Any time you’re invited anywhere by Jack and Barbara Nicklaus, you say yes please and if you’re invited to the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village in their home state of Ohio, you’re jumping up and down with delight and ensconcing yourself for the week, not just for a couple of days.  The Memorial is Jack’s baby and every year there are honourees/honorees, both playing and journalistic and there is a plaque for each person honoured.

Barbara and Jack Nicklaus, two of the best.

Maureen and I went there in 2009 – can’t believe it’s so long ago because it’s so fresh in the memory – because Dai, my husband, was one of the journalists honoured, in his case posthumously.  Fortunately, Maureen and I were still breathing and knew even before we set off that we’d never have another experience like this.  We were right.

At a lunch, Maureen was standing around when Barbara Nicklaus came up and introduced herself; then it was Tom Watson; then it was Jack.  It was golfing heaven.  The professional honourees that year were JoAnne Carner, whom I knew fairly well from covering the LPGA Tour and Jackie Burke, whose wife had been at college with Maureen, so, really, we were away in a coach.  We had breakfast with Padraig Harrington, chatted to David Feherty in the hotel bar – where he told us that his alcoholism was doing press-ups in the car park, just waiting for him to slip up – and wandered around in a delighted daze.

We treated ourselves to a facial and full make-up on the day of the presentation – I managed to keep my acceptance speech to the requisite four minutes, miraculous and think I didn’t disgrace myself in front of that consummate master of ceremonies Charlie Mechem, who is still doing the job.  He’s a long-standing friend of Jack and Barbara and was for a few years commissioner of the LPGA, making that difficult job look delightfully straightforward!  Every tour should have a Mechem at least once in its lifetime.

The incomparable Charlie Mechem, a man for every occasion.

For some reason, there was no photograph taken of me being presented with Dai’s plaque, so we ended up going down to Jack and Barbara’s house, where we had a happy snap taken, much to Mo’s disgust.  The reason?  She’d assumed all the formalities were done and had headed out to the golf course to watch Olly (Jose Maria Olazabal), dressed in her oldest sun top, secure in the knowledge that she could top up her tan and was unlikely to meet anybody that she knew.  Instead, I track her down – there are thousands of spectators and it wasn’t easy finding anyone – and haul her off to have our photo taken with our hosts.  The photo has pride of place on my desk but Mo can’t stand it – all she sees is that tatty top – and insists it has no place there, making her cringe with embarrassment.  She has banned it from the blog.

On the Saturday of the tournament, we abandon golf watching and go shopping, so when we get back, Mo stops off at the hotel reception to check the scores while I go up to the room.  Next thing I know she’s knocking on the door – why?  She has a key – and when I open it, a little indignantly, she pushes past me, gesticulating madly…..Tiger, Tiger’s next door…….She’d bumped into him, struggling with his key and an inordinate number of takeaway bags and exchanged pleasantries, congratulating him on the 68 that had got him back in contention.

The next day, he played superbly, had a 65, with birdies at the last two holes, to win by one shot from Jim Furyk.  It was a masterful performance, full of exciting shots, his fourth win at the Memorial.  Jack presented the trophy and predicted that Tiger would win his 15th major at the upcoming US Open and overtake his total of 18 major titles within two or three years…..

Tiger with Jack in happier times.

It never happened and now we have the latest, sad, sad, horrible pictures of Tiger in decline, arrested by the police, looking lost and broken, a man with no idea who he is or where he is.  He needs help and if he has any friends, he needs them now.

Not much golf for me this week but Maureen and I did have a treat on Tuesday, a jaunt to London for a do at the Embassy of Ireland in Grosvenor Place, hosted by Ambassador Dan Mulhall and his wife Greta, in aid of the Journalists’ Charity.  There was a sombre one minute silence in memory of the people killed in the most recent Manchester bombing and the ambassador’s valedictory speech – he’s off to Washington next – was poignant and heartfelt, not the jocular address he’d planned.

A lot of people had to cry off because they were working round the clock on the tragic story and its aftermath but those of us who were there hugged our friends with extra vigour.  It was great to catch up with Tom Clarke, who was my first sports editor at The Times and sent me off round the world, and his wife Meg, both keen golfers and full of bounce and joie de vivre.

Tom Clarke, legendary sports editor at The Times and Daily Mail and Meg, the woman behind the great man.

I don’t miss traipsing round the world covering tournaments – airports are much less user friendly these days – but I did feel a pang when I heard Iain Carter on Radio 5 Live giving us an update on the early starters in the first round of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.

