.  One thing’s for certain:  whoever wins will have to hole his putts (or chip in) – and that’s easier said than done on greens that are as slick as they’ve been for years.  I don’t suppose they were that fast or manicured in 1935, when Walter Hagen had seven one-putt greens on the first nine, to go out in 36, level par.

In his great book The Tumult and The Shouting, Grantland Rice wrote:  “I struggled through nine holes with Walter that morning.  He dubbed about every kind of shot imaginable….He butchered exactly 14 shots – hooks, slices, topped balls, the works….”  Even Hagen, who was past his prime, couldn’t keep that up and he never did add a Masters to his long list of titles.

“It’s the putting that goes first,” Hagen said later, “and do you know why?  The legs.  They’re not up to that hydrant immobility needed for the solid stance.  When the 8-footers begin to look like 18-footers and they don’t drop for you consistently any longer – that’s when you know you’re old.”

Rice wrote that Hagen was a great putter but added:  “His following will remember him much longer for his colour, his sparkling wit, his impeccable dress, his manners and charm under all conditions, than they will for his putting.”

Some people will remember Jock MacVicar for his putters rather than putting that inclined to the indifferent – one colleague recalls his shock at seeing a stash of 20 or so of the flat sticks in the boot of Jock’s car – but everyone will remember him for his kindness, his knowledge and his unbounded enthusiasm.

Sadly, the Doyen (of Dunaverty – he and Belle Robertson were at primary school together), president of the AGW, still writing for the Scottish Daily Express and looking forward to Bob MacIntyre’s debut at Augusta, died in hospital in Glasgow a few days ago at the age of 83.

There wasn’t a Scottish golfer of note who didn’t know Jock, who recorded their exploits with rare devotion, passion and insight.  “He was always positive, constructive and supportive,”   Andrew Coltart, now a Sky stalwart, wrote.  “When I was a kid, I felt I’d made it big when I was in one of his reports.”

Scott Crockett, communications director of the European Tour, a fellow Scot, put it beautifully:  “Jock was not only loved and respected in his native Scotland but across the world…..He knew everything about golf and knew everybody in golf….but it was his gentlemanly and kind-hearted demeanour, his at times wicked sense of humour and his ability to engage everyone as he found them that most will remember fondly….

“RIP old friend.”

 

 

 

It seems like a lifetime ago – and it was certainly a long time ago – but I used to go to the Dinah, now the ANA Inspiration, every year after a couple of weeks in Arizona and then head on to the Masters at Augusta the following week.  The tournament that raised the women’s game to another level started life in 1972 as the Dinah Shore Colgate Winners Circle, a 54-hole event with a massive prize fund of $110,000 – the US Women’s Open that year was worth $40,000 in total – and Jane Blalock, the first champion, won $20,050, more than the entire purse at several events.

It was all thanks to David Foster, an Englishman who worked for Colgate and saw women’s golf as a wonderful way to promote his company’s products.  Colgate sponsored Dinah Shore’s TV show – she was a megastar – and Foster asked her to host the tournament.  Here’s Dinah’s take on her involvement, in the foreword to Amy Alcott’s Guide To Women’s Golf:  “I was flattered, of course, but I thought he’d made one little mistake.  I didn’t play golf.  ‘You must mean a tennis tournament,’ I protested to the very British, very charming Mr Foster. ‘I’m a tennis player, not a golfer’.

“But David did mean golf, and so I began a crash course in playing this game that I’ve come to love so much.  That course becomes more intense a month before tournament tee-off time each year….. [there were at least two pro-ams and because Dinah was the hostess with the mostest, the place was awash with what would now be called A-listers, stars of stage, screen, sport and beyond – and fans]…..

“Though I never played it as a child, my roots in golf go back to my mother.  Golf was one of the greatest joys in her life, and when I think about her playing golf in Tennessee, I marvel at her guts.  After all, there weren’t a lot of women golfers back home in those days.  I wonder what she’d think if she saw how many women are playing the game today [1990/1].  I know she’d be just as thrilled as I am…..

“I have a very warm spot in my heart for the women who compete in, and who have won, our tournament.  I think their skill, talent and personalities have helped make it special…..”

