Some friends can be very annoying……..and some very persistent…….and some are both – all at the same time.

Gillian Stewart, one of my oldest, longest golfing pals, certainly falls into this category.  She’s been mithering me for a few months now to get myself back on the golf course from which I have been missing for a whole two years.  This is due to ongoing Long Covid battles that have left me with varying degrees of pain throughout my body and with questionable reserves of energy, which have to be carefully nurtured and cossetted like the most precious possession on earth.

Shamefully, I must confess that I made no great strides in this direction over the past season, concentrating instead on managing to work at the Masters in April, the PGA Championship in May and the Open in July.  After the Open I barely left the house for five weeks it took so much out of me – but Gill still wouldn’t let me off the hook.  So we arranged to meet for a five-day break in Gullane, in the very heartland of Scottish golfing territory and we agreed that I’d “hit a few balls”.

With the 270-mile drive behind me we ventured out the next, very stormy morning along the coast to Craigielaw golf club to see if we could use the practice range.  Travelling with Gill to Scottish golf clubs is akin to travelling throughout Ireland with the great Mary McKenna – it’s travelling with golfing royalty and first-class greetings and hospitality are frequently rolled out for us.  And so it was at Craigielaw where we were made so very welcome by Stephen and the golf team.

I found I wasn’t really itching to get out there and started dredging up delaying tactics such as, “Let’s go for a coffee.”  My query of “Shall we have another?” was given short shrift and suddenly there was no turning back.

My allocation was a whole twenty balls and I gingerly started stretching the ole. creaking bod just to alert it that some sort of action was imminent.  Four shanks in the first half dozen balls didn’t make it any easier to disregard the aching limbs, but slow practice swings and a sage piece of advice from Gill and suddenly the wedges were going away like……well, wedges.  Some 7-irons and rescues off the deck followed suit and even a couple of 3-woods off the tee peg went away with a pleasing sound.  The last was a beaut and that forgotten feel of a well-struck shot had me grinning from ear to ear like a Cheshire cat.

I had finally made a start.

In preparation for our trip we had decided that it might be prudent to suss out some nine-hole courses, so where better to start than at the oldest course in the world, which neither of us had played?  Time to rectify that huge oversight and gap in our golfing education.

We made our way to the Musselburgh Links, the website informing us that the first documentation of golf being played there dated back to 1672, although Mary Queen of Scots had reputedly played there in 1567.  The course is enfolded into the bosom of the Musselburgh racecourse and with the usual Scottish understatement the signage to the all-important starter’s office was challenging, to say the least.  We made it, however, and Kenny gave us a warm welcome and a starting time for the following morning.

Bright, sunny conditions with very little wind met us the next day and in no time at all we had skipped round the Old Links.  There were even a couple of reasonable shots to be enjoyed, including an up and down from the sand at the last, in amongst the dross.

And boy, was there dross!  No matter.  Gill’s sensible barometer of the whole exercise was simple.  “Do you feel any worse than when you started?” she queried.  The answer was no, so that officially makes the whole exercise a bit of a success.

Next on the list is a morning tee time at Gullane with a friend, but I think that may be a bridge too far for me just at the moment.  Small steps are the answer, I feel, otherwise attempting too much too soon will put me off.  My plan is to plough on, as and when I can, and in a year’s time look back and see if there has been decent progress in energy, pain and skill levels.

Meeting up with friends is such a tonic and the golf world is really a very tiny one.  Mooching about in North Berwick we bumped into Graeme and Catriona Matthew who were being taken for a walk by their cockapoo Rio.

I’d last seen Catriona across the course at Marco Simone at the Ryder Cup but had had no opportunity to catch up with her there.  It was interesting to hear how she was enjoying the world of broadcasting which she has recently joined.  It can be a bit of an eye-opener for many a player to step into the world of media but as with most things, she’s taking it in her stride.  She knows her place, however, and a barked reminder from Rio that he was hungry put an end to our blethering.

This blog is very fond of a dog or two and the sister is always championing the sainted Alice, whose picture has graced many of her blog posts.  So, in the interests of balance, here’s the boss of the Matthew household.

It seems like there’s a whole lot of dreaming going on at the moment.

If you follow the golfing world and believe even a fraction of what you read and see, you will appreciate that just now a great number of players seem to be realising long-held dreams.  Brian Harman (top pic) has only just made one dream come true by lifting the Claret Jug in July and now another is checked off the list – namely that of making the Ryder Cup team.