It was hot and sunny – a day for seeking out the shade if you’re a north Atlantic bod like me – so I thought I’d watch a bit on the telly, see if I’d recognise the course after the latest changes and spot veterans who were just beginners when I was writing about them.  Then I remembered, damn, it’s not on the Beeb any more, it’s on Sky and when they lied to me and set the debt collectors on me, I swore a great oath never to have dealings with them again.  Also, there was a certain amount of self-preservation involved because as a sports nut (less hardcore than in the past but a bit of a tragic nonetheless), I thought I might have difficulty getting out of the house:  I’ll just wait till the end of this over; ooh, I’ll wait till the end of the game/set/match; rugby 7s involving Fiji, better watch that; bit of footie, why not, could be a good game; better brush up on my rugby before the Lions go over to mangle (!!??)/squeak past the All Blacks [Note to all tourists:  BBUs (Brave But Unavailings) are banned].

Anyway, I went up to the golf club to put my clubs in the locker after their tour of Ireland and Cheshire and, lo, the golf was on and there was a guy in a green shirt over a putt of about 10 feet.  Looks like Luke Donald I thought and it was indeed Luke Donald, the current, mature model, who missed the putt, which the younger, potential-major-champion model never did.  There seemed to be plenty of people out on the course watching the golf, whatever Maureen’s fears about all the added extras in the tented village.  Let’s hope the medics didn’t get overrun with cases of sunstroke.  Remember the old Aussie slogan, slip, slap, slop.  Can’t remember the order but it involved a tee shirt, a sunhat (with a broad brim, no ear-revealing baseball caps) and sunscreen.

Sartorial elegance for sunny fairways…

The sun reminded me that it was time to root out the summer wardrobe and do you know what?  I hadn’t a thing to wear.  Where were the shorts?  Ah, just that pair I bought when the airline lost my luggage a few years ago and are all right to put on when you’re somewhere with people who know you very well – or not at all.  Not golf club friendly, probably, in truth, only back garden friendly and then only if you avoid that rose with the vicious, Spanish Inquisition, punk-like spikes.

It’s depressing, not having a summer wardrobe that doesn’t make you look like one of those old-fashioned Brits abroad or at the seaside, knotted hanky on head; rolled up trousers; sandals with socks; arms and faces flashing red for danger and a visit to the dermatologist.  It reminds me of the cringe-making photos of me playing golf at Prairie Dunes in Kansas in 1986 prior to the historic GB and I Curtis Cup victory in temperatures of 100-plus Fahrenheit.  It was not something I was equipped to do, either physically or sartorially and 30 years on nothing much has changed.

The late Michael Williams (Daily Telegraph), in red shirt and Bob Sommers (Golf Journal, USGA) with some hot bird at Prairie Dunes

Except, perhaps, that I’m ready to accept my parchment-coloured legs that look as though they’ve spent a lifetime in a sarcophagus and root out that skort that I bought in a moment of Mary Beard over-60 bravado last year.

Comfort rules OK…….

The West of Ireland is played at Rosses Point every year but there’s an awful lot of west beyond Sligo.  Maureen and I drove for just under an hour to Enniscrone/Inishcrone/Inis Crabhann and were still in county Sligo and then there’s Mayo beyond that.  It could take a lifetime to play every golf course around the coastline of Ireland, before even venturing inland.

How’s this for golfing territory?

At least Mo and I have now added Enniscrone to our list and it’s more than worth the detour.  We caught it on a near-perfect day, with blue skies and enough of a breeze to keep us honest and thank goodness it was in benign mood because it’s a tough track with serious dunes and elevated greens with roller-coaster run-offs.  It is not easy to navigate if you’re playing it for the first time without a local to point you in the right direction.  Still, we managed it, only losing one ball each and fortunately, a four ball of Englishmen called us through at the delightfully dinky traffic light hole – the light goes green when you leave the green, letting the players on the tee know it’s time to let rip – where we hadn’t a clue what it was we were supposed to be doing.  We hit crackers, which impressed our ball spotters, and swaggered on as though that was the norm.  It was the next hole that we halved in lost balls!

After a bowl of delicious fish chowder and the ubiquitous, divine wheaten, we set off on the drive north (east first of course, there’s a lot of water immediately north of Enniscrone, which is also famous for its beach, seaweed baths, wildlife and all things water-related).

We were off to visit our great pal, the inimitable Lilian Starrett, in Ballyclare, an old stomping ground of our aunt and uncle, Dick and Dote but not a part of the world we know that well.  The drive there had everything:  mountains, lakes, greenery and a porous old border that I hope even after Brexit everyone in places like Blacklion and Belcoo will continue to cross multiple times a day with nary a thought.  Am reading the quite brilliant Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall,  in a last, valiant attempt to get the brain cell working and understand the world we live in a bit better, so borders are on my mind.