And, of course, Dinah, with her high profile, her telly show and buddies like Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope – she was that big a star – was beyond special.  Players, Alcott included, appeared on her show (and in Colgate ads) and Dinah said:  “Amy is a great friend and a terrific individual, but sometimes I’m flabbergasted at some of the nuttier things she does.  For instance, when she won our tournament in 1988, she and her caddie dove into the pond at the 18th hole.  It’s full of mud hens, mud, ducks and other euch!  I was so happy they survived, I promised her that the next time she won I’d dive into the pond instead.”

That started what has become a tradition – the leap into Poppie’s Pond, which is a bit cleaner these days – and the winner’s white towelling dressing gown is as treasured as any green jacket/coat.

Dinah, fair play to her, did jump in with Amy, who won the title three times, in 1983, the event’s first year as a major, 1988 and 1991 and the tennis player turned golfer helped catapult the LPGA and its players into the brightest of limelight, for one week of the year at least.  It’s no wonder that she was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 1994 as an honorary member.

A British or Irish player has yet to win at Mission Hills Country Club, Rancho Mirage, home of the tournament since its inception but those of us who made the pilgrimage year after year had plenty to write about as we watched the best players strut their stuff at one of the best venues in front of huge, often rowdy crowds.  Laura Davies, in her pomp, came close but never added this to her long list of wins; Helen Dobson, such a good golfer, gave it a good run one year; and the European winners included the ever ebullient Helen Alfredsson and Patricia Meunier-Lebouc, one of France’s finest as well as the all-conquering Annika Sorenstam.  The Dinah was rarely dull and the spring drive across the desert from Phoenix to California – a short hop by American standards – was often magical.

I’d forgotten about Annika’s red shoes until I spotted them in the impressive, beautifully arranged display and it was a tale that kept us going all week.  Don’t ask me what it was now – some sort of marketing ploy I suspect – but those shoes livened up all our pieces and all the pictures.  Golf coverage can’t all be about 5-irons to 5 feet otherwise we’d all have died of boredom aeons ago…..

In England we’re back out playing golf again but I won’t tantalise those of you yet to be unleashed with details of our return – in glorious weather.  Instead, here’s a postcard, from Dai’s extensive collection, of Mission Hills as it used to be, before Rancho Mirage and Palm Springs sprawled out to take over the desert.

 

 

 

I always regard this time of year as “foursomes season”.  That’s because when I was a young amateur this week signalled the opening of the new competitive year with the wonderful Avia Foursomes.  This 72-hole foursomes strokeplay tournament (arguably the most difficult format in the game) was played each year at the Berkshire golf club over the Blue and the Red courses and it catered for every calibre of player from Curtis Cup players to those in higher handicap brackets.  More than three hundred women would descend on the Berkshire club anxious to rid themselves of the inertia of winter and keen to get swinging again.

I first played in the Avia in 1980 when it was already almost two decades into its existence.  The woman at the helm was the redoubtable Joan Rothschild, wife of Colonel D D Rothschild, managing director of the sponsors Louis Newmark Ltd, importers of Swiss watches.  It would have been a logistical nightmare for many but Joan worked tirelessly to ensure the popularity and success of the event.  Leafing through old editions of that wonderful publication Fairway and Hazard (from which these pictures come), kindly lent to me by former LGU chairman Jill Edwards, I came across this paragraph about Joan where the sponsoring company is singing her praises.

Joan….”thought of the idea, started the ball rolling and from that moment until the last prize had been handed out, never stopped working.  All the bright ideas were hers, and it is no exaggeration to say that she was in touch with our office almost every day for nearly six months.  All her ideas were first class and she has already formulated new ones for next year.”

Joan’s right hand man at the event was Douglas Caird, golf writer of note, founder of Fairway and Hazard and a huge supporter of women’s golf.  Between them they ran a tournament that thought of everything.  There were welcome gifts for the players, heaters on the first tees, soup kitchens at the half way point on each course and the most magnificent prize table imaginable.  Combine that with superb catering at the club and a wonderfully stocked shop by the club pro Keith McDonald and his wife Ivy and it was impossible not to have a great week, no matter the weather or how well you played.  One highlight for all the Irish players was the magnificent St Patrick’s Day window Ivy organised each year, innovative, imaginative and with wonderful clothes and gifts on display.

