I’ve had a busy time recently, whooshing back from Tenerife last week and then having a quick turn around before heading off to the sister’s to hustle down to London to watch Spurs versus Manchester United last Sunday.

I must confess to feeling a little conflicted as we made my maiden voyage to the spanking new Tottenham Hotspur stadium in N17.  Mum was a United fan, having supported them since the Munich air disaster on February 6th 1958.  She was in Coleraine in a nursing home having introduced me to the world on the first day of the month.  Way back then mums could have a couple of weeks in the nursing home – you weren’t turfed off home within hours of giving birth – and the wall-to-wall news was of the tragedy that took so many young lives.  My hubby is also a United fan and Patricia, of course, is Spurs through and through.

I dutifully bedecked myself in neutral colours and was warned by Patricia that I could absolutely NOT be an away fan in the home supporters’ section.  To my uninitiated eye the two sides were fairly similar with moments of brilliance and sheer stupidity in abundance.  It made for an exciting watch but not a restful afternoon as I found myself, eventually, shouting for the home team.  My husband was hundreds of miles away, so if United lost he could be miserable on his own.  I was going to be with Patricia, so thought I would be in for a happier time if Spurs won – and so it proved.  Nothing like a good ole dose of self-interest.

The next morning we dropped in on Judy Williams, widow of Michael, the long-time golf correspondent of The Daily Telegraph and had a delightful visit before making our way over to Thorpeness Golf Club in Suffolk, the domain of the redoubtable Chris Langford, one of the founder members of the Ladies’ European Tour (LET).

It’s a year since Lang organised a get-together to celebrate 45 years of the tour’s existence and it was lovely to meet up again with these wonderful, pioneering women who were brave enough to make the leap into the abyss of women’s professional sport all those years ago (top picture).  And boy, can some of these old pals of mine still play a mean game of golf!

Tuesday saw the inaugural playing of  TOFT  – The Old Founders’ Trophy – at lovely Thorpeness.  (If you believe the “F” really does stand for “Founders” you would be wrong,,,,,,,,,but this is a family blog!)  Rather bizarrely the first winner turned out to be the host professional who, I’m told, did the setting of the tees, the pins and more crucially, the handicapping.  So, with the organiser’s (ie Chris Langford’s) decision being final it is the name “Chris Langford” that will be etched into history!!

I was pleased to hear that the Founders had been guests at last year’s Irish Open but do admit to wishing the LET would take a leaf out of the LPGA’s modus operandi and celebrate their founders a little more openly and enthusiastically.  At the moment you’d almost need to employ a forensic detective to find the teeniest bit of information about the tour’s early steps.  I’d love to see a Founders tab on the home page with lists, photos, names and histories of these players.  Alas, some of them are no longer with us, so time definitely is of the essence.

With sketchy records and a lack of archive those who have knowledge of those early days are thinning out.  We cannot let that happen.  Today’s tour exists thanks to very special people who paved the way for the rest of us – and it behoves the tour to ensure that every single current player knows the names of the Founders and says a silent thank you every time they tee it up for the opportunities they now enjoy.

Last week the Ladies’ European Tour was in Riyadh for the lucrative $4.5 million PIF Saudi Ladies’ International, an eye-watering amount of money to those of us gathered at our reunion.  The feel-good story for me was that of  22-year old Annabell Fuller, an English player from Roehampton, who was playing in her second tournament in her second year on tour.  She had had a reasonable rookie campaign finishing 78th in the standings and winning a shade over 74,ooo euros but that didn’t make her eligible to play for the riches in Riyadh.

Managing to secure a sponsor’s invitation into the previous week’s event in Morocco was key as a top-ten finish there earned her a place on the tee sheet in Saudi.  She then had the week of her life, finishing third on her own and winning a smidgen less than 260,000 euros, a life changing amount of dosh.  Talk about grabbing an opportunity with both hands when it presents itself!  Utterly brilliant.

At one fell swoop Annabell has removed anxiety and uncertainty from her planning.  She will be in every regular tournament she wishes to play, will have a decent shot at making a few major starts and has no worries about footing her costs.  She’s already changed a few travel plans, upgrading from economy to something a little more comfortable and I’m sincerely hoping this performance is only a forerunner to many top-quality outings to follow.

Fingers crossed and a huge big heartfelt thanks again to the Founders who made it all possible.

A frequent topic of conversation in our family, and one which has whiled away many an interesting hour, is which generation has lived through the most change in their lifetime?

I have tended to think my mother’s generation (top, born in 1920) could claim that title.  At the time of her birth there was very little in the way of vehicular transport with horses and carts still vying for position on the increasingly busy streets of towns and cities.  A few decades later she had witnessed man land on the moon and Concorde cross the Atlantic in around three hours.  She even owned a mobile phone, could text, skype and send an email through the TV console.  The internet had gained traction and was a marvel although tending to baffle her somewhat.

Her golfing life moved from wooden shafted clubs to metal-headed woods and drivers;  from hitting a collection of (oldish) balls on a practice ground under the watchful eye of the club professional to a video lesson indoors on a computerised screen with slow-motion action replay.

Her ninety-year span covered a myriad of inventions and changes to her lifestyle showing just how adaptable the human being is but since Mum’s death fifteen years ago the world has evolved even more and become almost unrecognisable.  You can now book a restaurant from your wristwatch, pay the bill with it too, if you’re so inclined, and track every step you take through every minute of every day.  You can chat and interact with your family on the other side of the world and even “share” a meal with them across the miles.

