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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did any of you watch that series “The Serpent” which was on the box a month or so ago?  You know, the one based on true-life events in the 1980s where a dodgy gem dealer in Bangkok befriended and then murdered a succession of young backpackers, building up a stash of passports that helped him travel undetected as he amassed his sleazy fortune?  It was harrowing stuff and served to remind me how precarious it could be travelling in and around Asia at that time.  I did it myself for a couple of years.

The early 1990s saw many of us packing bags and clubs and heading off to the Asian Tour for five or six weeks, trying to hone our games before the start of our circuit in Europe in April.  This Asian swing attracted players from all over the globe and the central meeting hub for the entire tour was Bangkok.  I spent many an hour in that airport in my time.  Once everyone was gathered in Bangkok we all flew together to the first stop on the tour, which was usually Taipei.  From that point on it was recommended that all the officials, players and caddies travel together as it was deemed the safest thing to do.  One year my travelling pal and I deviated from that recommendation – with almost disastrous consequences.  But allow me to backtrack a little.

In our day Thai Airways were part sponsors of the Asian Tour and so it was a Thai Airways flight that my fellow pro Helen Wadsworth (known as Posh Bird to her friends) and I boarded together for our Asian odyssey.  Before boarding Helen and a number of passengers were pulled aside and told their hand luggage was too bulky for the overhead lockers and would have to go in a separate hold.  This triggered a bit of a mad scramble for reading material and things you felt you might want access to on the long flight.

The first leg of our journey to Bangkok was uneventful and we settled down in the airport for our five-hour layover until the flight to Taipei was called.  During this spell we met up with lots of other players flying in from all arts and parts and then the whole lot of us, as planned, boarded the Taipei flight.  Several hours later we touched down and waited in the baggage area to collect all our gear.  The clubs duly arrived, then the cases but Helen and I had to wait ages for her hand luggage to appear.  As I write this I realise I’d forgotten just how tedious flying can be!

Anyway, at this juncture Helen and I join the queue for the customs check which could be quite lengthy as the officials used to check there were no drugs being brought into the country in the shafts of the clubs.  When it was our turn we both automatically started unzipping cases and golf bags but to our astonishment the official stopped us and just waved us on.  That was a first, but very welcome after our monster journey.

We joined a line to exchange some money and with that accomplished found the queue for the taxis as we had long since missed the official transport to the hotel.  So, it was two very weary travellers who checked in to their hotel, arranging to meet again downstairs in half an hour to go for a quick bite to eat.

I found my room and was unpacking a few items when, to my surprise, the phone rang.  No mobiles in those days, of course and I wondered who could be ringing me on the room phone.  It was Helen.  “Get round here at once!”  I knew from her tone that it was serious so I ran as fast as I could down the corridor, up the flight of stairs and found her room.

The door stood open and inside, Helen, as white as a ghost, was staring at her hand luggage which lay neatly on the bed, unzipped.  There, in amongst her things in the middle of the case were two unfamiliar items.  One was a large cellophane bag about the size of an A4 piece of paper inside which were a dozen or so individual sachets of white powder.  On the outside of the main bag was a lot of foreign writing with the word BANGKOK stamped on the bottom in capital letters.  The second item was a soft, circular, cloth bag with a zip at the top.  Inside were a collection of instruments that looked like the sort of thing a dentist would scrape your teeth with.

We both stood there, utterly horrified, until Helen finally broke the silence by saying, “What are we going to do?”

To my shame I confess my first fleeting, wholly uncharitable, thought was, “What’s with the we?”  However, I rejected that line of thinking and after another lengthy silence I suggested, “Tell the police, I suppose.”  More silence and then in unison we looked at each other and said, “No, we can’t do that.”

So, in the space of a minute, here we found ourselves, in a Bangkok hotel room with a stash of goodness-knows-what, colluding not to tell the authorities.  As Helen sat stunned on the bed I went in to super-sleuth mode trying to work out what could have occurred.  This was the bag from which she’d been parted at Heathrow and it had sat somewhere, unattended and unlocked in Bangkok airport during our five-hour wait for our ongoing flight.  Perhaps someone was caught with having to ditch these packages very quickly and just stuffed them in to the nearest available bag.  We will never know.  Our blood froze, however, as we considered how unusual it was not to have been searched at the airport on arrival.  What if the customs officials had opened the bag?  Would they have believed us that we had no idea the packages were there?  Not likely!  After all, many’s the time I’d sat at home watching on telly as tearful students swore they’d no idea their luggage contained drugs and did I believe them?  Of course not – yet this is exactly what happened to us.

So, what did we do with this haul?  We snipped open every one of the individual sachets and poured them down the loo and then we took the soft bag and its contents and buried it deep in a rubbish bin in the middle of the city.  We were haunted by the possibility that the drugs had been planted at Taipei airport and perhaps we were followed by someone wanting to retrieve them.  It made for an uncomfortable week and I felt I played the entire tournament constantly looking back over my shoulder.  Helen coped infinitely better – and went on to scoop the title and a healthy first prize, a much better result than an unscheduled journey to, and indefinite stay in, Thailand’s infamous women’s prison, known as the Bangkok Hilton.

I don’t often now think of this incident but watching The Serpent triggered all the old memories.  I know I’ve been lucky at lots of important times in my life but this time in Asia ranks right up there with the best of them.  The luck of the Irish, eh?  Don’t knock it.

