I’m a bit shamefaced to admit in the blog that I used a buggy earlier this week.  It was a right Royal Birkdale buggy but it was a buggy nonetheless and Dai, unable to turn in a grave, will be doing whatever ashes do:  scratching, scraping, grinding, grating, rasping?  Perhaps if I type quietly and keep the Roget hidden, he won’t notice.

You see, although he did use them when he had to, Dai hated the things.  In that near classic (a family joke Dai didn’t find very funny) Beyond The Fairways, published in 1999 (aaagh!), he wrote:  “Golf, proper golf, has a simple formula.  Anything up to four people gather together on the first tee, agree on a format for the game, make their bets, hit their shots and walk off after them.  And the key word in all that is ‘walk’.

“What is happening through much of America and, unfortunately, many copy-cat countries throughout the world, is that people ride off that first tee, ride to the general area where their ball lies, hit it and ride off again.  Concrete paths wind their way, like tapeworm, round the very guts of the game, serving the carts, which are themselves the condoms of golf, preventing full enjoyment of the act.

“Mark Twain may have considered golf to be a good walk spoiled but at least it was always a good walk.”

There’s more, quite a bit more but you get Dai’s drift and at least Birkdale has not succumbed to concrete paths.  Also, Dai’s no longer around to see that the cart ship has well and truly sailed – and on a hot day, on a big golf course, this ageing swinger was grateful to hitch a ride.

Too many bunkers (not difficult in this neck of the links), too many putts and not enough points meant our quartet finished out of the prizes – well out.  But we all hit quite a lot of good shots, not necessarily in the right order and had a lot of laughs.  It could not have been a better day.  And the menu was a cut above normal golf club fare.  Not that Birkdale, with its history as a major championship venue, could ever be filed under ‘n’ for normal.  ‘E’ for exceptional, more like.

For example, one of our number, a long-standing member, drove Ian Baker-Finch to the airport after he won the Open, the Claret Jug on her lap.  That’s a story given to few.  The rest of us didn’t even attempt to top it – though shaking hands with Pat Jennings probably comes close…

Better show you the menu, though the image doesn’t quite match the quality of the food.

Higher up the golfing ladder, Chiara Horder, of Germany, won the Women’s Amateur Championship at Prince’s, another lovely links, in Kent.  She proved too good for Annabelle Pancake, of the United States, winning the 36-hole final handily, by the old dog licence, 7 and 6.  In the unlikely event that there are some young readers, your grandparents will explain the reference.

Pancake is from Indiana and her father Tony flew in to support her on Father’s Day, helped out by members of Crooked Stick GC, where John Daly shot to fame by winning the US PGA Championship after starting as ninth reserve.  Horder is the third German to win the title in the last six years, following Aline Krauter (2020) and Leonie Harm (2018).

Every time I visit Birkdale, I say hello to Bunty (christened Frances, maiden name Stephens, married name Smith), one of GB and I’s greatest players.  Her name’s on Chiara’s trophy twice, in 1949 and 1954 and she was runner-up in 1951 and 1952.  She wasn’t a big person but she had “the temperament of a tigress” according to Enid Wilson, who knew a thing or two about being a formidable match player (winner of the Women’s Amateur in 1931, 1932 and 1933).

No doubt the golfing readers will be aware that these days we have only three minutes to search for a lost ball – it used to be five – so at long last I’ve come up with a way of getting the timing right.  My phone, which is sometimes in my back pocket, occasionally in the golf bag, needs a six-figure code to access stuff, so it probably adds at least an extra minute to the search; my watch is usually in my locker in the clubhouse; but in Wilko the other day, I found my solution:  a digital timer.

It was four quid, from Wilko’s “really useful kitchen stuff” range and it should work a treat…I’ll keep you posted.

I’m always finding ways to delay writing the blog and this week’s prevarication involved composing a welcome to Ange Postecoglou, the latest manager of Tottenham Hotspur FC.  We’ve got until Sunday to produce a wee video, giving our name, a warm welcome to our new Aussie  boss and coming up with a question that might be released across every club channel (!!).

I’ve thought of a question, now I just have to root out my Spurs tee shirt and make sure it’s not too creased.  Anybody got an iron to spare?…..That’s another in-joke, it’s not a serious request.  This house is a no-ironing zone.

