The Ladies’ European Tour is not currently in good health.  The 2017 schedule looks set to be completed with a mere 15 tournaments on the roster, not nearly enough to provide the members with enough playing opportunities from which to make a living, never mind elevate their game to greater heights.

Sadly, this is not a new scenario.  The pinnacle of the tour’s existence was arguably around 1987 when I remember we had 27 guaranteed tournaments and as players we could plan our schedules to suit ourselves – four weeks on and then a week off was a popular format.

However, by the early 1990s we were in trouble as a tour with purses stalling and tournaments being cancelled as an economic downturn hit us badly.  As players we were told we had to step up to the plate.  We had to work harder in pro-ams to ensure the enjoyment of our amateurs, some of whom were potential sponsors; we were told to dress more smartly; and quite bluntly told we had to improve the level of our golf.  Collectively we rolled up our sleeves and did all that was asked of us, understanding that the product had to be right for the opportunity of attracting bigger and better sponsors for tournaments.  And then, in 1992, against all the odds, we won the Solheim Cup.  Surely that would set us off on a long, elevated, upward curve?  Sadly not, and even more sadly, that pattern of building up, then losing tournaments, then exhorting the players to give more, more and more, all the while keeping the problems “in house”, seems to have continued to this day.  I experienced this first hand, both as a player and as a member of the Board for five years.

And here we are, some 25 years on, yet seemingly, no further on.  A few weeks ago the players were criticised when their frustrations bubbled over and the financial ill health of the Tour was openly talked about.  There have been so few tournaments this year there is no planning required nowadays – the players must play everything they can afford.  In the first six and a half months of this year there were ultimately only five tournaments on offer, but the funds needed to compete in all five were significant as the venues were scattered from Australia to China to Morocco to Spain to Thailand.  That is, quite frankly, not good enough.

So, now comes news that the men’s European Tour chief Keith Pelley and LPGA commissioner Mike Whan have jointly proffered a helping hand to the beleaguered LET.

No help should be spurned – but a note of caution here.  The Seniors Tour and the Challenge Tour come under the auspices of the men’s European Tour and are surely direct competitors with the LET for a share in a finite pool of sponsorship on offer.  And it certainly wouldn’t be ideal to become a satellite tour exclusively feeding the LPGA, would it?

It would be very naive to think that any offer of help is purely altruistic.  Suggestions have been made of much smaller fields in the schedule and those players playing for more money.  Not a bad idea, but is that not a short-term fix?  Let’s look 10, 20 years down the road.  We want full field events (144 players) and a schedule of 30 tournaments or so that means a player can make a living in Europe. To accomplish that we mustn’t create a future for only the top part of the pyramid.  The entire LET pyramid of players has the depth and talent to merit playing opportunities.  As many tournaments as you can muster are needed, even if it’s at lower prize funds.  Opportunities to tee it up are key for any player’s development.  As a good friend once pointed out to me – if you want to win the top medal in the Chelsea Flower Show, you plant thousands and thousands of seeds.  You don’t limit your chances of success by only working with a small number.

Twenty-five years ago we were at the forefront of women’s sports in the UK.  Now we get less exposure and interest  than women’s cricket, football, tennis, rugby, hockey and athletics – to name but a few.  These sports have been where we currently are.  Surely we can learn from them?  Often, someone somewhere has walked the walk before you.  Just read Judy Murray’s inspiring book, “Knowing The Score”.

And……..something else that makes my blood boil.  This talk of the LET players not being able to make the Solheim Cup a real match.  Yes, the European team will always be partly made up of purely LET-based players and yes, while the schedule is so paltry that is very difficult indeed for us, but the depth of talent in Europe is terrific.  Remember, until a fantastic day’s singles play from a pumped-up US team in 2015 the Europeans were on course for a third consecutive victory.  What short memories the critics have!

One thing we have lacked is a far-seeing, charismatic leader at the helm, someone with a long-term vision and understanding of the landscape of sport and business, who can look beyond establishing their own, limited personal fiefdom.  To attract the quality of individual required a top-rated salary needs to be on offer.  Perhaps this is where any concrete “help” should be directed – in finding and paying for this individual.  This is a tough, tough world but one thing I can guarantee this person – the product you will have to work with is fantastic.

Recently it hasn’t been too hard to find something to write about but I was struggling this week – until an envelope was extricated from the post box.  It was in with a couple of bank-related missives (credit card statements as it turned out) and it looked similarly official but had a proper, real stamp on it.  Mmmm.  It was addressed to me all right.  I have to try and remember to check before ripping stuff open because I still get post for a mystery woman who used to live here years ago, long before my time and the time of the people I bought the house from.