The Avia heralded the end of winter and a new season of golf to look forward to, so in that regard it was our Masters.  With creaking bodies after the long winter lay-off many of us packed up our clubs post the Avia and went the few miles down the road to Sunningdale – for more foursomes, this time of the matchplay variety.  I have written of the Sunningdale Foursomes before in the blog. This unique tournament, born in 1934, allows men, women, pros and amateurs to compete against each other, in any combination, over the Old and New courses at the Surrey club.  The freedom of matchplay after the rigours of 72 holes of medal play allowed for some more risk-taking which resulted in good and bad outcomes in equal measure but it was exhilarating – and what a wonderful fortnight of competitive play to kick start our seasons.

Nowadays, of course, things are very different and aspiring players, male and female, are not hampered to the same extent by a lengthy off season.  Indeed, many of our home-grown stars are in the US full time, playing on the collegiate circuits with the odd invitation to a professional event.  One such player is Ireland’s Olivia Mehaffey who is currently finishing off a Masters degree at Arizona State uni.  Olivia’s home club is Royal County Down Ladies and her already impressive amateur career includes two Curtis Cup appearances as well as an invitation a couple of years ago to the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur Invitational tournament where she finished tied 23rd.

Last week Olivia beat the ASU programme record by shooting a ten-under-par 62 at Longbow Golf Club in Mesa, Arizona.  By her own admission she has been struggling of late, having switched coaches to work with Jorge Parada, mentor to LPGA luminaries Carlota Ciganda and Mel Reid.  It’s taken a little bit of time for things to fall into place for her but her patience was rewarded with that bogey-free, ten-birdie romp in the Clover Cup.

And the neat thing is Olivia gets to tee it up there again on the same course this week in a Symetra Tour event.  For a player whose LPGA plans have been delayed because of COVID-19 this will be a welcome opportunity to test herself against professional opposition but it’s distressing to learn today’s players have so much more to contend with than the quality of their backswing.

Olivia was quite open about her recent loss of form but admitted to being more affected by negative instagram messages than she envisioned.  This is a player who received abusive messages on twitter last summer about her appearance and now she’s had this heaped on her for the last couple of months.  What is wrong with people?  How dare they play fast and loose with the mental state of others?  If it’s not possible to be supportive and kind – say nothing and concentrate on your own life.  More power to Olivia, for surrounding herself with supportive people and for coming through this.  I hope she knows there are so many, many folk in her corner, full of admiration for her, her golf and her ability to rise above these sad, vile people.  These are certainly not issues that we had to concern ourselves with in our 20s, living and competing as we did in more carefree, social-media-free times.  It just goes to show the resilience needed to compete in sport in the modern era.

On a happier note, here in England we have only nine more days to wait until we can burst on to the fairways again, fresh out of lockdown and with a head full of self-instruction as regards our golf games.  And by the time that happens this particular head will have had its first haircut in five months.  Only one of the many benefits of living on the Welsh border and having a hairdresser in Wales!

And, finally, a teaser for our older readers – can you name the Avia partnership in the picture at the top of the blog?  If you can name the year as well you are a great golf historian……and probably also very old indeed!  Good luck.

Many years ago, all excited, intrigued, I had my first video lesson, with a top-notch teaching professional, a lovely person, at Celtic Manor in Wales.

I never had another one.

What I saw horrified me and destroyed for ever any notion I had that my golf swing was remotely as it should be or how I’d imagined it.  Cramped, crabbed, crap, take your pick.  I wasn’t quite scarred for life but it was close and I swore I’d never subject myself to torture by video again.  After all, what was the point?  I could usually navigate my way round a golf course – after a fashion – but my method, such as it was, was beyond repair.

There was an outing that same afternoon, at The Oxfordshire, not somewhere you’d choose to recover from swing trauma (unless you spent your time in the wonderful Japanese baths) and I somehow staggered to a grand total of 13 points.  It was little short of a miracle to reach double figures.

At the prize-giving afterwards it turned out that there was a booby prize, a consolation for the person with the fewest points.  It was a bottle of champagne, the proper stuff but even I, old blatherwycke herself, had enough sense not to complain when the winner was announced – with the heady total of 15 points.  Phew.

I haven’t played at The Oxfordshire since.  Nor shall I.

Helping Mo with her tips now and again doesn’t count as a video lesson in my book because I don’t ever have to look at it again.  I admit I’ve had a gander at my high-speed effort this week – blink and you’ll miss it, not!  You could probably make a cuppa – and I did realise what the problem has been all these years:  I’ve been playing the wrong way round.