Lil was keen for us to play Hilton Templepatrick, where she works and she’d summoned Kath Stewart-Moore from Portrush to join us.  Unfortunately, the balls paired Kath with Mo and Lil, who was hampered by one of those pesky back tweaks, was lumbered with me.  Kath, irritatingly competitive and consistent, improved as the round went on , impervious to distracting questions about the bird life and playing a ball that seemed allergic to trees and water.  She holed a treacherous, downhill putt for a par 3 at the 15th and Lil and I were toast.

A different look from the links.

The rain held off and the course proved playable and testing without being monstrous, bar the 3rd hole, which features a lake that takes up the entire fairway and offers no obvious, circuitous, non-aerial route to the green.  Not all of us avoided the water.

Kath, back right and Mo, front left, beat Lil and me in a pastoral setting.

The final course on this trip was Baltray, more formally County Louth Golf Club, which I, shamefully and amazingly, had never played.  It’s 125 years old this year and the day before we played, Maria Dunne, from Skerries, just down the coast, had won the Irish Women’s Open Strokeplay Championship by two shots from the Englishwomen Gemma Clews and Sophie Lamb.  All three have been picked for the Vagliano Trophy in Italy at the end of next month.  Mind you, we were just as impressed that Maeve Rooney, of County Sligo, who played with us and Mary McKenna at Rosses Point last week, played all three rounds.  Well done Maeve.

We were there too!

The trophy Maria won is now named for two of the greats of Irish golf, both stalwarts of Baltray:  Clarrie Reddan and Philomena Garvey.  Clarrie was a formidable competitor, who won the Irish and played in the Curtis Cup but Phil was just phenomenal, hoovering up an indecent number of Irish titles, one British (she was runner-up four times) and a host of Curtis Cup appearances, playing on two winning teams.  They put Baltray on the map – and kept it there.

The Reddan clan, a gathering of golfers of all ages and stages.

You know the way that musical people will tell you that everyone can sing?  Well, just ask my friends and they will wholeheartedly tell you that that is not true, not by a long chalk.  There are a (favoured?) few to whom I lift the phone on their birthdays and I belt out my best rendition, ignoring their pleas to cease immediately.  Well, today is madillgolf.com’s first birthday, but do not fear, I am not going to subject your ears to what Dad used to call my caterwauling.

The last person I sang down the phone to was Mary McKenna MBE, one of Ireland’s greatest golfers and ambassadors, but more importantly one of the world’s great people.  So, it is very apt that it is at her kitchen table that I sit writing this post.  Her home is full of golfing memorabilia, awards and photographs documenting an incredible career of several decades during which she pretty much hoovered up anything worth winning in the women’s amateur game.  Jostling alongside this golfing treasure trove is evidence of her love of photography – no wonder we appointed her as honorary snapper to the blog although, come to think of it, I’m not quite sure she ever really did accept the position.

Who needs wallpaper?

So, here we are, one year in and no-one more surprised than me that we have made it this far.  For one thing, I only expected a dozen or so people to be interested in our posts.  Not so – several hundred of you seem to have nothing better to do with your time each week than log in to the ramblings of a couple of mad Irish women golfers.  And we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

I was dead against doing this blog for lots of reasons.  Patricia had been on at me for ages thinking it was a good idea and could be great fun.  “We’re not going to be a news or results service,” she said.  “We can write about whatever we like, talk to interesting people and be opinionated about all things golf – you know, stuff we do all the time anyway.”  Hmmm!

But, how right she has been!  Once I got my head round the fact that she seldom starts her contribution for the 7.00am Friday deadline until after 10.00pm on the Thursday evening I found out I was, indeed, having a grand time.  So – my own personal highlights?   Spending a day with the delightful Martin Ebert at Portrush as he generously gave of his time to outline his plans for the two new holes which will reintroduce the Dunluce course to the Open Championship rota after a gap of 68 years;

The Master Plan. The holes are better in real life!

The delightful Martin Ebert, master designer.

being able to share walking inside the ropes at the Ryder Cup at Hazeltine and seeing up close and personal the raw emotion between Patrick Reed and Rory McIlroy in the top singles and then being able to talk to them both afterwards;

Patrick Reed, the victor in an epic battle.

Rory McIlroy, Ryder Cup not “just an exhibition”!

and, most surprisingly, the tips!  Ah, the tips!  I’m on a mission to make them easy as can be.  I have read and watched golf instruction for a long, long time and at least 50% of the time there is a secondary meaning that can be taken out of the information that is the polar opposite of what is intended.  My goal is to help make your life on the course easier and therefore, more enjoyable.

A year has whizzed by reconnecting with lots of people in this greatest of sports.  Well done, Patricia, for being persistent, well done to you guys for reading our offerings and happy first birthday to madillgolf.com!