Anyway, I opened it dear reader – and found the bill for my golf club subs.  Ah.

It wasn’t exactly a shock – it’s that time of year – but I hadn’t read the details in the email that came in a few days ago, informing me that the subs had gone up (didn’t have the strength that day).  This time I took in the figures – and threw the tempting stuff about that big pro-am in Pinehurst into the recycling.

Dai, contrary as always but possibly right, as he was occasionally, thought that we – and golfers in general – paid too little for our membership, that it was remarkably good value.  And that was before retirement, in the days when we were working away so much that we were the perfect members:  we paid our subs on time, in full and hardly every cluttered up the course.  There was the occasional disruption, for instance when my partner and I (not Dai – we were not compatible in foursomes or greensomes, having completely different approaches to the game) were thrown out of one major competition, after winning our first match, because someone noticed that I had not put in three qualifying scores in the previous year.  Oops.  I felt sorry, not for us but for the poor souls we’d beaten.

In those days getting the three scores in was tricky beyond belief.  Tuesday was usually a travelling day and Sunday was a working day, so playing in comps was harder than you’d think.  How times have changed.  Flicking through the diary, I totted up more than 40 games at Whittington Heath so far this year.  Not excessive but at the new subscription rate that works out at just under £32 an outing – and there are still four months to go.  Play twice a week and you’re down to just over £12.  And that’s not counting playing in club matches – home and away – or trips to the club for draw nights, meetings, chit-chat and asking advice in the pro’s shop, playing a few holes on a lovely evening, coffee (or wine) and chat in the clubhouse and general putting-off-doing-the-blog visits.

I count that as outstanding value for money and you can’t put a price on the friendships made and the support from those friends over the years.  Bloody hell, it’s a snip at £1,270 a year:  sub 1,190; bar/catering 50; full locker 30 (vital when you haven’t got a garage).  Where are those bank details again?  And do I really need to put the heating on in August? (Paying in instalments adds 3.5%, which is more than my Scottish/sensible streak can bear.  Even though it’s only £3.70 a month extra by my phone’s calculation.)

I do object to being designated an FL – Lady Full Playing.  I am a full playing/paying member full stop – and patently no lady – but categories of membership are still struggling to catch up with the modern world.  I’m a fan of family memberships, to try and attract and keep the 25-45 year olds who are working hard and starting families and may not even be able to play once a week, so £1,000-plus is more than an item.  It’s a minefield out there but if we want to survive and thrive, we have to learn to navigate it.  All suggestions gratefully received.

Yesterday, during my post tai chi, blog-delaying visit to the club, I looked at a friend’s copy of The Times, working from the back as usual.  I flicked through the umpteen pages of football (not even looking for who Spurs might be buying at the last minute), paused for a happy moment on the cricket (is this a welcome real revival of the Windies?), tennis from Flushing Meadows and checked to see what golf was on – the season is still in full swing isn’t it?

No golf.  Not anywhere.  Not that I could see.  That’s one of the reasons I no longer buy a newspaper on a regular basis, much though it pains me.  They haven’t the room or the inclination to cover golf week in, week out.  They cherry pick, leaving us to scrabble for info elsewhere.  Fortunately, the owner of the paper (not Rupert Murdoch) – and someone else who overheard our discussion – was clued up enough to inform me that Robert Rock, who’s a local lad (my friend Barb was his mother’s hairdresser), wasn’t playing in wherever it is this week and finished well enough in Denmark last week to move up to 80th-odd in the order of merit.

I might have found all that out on the internet but it was more fun finding out at the golf club.  And isn’t that what clubs are for?

 

 

We have Opens coming out of our ears at the moment:  the big one at Royal Birkdale, the senior men at Royal Porthcawl and this week the Ricoh Women’s British Open at Kingsbarns, a scenic gem just outside St Andrews.  Perhaps it’ll get a mention on 5 Live but who knows?  No sign of a preview that I could see in the Daily Mail, supposedly a paper aimed at women.  But then their golf correspondent, one of the best, is concentrating on the men and Rory’s reasons for dispensing with JP as his caddy.

The women’s football is all the rage at the moment – which is good, but I can’t help thinking that we golfers are missing a trick and not getting in there, elbows out, fighting our corner.  We have to rely on side issues – like dress codes – to boost the numbers and generate interest.  And since our recent rant, the LPGA have instituted their own new dress code, laying down the law, concentrating on the don’ts, the no thises, no thats that make me detest dress codes with a passion.  It’s like kneeling on the floor at school so they can measure how many inches/centimetres the skirt is above the ground.  Does it pass muster?  Does it heck as like.  (Have never been quite sure what that means but it seems right for the occasion.)