Much to your (and my) relief, this week I am not even going to mention the current contentious topic concerning world golf.  When moaning on to the sister the other day about the game in general, she asked me what I was looking forward to in golf at the moment and to write about that.  So that set me thinking…..

First of all, I’m really looking forward to following the career progression of 20-year old Irishman Tom McKibbin.  Tom plays at Holywood Golf Club, the same club as one Rory McIlroy, motoring along nicely through the amateur ranks.  He has not disappointed since he turned pro and his tenth place finish on last year’s Challenge Tour enabled him to graduate to the DP World Tour this year.  A couple of weeks ago he notched a win in Hamburg at the Porsche European Open to become the youngest Irish winner on the tour since Rory won as a 19-year old back in 2009.

Whatever’s in the water at Holywood Golf Club parents of wannabee golf champions should join instantly and surround their offspring with the warm, supportive positivity that obviously emanates from there.  On the Saturday in Holywood the club television was firmly set to the golf in Hamburg as the members followed Tom’s progress.  There was no chance of the FA Cup final taking precedence.

The US Open this week is at a different Hollywood, at Los Angeles Country Club, an exclusive set-up opening up its fairways to a major championship for the first time.  It will be interesting to see how Englishman Matt Fitzpatrick performs in defence of the title he so wonderfully clinched last year at Brookline.  It’s hard to believe that was a year ago – it seems more like a handful of months.

Fitzpatrick revealed his eagerness to repeat last year’s effort and lift the trophy again, confessing he “didn’t spend enough time with it” over the months it was in his possession.  He and some pals did take it on holiday, however, showing it some of the Italian sights as they spent a week on a boat visiting various holiday spots along and near the Amalfi coast.  I wonder if his Italian mentor and fellow stats expert Edoardo Molinari helped with the itinerary.

Looking back for a moment, last week brought smiles and joy from a couple of other golfing directions.  Unless you’re a close friend or family member of Tommy Fleetwood how could you not be joyful at Canadian Nick Taylor’s unbelievable 72-footer for eagle at the fourth extra hole that won him his national title?  He was the first Canadian to win his home Open since 1954 and sparked scenes of unconfined joy from the partisan galleries.  Fellow Canadian and PGA Tour winner Adam Hadwin was rugby tackled to the ground by a security guard on the 18th green as he ran on to congratulate his pal.  Glorious mayhem!  Fortunately Hadwin survived intact and is playing in LA.

On a personal note, the last few days have seen me walk a few holes with a pal at Delamere and have a chip and a putt from the side of three or four greens.  Small steps but steps nonetheless.  Report card:  putting – acceptable.  Chipping – still yipping!  And there was I thinking that that vicious parasitic medication might kill off the yips as well!  But, you know what – who cares?

At the absolute top of my list of things to look forward to is making the trip to Royal Dornoch at the end of the month to spend some time with pals and watch the Vagliano Trophy, a biennial match between GB&I and the Continent of Europe.  There are eight players on each team and amazingly the sides are tied at 15 victories apiece with one match halved.  I’m pretty sure I played in that halved match…..I did play on three occasions and think we had one win, one loss and one half.  I’ve tried to find the archive on the R&A website but have been soundly defeated.  Either I’m worse at technology than I thought………. or perhaps there is no archive?  No, surely not!  I must just be worse than I thought.

Ingrid Lindblad of Sweden, the new world No 1, will be playing and it’ll be fascinating to see how these players cope with one of the best courses in the world.  Maria Dunne of Ireland will be the home captain trying to steer her troops to a first victory since 2005.  A past player herself, she is ideally placed to understand the pressures and highs and lows of playing elite amateur golf.  Seeing the best players play the best test will be a real treat.

Great courses evoke great memories and Dornoch is special for me.  Have I ever told you about the time Wales won the women’s Home Internationals there in 1999?  It was arguably my finest achievement in coaching……oh, you have heard it?  Oh, well then, for those of you who haven’t – a yarn for another time.

Sometimes sisters are wise old birds.  Thinking of enjoyable golfing things has perked me up no end.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m a “lists” person – partly to aid a balky memory, but also my list acts as a safety net for me and gives structure to my day.  I’m never without an ongoing list and some items manage to hang around for years and some even for decades.  There is one such item that I reckon has been inhabiting my list for well nigh fifteen years and I have fingers and toes crossed that I may shortly be able to put a big fat tick in the “done” column.