Well, it’s embarrassment and apologies all round after I got myself in one hell of a mess – by putting in an ‘l’ where there wasn’t one.  I thought that it was Joe Flanagan who had died but it was another lovely Joe, Joe Fanagan.   My sincere apologies to the Fanagans and the Flanagans.

Both Joes were a joy to be with but Joe Fanagan was lucky enough never to be asked to run the women’s European Tour.  His daughter Suzie, who played Curtis Cup, did turn professional and Joe and the family were steeped in golf.  Rhona, Joe’s wife, remains an elegant, excellent player, Denise is more than handy and Jody played in the Walker Cup, partnering Padraig Harrington in a memorable GB and I win at Royal Porthcawl, one of the rare occasions when Tiger Woods looked out of his depth.

Sporting excellence aside, the Fanagans are a joy to be with and meeting any one of them always puts a smile on your face.  At this sad time, it’s the happy memories and the laughs that start bubbling to the surface and Mo and I send our love and condolences.

And I send my abject apologies to the Flanagan family.  I’m keeping in my appreciation of their Joe, who died a few years ago, because he more than deserves it.

It’s more than 30 years since he was persuaded to become executive director of the Women Professional Golfers’ European Tour, a body that was often as unruly as its name was unwieldy.  Joe, who’d been involved in running the Carroll’s Irish Open for many years, was well-versed in the ways of tournament golf but trying to manage and promote a tiny, struggling tour was a very different beast.  Ever affable and outwardly unflappable, he had learned to expect the unexpected but I suspect the turmoil of the tour taxed even his patience and forbearance to the limit.

He played his part in getting the Solheim Cup up and swinging at Lake Nona in 1990, recognising that it was a big and important step for the Europeans even though they risked being overwhelmed and outclassed by the Americans.  The home side did indeed win handily and some commentators scoffed that it would be 100 years before Europe could compete.  Two years later it was the Americans who were overwhelmed and outclassed as Europe won a famous victory at Dalmahoy.

Joe had been replaced by then, dismissed for…..what?  Not performing miracles, I suppose.  Except that, looking back, he probably had.

I’ve never had a keen, analytical brain and my powers of logic are intermittent at best – as my bridge partners know to their cost – so it’s a bit of a miracle that I’ve made it this far.  Luck, of course, has played a big part – parents, upbringing, being in the right place at the right time every now and again, loving and helpful family and friends – and I’m totally convinced that there’s no such thing as a self-made person.  Think about it, it’s a patently ridiculous notion given that everybody has been born to somebody; even if they’ve come out of a test tube, they haven’t emerged into the world purely under their own steam; and throughout life everybody has had help at one time or another.

Where’s all this leading?  Well might you ask.  I think it started because someone wondered if I was going to address what they called Rory’s rant on the subject of the Distance Insight report being conducted by the R&A and the USGA and my brain cell shrivelled up at the thought.  Like my once beloved, vibrant Spurs I’m lacking in energy and inspiration  – call it lockdown lethargy – but this distance debate will run and run, though I doubt I’ll ever have anything relevant to say on the subject.  It’s a long time since a powder puff like me knew what a green-in-regulation at a short par 4 was, so I think it’s fair to say that almost everybody on earth plays a game with which I am not familiar.

Embedded balls are also beyond my remit, I’ve decided – though there is a very funny WhatsApp video doing the rounds of a guy calling for a ruling on a ball embedded in the snow.  The ball is orange – a Callaway I think – and at the beginning it’s sitting on top of the snow but by the end it’s buried.  I’d share it if I had the technical know-how but it’s worth seeking out.

That’s another thing, lots of people I know are very good at learning remotely.  Don’t know how to share a WhatsApp video?  Google it.  (Still baffled.)  Need to know how to get multiple, mysterious stains out of a pale woolly?  That’ll be on Google.  (Still stained.)  Want to repair a broken plate?  Look it up on line.  (Still broken.)  Oh dear.  Some of us need something a bit more hands-on, a bit more old-fashioned or, in more extreme cases, a real, live, breathing expert as in The Repair Shop.  Ah, how divine, a real, live, breathing expert…

One good thing about on-line learning is that your singing teacher – and your fellow choir members – can’t hear you mangling the music.  Everybody’s muted because it’s a cacophony otherwise, as we demonstrate when we’re all unmuted to sing happy birthday to some poor soul who has to look grateful.  Funnily enough, though, when we’re all together in the same room it sounds suitably tuneful and celebratory.  Real, live rehearsals?  That’ll be fun.  Some time this year do you think?

A little bird tells me that the Scots are still playing real, live golf, out there swinging on real golf courses, come snow or high water.  Am I envious?  Not at the moment, given the mostly foul weather but let’s hope the rest of us will be out there joining them soon.

This is as good a moment as any to introduce my cosy Aussie cardy, made of King Island wool, born and raised in the middle of the Roaring Forties.  Dai and I played on the little course there, best described as sporty and associated with the Goggins, one of Australia’s most  famous golfing families.  Dai thought I, a non knitter, was daft carting back a load of wool but it’s beautiful stuff and my cousin Lesley did the technical, creative bit, for which many thanks again.  It’s like a blanket, so it’s a treat when it’s cold enough to wear it!

And this is a turtle made of kelp, another of King Island’s native products.  I was just looking for an excuse to give him an outing.