Well, you’ll probably all be breathing sighs of relief at the news that this is the last blog of the year – one less thing to read in the run-up to Christmas, the Heathland stableford, the general election, birthdays, Hogmanay, whatever.  All being well, Maureen and I will be back in January, refreshed, revitalised and raring to go.

Usually I don’t put up the decorations until my brother-in-law’s birthday on the 12th of December but I gave in early this year and the tree – small but real – is already up, assorted Santas are being scattered about the place, there’s a (fingers crossed) healthy-looking poinsettia in a new pot (T-K-Maxx’s best) and all the lights seem to be in better working order than my golf swing.

We had a 15-hole, 3-a-side Texas Scramble on Tuesday and it was a glorious day, sunny, almost warm, mulled wine with mince pies and stollen at the halfway house.  All three of us hit some decent shots and one of us, a new member, holed some cracking putts once she’d recovered from the shock of meeting her playing partners, two people that she’d never encountered before but is unlikely to forget in a hurry…..Of course, if we’re lucky, she’ll never recognise us.

You won’t be surprised to learn that I’ve always been in favour of abolishing the dress code altogether – although maybe not in favour of playing in the altogether, certainly not at this stage of the proceedings and certainly not at this time of year in the UK.  It’s two-duvet weather in my book and thank goodness for inside loos, double glazing and central heating.  Most of us no longer wake up with icicles on the pillow and scraping ice off the inside of the windows is an indication that you need new windows.

We’ve come a long way in a few decades but golf still seems to have a problem with shorts, if not long socks, which seem to have gone the way of the tie and become a relative rarity.  Can you believe the brouhaha over the European Tour’s landmark (!!) decision to allow the players to wear shorts at Leopard Creek in South Africa last week, not just in practice but in competition.  Sportsmen wear shorts, shock, horror.  Blimey.

I no longer have Sky so I like to go up to the golf club after tai chi and watch people playing in sunshine:  the men are in Mauritius, Sydney (the Australian Open) and the Bahamas, to name just a few of the venues and the LET’s last event of the season is the Magical Kenya Ladies Open at the Baobab Course in Vipingo Ridge.  In “the old days”, players like Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle and their contemporaries honed their professional skills in Africa – Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia – so there’s nothing much new under the sun, although the resort seems posher than the old-fashioned courses of yesteryear.  Pete Cowen’s only tournament win was the Zambian Open of 1976 and he’s now one of the world’s best coaches.

I won’t be having any lessons from Pete in the New Year – way beyond my skill and purse level – but I will be trying to improve my game (did I really write that?!!!) and paying closer attention to the rule book.  The scale of my ignorance was brought home to me the other week when four of us were playing in our 9-hole Friday roll-up.  One of us hit a very respectable shot to the 9th green (it was a waltz, so three out of four scores were to count*), we walked a few yards to the next ball and there came a plaintive cry, “This isn’t my ball……..you’ve played the wrong ball…..”

Ah.  The mistake was easily rectified but we had to work out what the penalty was.  “I’m pretty sure it used to be two strokes,” sez I, “but I’ll check the rule book.”

That’s when confusion reigned and hope sprang in our hearts that, in fact, there wasn’t a penalty at all (we were struggling to register any points).  In match play it would have been loss of hole and in stroke play disqualification – unless the error was recognised and rectified in time.  Well, it had been recognised and rectified, so were we in the clear?  Had the rule changed?  Seemed a bit generous but…….

Eventually, in the clubhouse, after much discussion and consultation, a clued-up soul pointed out the words “general penalty” in the rule book.  It was there, under 6.3c Wrong Ball, in bold red letters:  “Penalty for Playing Wrong Ball:  General Penalty.”  None of us is colour blind but we’d managed to ignore/overlook the red letters.  If we’d gone back to page 19, rule 1.3 Playing by the Rules, we’d have come across (not in red) General Penalty:  Loss of hole in match play and a two-stroke penalty in stroke play…….

So, there you are, a general penalty is pretty severe.  Maureen knows that only too well, having had one of her most humiliating moments on the golf course when playing with Fred Daly, Open champion in 1947 and Ireland’s only winner of the Claret Jug until Padraig Harrington opened the floodgates 60 years later.  Mo, aged about 15, had been having an uncomfortable day but at the 18th she hit a cracker onto the green, in front of a few of Fred’s cronies, who’d come out to cheer him in.