It’s all about a blind, you see.  A picture blind, a golfing picture blind.  It started with me having a brainwave to explore getting a vista of Dad’s beloved Rosses Point on a blind for his bathroom.  It was to be a surprise but back in those days the world hadn’t graduated to taking pictures on your phone and the easy transfer of photos from one device to another.  So, despite a skirmish of early investigations I made no headway at all and parked the idea……for the moment….or, as it turned out, for a very long time indeed.

A couple of years later, quite by chance in conversation, a photographer friend of mine mentioned he was in the process of working out how to manufacture golf umbrellas adorned with photographs of clubhouses and courses.  The idea was that each club could have their own bespoke brolly with a photograph of their own course on it.  When questioned he thought it should be “fairly straightforward” for me to achieve my ambition of the Rosses Point blind.  “Blind picture” re-entered my list at the very top.

With technology moving onwards I now found it easier to locate companies capable of doing what I wanted, but at a cost that made my eyes water.  So, once again the blind picture idea was shelved.  Slow forward several years and about five years ago we were having quite a bit of work done to the house, including turning one room into an exercise room, which with a bit of creative thinking could be turned into an overflow bedroom for busy times when lots of family were visiting. This little room has no windows (hold on – not as bad as it sounds!) but is oblong in shape and has a set of  double patio doors at each narrow end.  And so, I wondered if this would be a better canvas for my golfing blind – admittedly a much, much larger canvas than originally intended at an approximate 6 feet by 7.5 feet.

It’s at this point that the whole project took a sudden spurt forward.  Hubby came home one day from a motorbike track day with an action picture of his good self taken by a professional photographer and that’s when I decided this sports/exercise room of ours could easily cope with two distinct and separate blinds.  He decided on his motorbike one and, with poor Dad now playing only a heavenly Rosses Point, I decided to switch my focus to where I grew up, namely Portstewart, and its world famous view from the clubhouse and first tee area.

But, would it actually work?  The first test was the biking pic.  Company found, instructions followed, file uploaded, money paid.  Bingo, a blind we were both thrilled with and easy to put up.  Now, all I had to do was get exactly the photograph I wanted for the golfing end of the exercise room.

By this stage we were in the early stages of lockdown in 2020 and unable to travel anywhere so I rang Michael Moss, erstwhile manager of Portstewart Golf Club and tasked him with sourcing the picture that would help me put this project to bed once and for all.  Moss-y boy sallied out with his ipad and phone, took copious pictures and sent them over.  Excited beyond all imagining I selected one and sent it off to the blind people.

Abject failure.  The pic didn’t have the underlying required technical details to “grow” the picture up to the required size without going all out of focus.  I realised an ipad wouldn’t cut it so after shilly-shallying back and forward for the Covid years, Mr Moss was dismissed without a reference.

Enter, stage left, the blog’s favourite photographer, Mary McKenna, who, by the summer of 2022 was travelling around again and had a trip planned to the wee North.  Forsaking her friends at Portrush, McKenna took up residence on the first tee at Portstewart snapping away, all the time warning me that she doubted her technical know-how was up to the task.  Meanwhile, my own learning curve was continuing and the penny had finally dropped that the lovely, panoramic view I was envisaging was never going to translate onto a narrow, tall blind.  Eek!  The longer the project continued the further away the finishing line appeared to be.  Mac’s pictures were lovely – but rejected by the blind people – and she followed Michael Moss out the door.

All this palaver took us up to the summer of last year and I was resigning myself to forever having one room in the house with only one blind when I had (yet another) brainwave.  Good friend, renowned historian and Lady President of Royal Portrush, Kath Stewart-Moore was a photographer of some note, wasn’t she?  One phone call later and Kath (who saw me coming) had swiftly moved me on to Barbara Stewart with the assurance that Barbara would be more than up to the task.

Dear Reader, if you’ve managed to stick with this tortuous tale thus far, I assure you we are almost finished.  Barbara took up her mission with alacrity and several trips to the golf club at Portstewart ensued over the winter and spring, checking the light, working out the angles and drinking copious cups of coffee.  She visited in all weathers and then last week sent through her submission.

I absolutely love it!

The blind order has been placed, the proof has come back and we are all systems go.  I’ll have the completed blind in a fortnight.  Fingers crossed I won’t take too long to getting round to putting it up!

Fifteen years in the gestation – what a pity Dad isn’t here to see it.

Now, what’s next on my list?