There’s no doubt the recent announcements of the 2023 Solheim and Ryder Cup sides are dream-fulfilling for many.  After all, for certain nationalities, these teams are the undoubted pinnacle of our sport.

Bob McIntyre is a case in point.  The genial Scotsman narrowly missed out on making the European side two years ago but on this occasion he managed to snare the final automatic place in the last counting event in Switzerland.  “For me it’s always been a dream to play in the Ryder Cup,” he said.  “We’re going there to Italy to win the Ryder Cup back for Europe and that’s the real dream.”

Ah, he seems to have a part A and part B to his dream, but that’s the great thing about dreams – there simply are no limitations.

Shane Lowry seems to be similar in having a two-part dream.  He achieved part A, making his Ryder Cup debut in Whistling Straits in 2021 where the Europeans were soundly trounced.  Now he wants to be on the side taking the spoils.  That’s part B.

That got me wondering if the players actually meant they consistently daydreamed and visualised themselves achieving their heart’s desire.  Or from the time they were kids did they actually dream in bed at night about playing in the Ryder Cup match?  And how did they do in those dream matches?

I’m a big believer in a positive mental attitude and I am also a prolific and vivid dreamer in bed at night.  But no one, and I repeat, no one, would want my night-time golfing dreams playing out in reality.  All my life I have had golf dreams, most of the early ones centring around achievements in the amateur arena – probably because we didn’t have a professional women’s tour in Europe way back then.

Interestingly, my dreams tended to be about a team match, namely the Curtis Cup, a biennial amateur encounter between Great Britain & Ireland and the USA.  It was rarefied air and a huge ambition of mine to make the team.  So what were my nighttime dreams?

They usually centred around the first tee and my opening drive.  My opponent had already safely negotiated their first shot but when I pegged up my ball I discovered that the tee markers were awfully close to a wall at the back of the tee.  I didn’t have room to swing back without hitting the wall and if I teed up far enough away so as to miss the wall, then I’d be ahead of the markers.  My dilemma was compounded because I knew with absolute certainty that all those spectators lining the first hole, as well as the officials on the tee, were blissfully unaware of my predicament.  I made dozens of swings trying to miss the wall and could sense the growing impatience from the gallery because I was taking so long to play – and for no good reason, seemingly.

If it weren’t a pesky wall waiting to sabotage me, it was an overhanging branch of a tree – again on the first tee.  My opposition was never troubled by this low hanging branch because they were never as tall as me.  At six feet tall, I couldn’t manufacture any type of backswing that wouldn’t result in me getting caught up in the foliage.  As with the wall, no one watching on seemed to notice and the pervasive thinking was, “Why on earth is she taking so long to hit it?”

I never did find out how I coped with these tee shots because I would always wake in a cold sweat before making any kind of contact.  Don’t tell me Shane or Bob have these anxiety-laden dreams (I do hope not), which are, I suspect, uncomfortably revealing about my personality!

And they continue…………  Despite not having played golf for almost two years because of various health issues, it’s apparent I am quite keen to visit the golf course in my dreams.  I seem to have conquered the first tee because I now find I have moved to up around the green where I am afflicted with the occasional chipping and/or putting yips.  Oh, rapture and joy!

I told the sister the other month that, once well enough to play again, I wasn’t sure I would be prepared to put in the work required to contain (not conquer) the yips.  I wonder why I thought I’d get a bit of sympathy!  Her matter-of-fact answer was simply to relay the fact that Henry Longhurst, that doyen of golf writers, professed to feel a huge weight lift off his shoulders once he made the definitive decision to confine the clubs to the attic.

Let me assure you, my dreamland is not a lot of fun and so it really does pique my curiosity (and envy) every time I watch golf on the telly and someone is declaring that “it’s a dream come true”.

For the record, I did play in the Curtis Cup and I had no problems on the first tee.  For me, reality trumps dreamland every time.

I fervently wish you all golfing dreams that are the polar opposite to mine…………….and that they come true!

Not so long ago, Maureen noted that over the years I’d demonstrated an aversion to the practice ground, undoubtedly to the detriment of my golf, if not my back.  Anyway, the last couple of Saturdays, I’ve enjoyed a group practice session with a few others, the first very enjoyable, the other nearly as chilling as a dinner invitation from Hannibal Lecter.