Sadly, it was all in vain.  Fred walked a few yards, looked, then turned and said the immortal words: “You’ve played the wrong ball, sweetie.”

[*A waltz is 1, 2, 3:  one score to count at the 1st, two at the 2nd, three at the 3rd; then 1 at the 4th and so on.]

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I gave up worrying about the LET (Ladies European Tour) a long time ago.  It has been around, in various guises, since 1979, sometimes bounding along, sometimes limping but it has always survived, clinging on to existence, limpet-like, sustained mostly, probably, by sheer bloody-mindedness and determination.  A bit like the suffragettes.

Golf, particularly professional golf, is not a necessity, it’s an indulgence.  Like all sports it has always relied on patronage, aka sponsorship and most sponsors aren’t sponsoring out of the goodness of their hearts but because they see a commercial opportunity; they can make money out of golf.  At the moment, they’re churning most of their money into men’s golf, with the women picking up what they can but all being well, that could be changing.

It’s a slow process but you never know, the men could be pricing themselves out of the market.  The money they’re making is ridiculous, embarrassing even and their standard of living would be more than comfortable even if their prize money slumped to half its current level.  Of course, some players might have to downsize to a mini-mansion or up their game but they’d still be able to make a more than decent living.

A few days ago, in an article in Golfweek, Stacy Lewis, a former world No 1, who’s had a good career, winning two major championships, wrote about the disparity between what the men and women earn.   She lives in Houston and was at home for the men’s Houston Open, watching all the courtesy cars whizzing around, huge crowds massing for an event that featured $7.5 million dollars in prize money, with a field that “didn’t have a single player inside the top 30 in the world competing”.

Lewis pointed out that the biggest prize in women’s golf is the $5.5 million on offer for the US Women’s Open.  She worked out that over a season the women play for roughly 17 per cent of what the men do.  In the proper workplace, according to the latest report from Payscale.com, women make on average 79 cents to every dollar earned by a man.  Whichever way you look at it there’s room for improvement.

In the WPGA handbook of 1981, Peter Alliss, the WPGA president, was bullish:  “There can no longer be any doubts. The WPGA tour is here to stay – and getting stronger all the time.  If in 1979 we suffered the usual teething troubles of a new venture, last year saw us go a very long way towards silencing those who had little faith in our ability to survive….”

Barry Edwards, the executive director, said it was all systems go for a booming 1981.  He wrote:  “Women’s professional golf was hiding under a bushel before the emergence of the WPGA in 1979.  It did exist in Europe but in such a small and insignificant form that most people simply ignored it.  The WPGA changed all that.  This is a booming sport and all those instrumental with its launching can feel justly proud……

“It may not be long before we receive more entries from the United States.  Indeed, the USLPGA are very interested in our growth and plans are well ahead for a Europe-USA biennial match being organised……”

It took until 1990 for the first Solheim Cup to hit the schedule and it’s now a serious sporting contest as this year’s match at Gleneagles proved, showing that women’s golf can draw the crowds and hit the headlines.

Handbooks are a bit passe (sorry, not sure how to do an acute accent, or any other sort of accent) in this digital, electronic age but they’re an interesting record of a tour’s progress.  In 1997, the Women Professional Golfers’ European Tour was billed as the American Express Tour; a year later we have the ELPGA, the European Ladies’ Professional Golf Association – “the launch of a new name and a new era for women’s professional golf in Europe”; the next year, 1998, it was the Ladies European Tour, apostrophe ditched and the emergence of “a new-look circuit”;  by 2000 it was the Evian Tour……..I may have given up paying close attention to the behind-the-scenes politicking about this time and at least there were plenty of good players around, including the incomparable Laura Davies, Liselotte Neumann and Alison Nicholas, who won the US Women’s Open in 1997…….

Now, at the end of 2019, with the LET in another limping-along period comes news of a merger with the LPGA, “a long-term partnership to significantly grow awareness, sponsor support and professional playing opportunities for women in Europe……..The combination of the LET’s European expertise and relationships in the region, with the LPGA’s global strength and worldwide exposure and their shared vision for the future of the women’s professional golf and growth of the game, provides the core ingredients to ignite a tour loaded with upside potential.”