Anyway, the women seem to be playing well at Kingsbarns, with Michelle Wie, a proper golfer whatever the hype and brouhaha of her early years and her subsequent trials and tribulations, leading the way with a 64, eight under par.

I’m getting the train up to Leuchars today, to see how the weekend pans out and who hoists the trophy on Sunday.  There’ll also be the announcement of the Solheim Cup team for the match at Des Moines Golf and Country Club in Iowa later this month.  Make a note of the dates:  Friday 18th August – Sunday 20th.  It’s a big deal in Iowa and it should be a big deal over here.  The LET may be wobbling (not a state it’s unused to) but Europe can still put a good team together and I’d be astounded if Annika Sorenstam, the European captain and her players don’t give Juli Inkster, the USA skipper and her team a scare.  The Americans, the holders, are overwhelming favourites, as they usually are but they would do well to guard against complacency.  If I can find a bookie who’s heard of women’s golf, my money’s on Europe….

At a less elevated but no less important level, at least to those of us battling away on fairways far from the madding crowd, it was the Whittington Heathens’ ladies’ captain’s stay-away (not so sure about the hyphen but hope Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves and Get Her Off The Pitch! among many other things, would approve of the apostrophes) this week.

We played at Llangollen and Henlle Park and stayed at Lion Quays Resort, just in England, Gobowen way, Ian Woosnam territory and we more or less avoided the rain, bar one torrential plump in the middle of our round at Llangollen.  Both courses were hard work because they didn’t give you an inch:  there was no run because of the rain and we had to work hard for our points but we all had a ball and there were lots of laughs, not least because there are times when laughing is better than crying.

I’m on tour at the moment because after the stay-away it was on to Wrexham, to play in another Open.  An Open that was open to women at my level – and much better.  In fact, thanks to my team, from Wrexham and Fairhaven, all better than me, we won!  I did my bit and we all tried hard, hit more good shots than bad, holed some putts, missed some we shouldn’t have, got plenty of exercise, yakked a lot and laughed a lot.  Isn’t that what golf’s all about?!

The other day someone asked me how many Opens I’d been at and, not being a numbers bod, I hadn’t a clue.  Quite a few is the answer and it is still, I think, my favourite championship.  The world and her husband are here at Royal Birkdale and if you stand still for long enough, you’re likely to bump into almost everybody you’ve ever known in golf:  from Ireland, Japan, America, Sweden, Spain, Australia, wherever, you name it.  It’s wonderful.

Even on Tuesday the train to Hillside was full of golf fans, male, female, young, not so young and the buzz and excitement were palpable.  We streamed into Birkdale and big bruiser of a course though it is, with space to spare, we still stood out.  We were absorbed easily but not swallowed up.  Just another golf tournament?  I don’t think so.

I had a front row seat in the grandstand in 1998 when Justin Rose, a talented, gangly teenager in a baggy jumper, holed out from the rough at the 72nd hole, to give notice of his taste for the big occasion.  There was pandemonium but it was Mark O’Meara, aided, if memory serves, by a lengthy, officially sanctioned search for a missing ball, who won the title.  His reward this year was to open the proceedings at 0635 on a pretty filthy morning.  I confess I wasn’t there to see the start but perhaps I’ll make it this morning, when Beef is first off….

Dai died in May 2008, so Birkdale was the first Open I attended without him and it was a bit of an odd, bittersweet experience, albeit quieter than normal, with no husband to demand why I wasn’t getting a (blank) move on.  The traditional Open ice cream didn’t taste quite the same that year.  However, Greg Norman’s blast-from-the-past performance enlivened the proceedings, as did the presence of Chris Evert, who was, briefly, Mrs Norman.  Ian Poulter also got in on the act in fighting style but it was Padraig Harrington, always one of my favourites, who retained the claret jug he’d snaffled at Carnoustie the year before.

Padraig, whose endlessly inventive thought processes are probably a mystery even to himself, went on to win the USPGA later that year and I didn’t see a shot of his final round.  Assuming that he was too far adrift to have any chance, I went to bed and woke up to hear on the news that the delightfully doolally Dubliner had become a major miracle worker.  It taught me never, ever, to take anything in golf for granted and it should be an object lesson to every player, at whatever level, to keep on plugging away, whatever the conditions, however hopeless things look, until the holes run out.

Even here at Birkdale, watching the best players in the world, it’s amazing how dire some of the body language can be, how quickly players of immense talent seem to be floored by the slightest setback, ready to slump after a missed putt or a misjudged pitch and responding sarkily or swearing sulkily if a shot goes awry.  We all have days when we’re out of sorts but being a professional is surely all about damage limitation when the timing is out of sync or the biorhythms have gone walkabout.  It’s often a question of mind over matter.

Ask any Open champion.