We were working out how far we hit our irons and I was more than happy to put on my glasses and help with the assessments.  I didn’t relish doing my own measurements because I already knew the answer:  no distance at all.  In fact, most of my shots endangered the young professional diligently honing his game a little to our right.  The golfing readers will be ahead of me and will be making a mental note to keep well behind me if we’re playing together.  Yes, I started shanking and didn’t stop until I put the irons away and used my trusty rescue.

Instead of putting in the time and effort to learn how to hit my irons properly (a depressing, tiring, fruitless business in my case), I have solved – ok, avoided – the problem by  keeping them in the bag.  The poor wee souls have rarely hit a full shot in anger, destined never to reach their potential, confined to a bit of a pitch here, a chip and run there.  It’s a strategy that has its limitations but it does make club selection fairly straightforward.

In far-off times, my favourite club was my 3-iron but who even owns such an implement nowadays?  Certainly not an old bat with commitment issues.

And my fitness and flexibility leave a lot to be desired.  I played three undistinguished rounds in four days earlier this week and wondered fuzzily if I should join a gym again…Weights, however light, are good for you at any age apparently.

Perhaps I should get the bike out?  But not so long ago it was too wet and now it’s too hot and just looking at the Tour of Britain on the telly makes me want to lie down.  How do they do it?  And how do you have a mountain stage in Suffolk?  Or perhaps I just misheard and the King of the Mountains had conquered Snowdonia?  They wouldn’t even have noticed the titchy incline between Threapwood and Malpas that makes me puff pathetically.

And if you get on your bike and overcome the early wobbles, you still have to watch out for potholes (we specialise in those in our part of Staffordshire), dozy pedestrians spilling off pavements and even dozier drivers tootling the wrong way round one of the biggest roundabouts in the county.  Wow, how did he (it was bound to be a he, surely!) manage that?  Sue M and I, who witnessed it, still haven’t puzzled it out.  Fortunately, we don’t think there was anything hurtling round the right way.  No reports of mangled wreckage anyway.

The good thing about my bad golf is that it’s made me look twice at a recent email from WHGC:  Invitation to Membership.  It’s a rather quaint way of telling me that the subs are due and inviting me to renew my membership.  It’s gone up, of course but I got out the old calculator (well, it’s on my phone like nearly everything else) and divided the total by 365, to see if it was still worth my while.

All being well with the calculator, the sum comes out at £4.79 a day and that includes the house levy (your food and drink starter fund), GolfGuard insurance (a whole £2.50), a large locker (£50) and something called a Ladies’ Golf Union fee (£21).  That’s a bit puzzling because the LGU has been defunct for quite a few years now, subsumed into the R and A, I thought or England Golf or whatever but certainly no longer an entity onto itself.  Amazing how long it takes the admin to catch up with the times…

Talking of catching up with the times, I played golf at a very familiar course the other day, for the first time in ages.  It brought back many happy memories of past battles, particularly with the brother-in-law who’s a member there and of a Maureen birdie barrage many moons ago – they ran out of red numbers on the scoreboard, oh stellar stuff!

No danger of that with me – I’m not even sure I managed one of those par things as my chipping and putting failed to make up for deficiencies elsewhere.  My opponent was not at her best either – neither of us relished the heat and humidity – but she recovered her game just in time, hit some proper shots (irons included) and finished me off at the 16th.  Fortunately, the team won, so all was well.  As dad used to say:  “Every result makes somebody happy…”

It’s a phrase I’ve been using a lot recently and I keep recalling the advice Jack Nicklaus gave his old friend Kaye Kessler, a wonderful journalist who covered the great man’s career from the start but whose own golf was at best intermittent.  “Don’t take that swing out of town,” Jack said.

Finally, the very best of luck to two of Whittington Heath’s finest:  Sue Kershaw and Rachel Bailey.  They’re heading out of town this weekend, undertaking a daunting hundred kilometre walk alongside the Thames in aid of Peaches, the womb cancer charity.

Sue, left and Rachel ready to go.  Good luck both.  Take it steady, no need to go like bats out of hell – though it’s forecast to be a scorcher.

 

The message was clear, succinct and because the writer knew who he was dealing with, highlighted in red:  “For those in possession of the trophies, please remember to bring them along.”