Well, who knows what that’ll all mean in practice in years to come.  In the meantime, the LET Order of Merit will be called the Race to Costa del Sol from next year and the prize money of the Andalucia Costa del Sol Open de Espana Femenino will be doubled.  It’s a start and Marta Figueras-Dotti, chair of the LET Board, was optimistic.  The Spaniard had a distinguished playing career on both sides of the Atlantic before becoming a coach of some renown and is a passionate promoter of the game in general and the women’s game in particular.

“Two teams, joining for one common purpose, will create opportunities we simply could not have pursued on our own,” she said.  “At its foundation this joint venture is about creating opportunities for our members to pursue their passion and their careers as professional athletes.  In just the 60 days since we began working on this joint venture, we have already seen a dramatic impact on our LET Tour schedule – an impact that will be a positive result for virtually all of our LET members.”

Mike Whan, commissioner of the LPGA, said:  “We have experienced incredible growth in women’s golf in the US and this is an extraordinary opportunity to accelerate and expand the game in Europe as well.  I’m excited that this is something we will build together with the LET.”

Here’s to a prosperous future.

 

 

 

“Why on earth are you driving all the way up to Cairnryan?” my friends asked, puzzled beyond belief.  “Shortest sea crossing, ” sez I.  “Herself doesn’t want to be on the water too long at this time of year.  And apparently they put on the slow, old ferries now that the season’s over.”  Trouble is, if you live in England, Cairnryan’s a long way up but we made it in plenty of time for the boat, even with a couple of stops, including one at the Cally Palace, one of Mum and Dad’s favourite hotels, in Gatehouse of Fleet.

Mo and I called in for old times’ sake and the place didn’t seem to have changed a bit.  Staff just as pleasant, grounds just as beautiful, with a golf course that’s well worth a visit.

It had been a bit wet and worryingly windy round about Shap on the drive up but the weather improved the further north we got and, wonder of wonders, the crossing was flat calm.  Even Maureen, far from the world’s best sailor, sat playing patience without feeling ill and was able to drive us off the boat and to our destination (via an annoying diversion that gave us a tour of previously unexplored countryside) without any need to call on the reserve who had been sacked by her advanced driving group at the end of last year.

It was still flat calm when we played Dunluce the next day, perfect conditions for four oldish dolls taking on one of Harry Colt’s masterpieces – don’t forget that Whittington Heath is also a Colt course, less majestic than Royal Portrush perhaps but it has also stood the test of time and is a joy to play.  I digress, as usual but one of the reasons I fell in love with Whittington the first time I played it was because it was fast and hard-running, conditions that reminded me of the links courses I’d grown up on.  Admittedly, Lichfield and Tamworth, distinguished though their history is, are about as far from the sea as you can get but you can’t always have everything.

This week, I, a resident of landlocked Staffordshire, have been getting a life-giving fix of sea air on golf courses that rank with any anywhere in the world.  Yesterday it was the Strand course at Portstewart, the club where Mo and I started the game.  There’s a gala dinner tonight to celebrate the club’s 125th anniversary but busy though they were everybody had time for a chat and it felt as though we’d never been away.

The view from the 1st tee still puts it in the running as one of the most scenic in the world – though the weather was a bit grey and gloomy for it to appear at its most majestic – and the dunes are as massive as ever.  Like Portrush, it’s not a course for the faint-hearted.

All the apps and the forecasts had predicted rain about lunchtime but it swept in for elevenses and a chilly wind didn’t help.  We struggled womanfully to play some canny golf as our hands got colder, our grips wetter and our determination to play 18 holes dwindled to nothing.

Kath Stewart-Moore, whose golfing pedigree is unsurpassed – her father skived off school all week to watch Joyce Wethered win the British at Portrush in 1924 and it would take a whole book to list the extensive achievements of equally extensive S-M clan – parred the 8th and birdied the 9th to square the match, so we took that as a sign to head for the clubhouse.  Time for a Guinness and a toastie or celeriac soup with wheaten bread and a glass of red.

It wasn’t so much the course as the weather that brought us to our knees and when we saw the state of the intrepid souls (or stubborn eejits) who’d played 18 holes, dripping into the lockerroom on the verge of hypothermia, we knew we’d made the right decision.