I should’ve been a lefty.  Perhaps then I could’ve been a contender…..

The picture of the innocent with a full backswing, parallel no less, was taken more than 50 years ago – at Boat of Garten, one of the loveliest places to play golf – and I doubt I’ve got anywhere near that since.  Until, that is, I followed Mo’s instructions the other day and did a couple of counter, left-handed swings that looked a heck of a lot freer than the right-handed version.

Ah well, as a late, lamented Scottish friend used to cry in his broadest accent:  “Too late, too late.”

About the only thing I’ve got in common with Bryson DeChambeau is a red cardi.  He got his for winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational (presented by Mastercard) – Arnie really rocked a cardigan in his heyday; I got mine as a present from Dai (it’s from Pinehurst, where we met) and I bet neither of us will ever send it to the jumble.

Mention of Bryson reminds me that it’s probably obligatory to rattle off a litany of praise and thanks to his many sponsors and supporters but I’ll confine myself to just a few that caught my eye as they celebrated their part in his victory.  They’re in no particular order and would, if this were a for-profit sort of blog, be paying me NOT to use their products.

“Bryson DeChambeau boldly overpowers Bay Hill with a Bridgestone golf ball to win API….3-piece TOUR B X….allows for maximum speed and distance on long shots and superior spin and control on short shots….”  You can, apparently, have a free ball-fitting consultation.  Never thought of that, I must admit.

“Bryson DeChambeau closes out API with SIK….SIK Pro C Armlock putter (with descending loft technology)….

“LA Golf partner B DeC wins with all LA golf shafts….graphite shafts that were specifically designed for him….

“FlightScope Ambassador B DeC wins API….trusts FlightScope’s popular X3 model to help prepare for competition…..global leader in tracking and analyzing sports performance data….accurate feedback during practice sessions….”

DeC’s spikes and tees also get a mention and I then had to go for a lie down.  There’s an awful lot that goes into the making of a superstar, turning a player in to a business, a brand.  It’s exhausting.

Mind you, Arnold, oozing panache and charisma and with the considerable help of Mark McCormack, was the original endorser par excellence.  He (they) made millions long before prize money moved into the stratosphere and for years after his best playing days were behind him.  Best of all, everybody loved him and he loved them back.

Talking of champions, there seems to be a lot of chat, not least from the man himself, about what’s wrong with his game at the moment, where has Rory’s spark, his mojo gone?  Probably not too far but I’m increasingly certain that Mo was right when she suggested a while ago that he get in touch with Dave Alred MBE PhD.

He’s worked with numerous sportspeople, most famously Johnny Wilkinson and helped golfers like Luke Donald, Francesco Molinari and Padraig Harrington.  There are a couple of notorious obsessives in there and Alred’s website stresses words like “uncompromising” and “unequivocal” and phrases like “relentless drive and application towards improvement”.

Perhaps that’s not to Rory’s liking and the Ulsterman and his team haven’t got the desire or bottle to commit to such a tough regime but, boy, I’d love a season or two of Scary Rory (on the course).  It would be brill.  I really, really want him to notch up a few more majors (at least three, preferably more, including a Masters) but perhaps his Poppy will just have to read about Daddy’s achievements in her history books and settle for seeing the odd flash of brilliance now and again.

This seems a good time to admit that after checking out Bridge Base Online the other day, I had to look up the meaning of the words “kibitzer” and “kibitz”.  Then I, an interfering old besom of long standing, started laughing.  How on earth had I not known!!

A kibitzer is “an onlooker (at cards, etc) who gives unwanted advice; an interferer.”

Kibitz (vi) is “to give unwanted advice, to meddle, to comment out of turn.”

In my defence, these days I try to wait my turn before commenting….

And Dave Alred does have a nice smile…

To finish on a high note, Leona Maguire got a text from Catriona Matthew, Europe’s Solheim Cup captain, when she finished in a share of 6th place in the LPGA Drive On Championship (presented by Volvik) at Golden Ocala Golf & Equestrian Club in Florida last week.  Leona, who has a base at Lake Nona, has played there with Annika Sorenstam a few times, so her golfing education at the highest level continues apace.

Until next week.