Blimey, that includes me.  Somehow, last year, at the venerable Royal Liverpool GC, colloquially known as Hoylake (because that’s where it is, on the Wirral, near Liverpool), I won the Golf Writers’ Championship and the iconic Fred Pignon Trophy for a record fifth time.

Derek Lawrenson, recently retired as the must-read golf correspondent of the Daily Mail (hooray, it now means I never have to open the paper again – apologies to the new golf person, if there is one; must at least keep up with that), has won the title four times and now that he can play loads more golf and is still young (ish), my money is on him to add to his collection.  Anyway, I digress as usual and neither Derek nor I laid hands on any silverware this time round.

We were at Hoylake again, on a bright enough and very breezy morning, playing the Open routing that Brian Harman had conquered a few weeks before to win his first Claret Jug.  “Oh,” I, ever the diplomat, said on checking in at the reception desk in the pro’s shop, “does that mean that poxy little hole is the 17th?”

“What poxy little hole would that be?” came the response.  The old hand at the desk has seen and heard it all and is now, whether by nature or nurture or both, a supreme diplomat, not bland by any means but always calm and in control.

The hole, a new addition, is called Little Eye and measures 100 yards from the black tees that I played from.  If the course is being played as normal, it is the 15th but for the Open it’s the penultimate hole, a sharp-edged, would-be legendary par 3 of 130-odd yards that will, with luck, undergo considerable renovations in the immediate future.  I hear that many members bypass it altogether, going from the 16th green to the 18th tee without missing a beat.

In the Open programme, John Heggarty, the club’s head pro for more than 40 years, described the hole thus:  “The views are stunning and the setting dramatic, with an infinity green that plays directly out towards the ocean and Wales.  The green is raised above the player significantly and the sea of bunkers and huge fall-off areas to all sides, including all the way to the green, provide a striking scene.  It is absolutely essential to hit the green as any miss will leave a devilishly difficult up and down…..”

In other words, it’s a nasty little shit that is far too much of a lottery to have any place on a proper golf course; far better suited to one of those impossible-golf-hole calendars…Oops.  Have I made my feelings clear?

Anyway, my card was full of blobs (nul points) by the time we reached Little S.  Our best player hit a very good shot that landed on the green and miracle of miracles, stuck there not too far from the pin, which was only eight yards from the front, in a central position (not sure how many sensible pin positions are possible); our next best player made respectable enough contact but pulled it left and ended up in a sandy waste well below the level of the green in some other poor unfortunate’s massive footprints…Seve at his sublime Houdini best would have struggled to extricate himself and many hacks later a blob went on the card.  Thank God for stableford.

If you look at Mo’s blog, you’ll see my elegant tee shot, captured on video unbeknownst to me…I have nothing in my bag that can cope with the distance into the gale (!), so I have to finagle something with my 5-wood, down the grip and smash it.  Thanks to the sensible people who decided not to shave the grass, thus saving my ball from a sandy grave in that cavernous bunker.  Though, in my defence, I got out of every bunker I was in very respectably first time (bar one, when I wasn’t really trying because I’d forgotten to hit my drive because I was too busy talking, which is another story but scarcely a surprise).

I suppose there’s no escaping the shame of admitting that the Fred Pignon is (reminders notwithstanding and burglars permitting) still sitting, half-cleaned (it’s very old and not easy to get pristine) on my kitchen counter.  Yes, reader, I left it behind.

My sincere apologies to Dave Edwards, who won the championship for the first time – and the Race to Royal Liverpool and the Etiqus Golfer of the Year as well.  A great effort.  Fortunately, Dennis Kirwan, who was Golfer of the Year last year, managed to return his trophy and Maureen very kindly lent me the Madill Trophy to stand in for Fred.  Just as well The Lasses had defeated The Lads at Muirfield this year for the first time since 2016!

Dave, who lives in Banffshire and plays at Cullen, not far from Lossiemouth, where our maternal grandmother came from, was inspired by his wife Yvonne, who sent him out with the words, “Win it for me.”  He did his bit and I can only apologise to Yvonne for making a complete and utter bollocks of my part.  But at least her man had quite a bit of silverware to handle and I did persuade the inimitable Elaine Ratcliffe, former Curtis Cup captain and one of golf’s great people, to do the presenting bit.

They didn’t have this trouble at The Open…(the 17th apart…)