Another good thing is that I now know that my waterproof trousers are still sound; my waterproof shoes are getting to the stage where the toes are letting in just enough to relegate them to the dry-days-only corner; my water-resistant top can cope with quite a lot of water; thermal underwear is a gift from on high; my bag’s claim to be waterproof is not yet in contravention of the Trades Descriptions Act (is there still such a thing?); and if I will insist on playing golf in the rain, I should stop being so squeamish and invest in some contact lenses…..

Oh yes, and I’ll never again pour scorn on American golfers wearing ear muffs or insulated coats.  Promise.

 

 

 

This has been a tiring and emotional week and some of us – not just Rory – are on our knees before the Open’s even got into the second day.  In the run-up to the championship, the first at Portrush for 68 years, in case you’d missed that hiatus, a friend said she hadn’t felt this excited about anything since waiting for Christmas as a child.  So, really, most of us can hardly breathe.

We’re reduced to a one-word answer whenever anyone asks us anything about Open week:  “Unbelievable.”  It’s about all that even the most imaginative and garrulous can come up with.  There’s a lot of head shaking; and an awful lot of smiling inanely.  Is it really happening?  Or are we dreaming?

Well, the dreaming has been done and turned into a reality.  The biggest show in golf really is here.

We got up at 0500 hours to drive to the course, tramp through a muddy car park, queue at security, fretting that we’d be held up too long to make it to the 1st tee in time to watch Darren Clarke, champion golfer of the year in 2011, hit the opening shot at 0635.  He, being the showman that he is, started proceedings with a birdie 3, responding to the audience drawn by the sense of occasion and the desire to be part of history.  The usual handful of R&A early risers and photographers were joined by a standful of people and a long line of fans streaming up the hill towards the green.

Being a golf spectator is not for the faint-hearted and the Dunluce course at Royal Portrush is a workout of epic proportions.  I used to play here a lot but had forgotten just how undulating it is and had to admit wheezingly to myself that my fitness levels are not what they were – or should be.  The two new holes – the 7th and 8th – also played havoc with my sense of where I was (never reliable at the best of times), though you would think that even the mathematically challenged could cope with adding two onto a number…..

There was a brisk enough breeze – Dad wouldn’t even have rated it a zephyr – and some skiffs of rain to keep the players honest and the course showed itself to be every inch the championship test worthy of The Open.  How I ever managed to get round it, even from the forward tees, heaven only knows.  Perhaps I was a demon chipper and putter in those days……

Sitting in the stand at the 18th (which used to be the 16th and was where Maureen lost an Irish final against the mighty Mary McKenna many moons ago), waiting for Darren and co to finish, I thought of Mum and Dad; Zara Bolton, Dorothy Glendinning and all the people who helped and encouraged us juniors; Stevie and his Golf Foundation classes; Max Faulkner, who won the Open here in 1951 and signed my precious programme, shakily, when in his 80s.

I was tired and I was emotional but it was a precious, special moment and Darren recognised it when he raised his putter and turned full circle, saluting us all.

For many of us, this is a week for enjoying the company of friends from all over the world and every corner of Ireland, for going with the flow, ripping up the timetable and watching the golf that appeals most without the tyranny of deadlines and meticulous research.  Maureen may have opted for a work-free major but she hasn’t neglected the blog and has done a tip which will appear as soon as I can work out why it’s decided to be uncooperative and make itself unavailable.  Normal service will resume as soon as possible.

The photo stream is undiluted, however and I can’t resist sharing some of my favourite snaps.  The montage of the AGW (Association of Golf Writers) dinner was put together by Mary McKenna, who is as talented a photographer as she was a golfer.  I hasten to add that she is not responsible for the photos, they’re all my own work and all the flaws are mine.

There are those who may accuse me of family bias for using the following photograph but it’s a tribute to those brave souls at Portstewart Golf Club who continue to work closely with our cousin John Breadon and to all the unsuspecting spectators subjected to his marshalling on the 1st hole.  John (right) is kept up to scratch by long-suffering son Patrick……

 

 

Finally, it’s always good to promote a good cause, especially one that features a five-time Open champion and a decent pic of the White Rocks with Dunluce Castle just visible in the background.  This year the Open Water initiative is tackling the problem of single-use plastic water bottles by encouraging people to use stainless steel bottles and refill them at water stations around the course.  At a conservative estimate that’ll be 120,000 bottles saved.  All we have to do is remember to keep our reusable bottles with us.  The Open ones are a snip at £4.50 but other bottles are allowed in…..