 

 

 

“Don’t tell me,” Dai used to say, usually with a certain amount of exasperation because he’d been kept waiting longer than he wanted.  “You fell into chat.”

In my defence, it’s often rude to sail on regardless, not saying a word and apart from the social side of things, there’s a lot to be said for falling into chat; you never know what nuggets you’ll unearth without really digging at all.

For instance, did you know that the whole of Northumberland has a population of 650,ooo-ish (too much chat not enough concentration), the same as the London borough of Enfield?  Or that there’s a world-renowned coffee roastery in Amble?  Or that a retired Yorkshire farmer (cattle and sheep) now sends his hand-carved shepherd’s crooks all over the world?  All information gleaned as a result of starting up a conversation with a total stranger over coffee at a shared table in a crowded market.

There’s nothing stand-offish or reserved about the English up here in the north-east, they’re world-class chatters and if you’ve got a dog with you, you’re away in a coach.  There’s lots of space and plenty of spiritual inspiration – Holy Island and Lindisfarne, for example – but if you’re a would-be Trappist, it’ll be tough to make the step up to fully fledged; nearly as hard as passing your driving test unscathed on some of the country’s most challenging bends.  If they say it’s a bend, they mean it.  And, if you decide to take the bus, strap yourself in, it’s a ride to rival the best of Alton Towers or Blackpool – and if you’ve got a bus pass, it’s free (though not of anxiety).

Just down the hill from the church, at Low-Newton-by-the-Sea, just before the beach, there’s a pub with its own wee brewery and we wouldn’t have known about it if we hadn’t fallen into chat.  They love dogs and don’t mind sand all over their floorboards.  Unfortunately their famous crab stotties were off the menu when we got there but we had a ham ploughman’s to die for and on reflection, what a place to go.

“Are you taking your clubs?” people asked when they heard about the trip to an area with more than its share of good courses.  Fair question but one long-suffering golfer got it spot on:  “For goodness sake,” she said.  “It’s a holiday.”

I did pack my putter, with the intention of practising a tip I’d spotted on some website or other but I recently deleted a whole load of emails by mistake and it’s probably returned to the ether (AI here I come).  In any case, the weather’s been brilliant so we’ve been out all day and the crib, flip uno, bananagram, paints, putter and waterproof trousers remain untouched.  The books aren’t quite unread but it only takes a page or two before the sea air kicks in and the snoring begins.

Talking of books, we did pay the obligatory visit to the world-renowned (there was at least one American in there and several Germans) Barter Books in Alnwick, housed in the grandeur of the old station, built in the days when they knew a thing or two about grandeur.  If you read (and/or drink tea or coffee and eat cake), this is the place for you.  Bliss.  And they welcome dogs.

On the golf front, I was delighted to see that Portmarnock (Dublin, Ireland), a course that’s up there with the best anywhere and a club that only recently joined the 21st century by allowing women members (wow, now at least one up on Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran and any number of places), will be hosting next year’s Women’s Amateur Championship.  In 1931, when the event was called the Ladies’ British Open Amateur Championship (I do wish they’d kept the British bit when they changed the name but, then, taking the event to Ireland might have been trickier),  it was played at Portmarnock and the redoubtable Enid Wilson won the first of her three successive titles.

Royal Porthcawl, which is hosting the Senior Open (presented by Rolex) this year, will also host Final Qualifying for the Open (the 151st) at Hoylake, on the 4th of July.  Porthcawl takes over from Burham & Berrow, which is still recovering from last year’s drought.  Wonder if they’ve worked out how to stage the Open itself in Wales for the first time; Porthcawl is certainly getting plenty of practice.

And, finally, many congratulations to Brendan Lawlor, who won the inaugural G4D Open at Woburn.  The Irishman finished  just two strokes clear of England’s Kipp Popert, with Juan Postigo Arce, of Spain, third.  Lawlor, who’s part of Niall Horan’s Modest! Golf group, was ecstatic:  “It’s just an unbelievable feeling…It’s been an incredible week.  The volunteers, the R&A, DP World Tour, EDGA, everybody involved has put in so much work to get this championship done.  Every player here, we felt like royalty this week.  Hopefully this is the start and we’re going to have many more of these major events.  Disability golf is definitely on the way up.”

Brendan, who’s a pro, is probably off practising somewhere or contending for another trophy but today, weather permitting, I’m off on puffin watch, cruising round Coquet Island.  Don’t think I’ll be needing my putter…