I wonder what she’d make of golf now which is striving to embrace so many differing formats.  I doubt she’d have time for the LIV golf tour – too showy, loud, greedy and classless for her tastes but I do think she’d have quite enjoyed Tiger and Rory’s TGL efforts, indoors, under lights and in a two-hour evening time slot.  The first she’d have dismissed as not being “proper” golf;  the second doesn’t pretend to be that and is a winter evening’s entertainment (although it’s not to my taste).

I wonder if – no, I’m sure she’d have been uncomfortable with the steady encroachment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into all walks of life.

Next month sees the publication of Ely Callaway’s (founder of Callaway Golf) autobiography “The Unconquerable Game”.  Ely’s son, Nicholas, has been the driving force behind this twenty plus year endeavour since Ely’s death in 2001.  He used Ely’s extensive notes, documents and recordings of the discussions the man himself had had with his four biographers to put together the book, but it is the audio version that is a publishing first in that it has a posthumous narrator.

Nicholas provided original voice recordings from his Dad and the alchemy of AI, plus two voice actors and many hours of work have now produced the senior Callaway’s voice, nuance and inflexion to a tee.  So, in the audio version of the book it is Ely who is recounting his story.  Spooky or what?

Just about the same time I was reading about Ely I came across some news from the world of motor racing.  (Who says I don’t have eclectic tastes?!)  Scott Mansell, a British former racing driver, and no relation whatsoever to Nigel, had a coaching session in a racing car.  So, what’s the big deal?  Well, his coach was AI, our new friend, aka Artificial Intelligence.  Scott described the experience as “scarily good” and proceeded to go into all sorts of technical reasons that resulted in improved lap times, first in a simulator and then on a proper track, with the driver’s performance being monitored in real time by AI.

The sentence that really piqued my interest was,  “This will change the future of learning skills.”  Scott goes on to suggest that in five to ten years time we’ll all be able to access world-class coaching (and he specifically mentioned golf tuition) at less than 1% of the current cost with a coach who never gets tired, who is always assessing our technique and who is available 24/7.

Will there be any job left on the planet that requires a human being, I wonder.  Are we potentially a mere decade away from golf coaches not being able to make a living, having being ousted by AI which will have hundreds of thousands of hours of swing patterns and solutions at the touch of a button.

Will AI learn to read their pupils as well as a human coach?  Will AI understand human nuances, motives, strengths, weaknesses, ability to manage pressure and all the subtleties that go into making a human tick?  Perhaps a human coach will be squeezed out of technical coaching completely and only be called in to deal with this “extra stuff”.  It’s scary but it does appear to be the way we are heading.

In my almost thirty years of coaching I worked with professionals and amateur international squads but at least 75% of my time was spent with the club golfer who was keen to improve and enjoy the game to its max.  I never lost sight of the fact that these folk were spending their hard-earned cash with me and it was important to me that their improvement went hand in hand with having great fun as they were learning.  Surely that only comes with human interaction?

Only time will tell, but perhaps (if I’m spared a little longer) I will switch to my own generation as the one that has witnessed the most change.  I’m interested to know if you faithful blog readers would be itching to have an AI lesson – please let me know.

One thing’s for certain – boy, am I glad I’m retired.

Anybody expecting a well-ordered, well-argued, cogent blog is new here, so welcome and good luck following my meanderings, most of them unrelated to golf.  This being February, it’ll be free-flowing, casting off the restrictions of reined-in January and looking forward to blue skies and longer days, filled with fun and laughter.

This doesn’t mean that the wine starts flowing in mid-afternoon – although a friend supplied prosecco the other lunchtime so we could help her celebrate her 70th birthday – and I started writing this in one of Lichfield’s many coffee shops; well, making notes in one of my stash of half-filled notebooks, all of them a mishmash of jottings, shopping lists and assorted things to do.  The hope was to get everything done and dusted in time for draw night at the golf club and the big match at Anfield.  (So much for not mentioning football!)

Ah well.  Hope springs eternal.  It has to.

It was still nil-nil when I got home but we were being battered and needed to be braver and less sloppy with our passing; same old failing of giving the ball away and the opposition gobbling us up.  Liverpool do force better teams than us into errors but a lot of our mistakes must count as all our own work.  Ah well, at least Newcastle won’t be playing Arsenal in the final, having beaten them 4-nil over the two legs of the semi-final.  Still, who wants to have to find pleasure in something as negative as that.  Yuk.  COYS.  Final score 4-nil on the night, 4-1 on aggregate, not a surprise but just a pity we went out without a whimper.

I did play five holes of golf this week, just for the air, the exercise and the company.  We’re playing a winter routing, so there’s a lot of dotting about and a modest number of holes suits me well, as I’m still nursing a stiff left knee, adding to the Tottenham injury list; it’s played havoc with my side step but doesn’t really have much of an effect on my golf swing – who knows what that tells us!

 

Anyway, did you see Justin Rose’s eagle three at the 18th at Pebble Beach in the last round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am?  Justin celebrated as though he’d won the Masters, the Olympics, the World Cup, the Ryder Cup and the FA Cup all in one; a bit of an exaggeration but you get the picture.  He was ecstatic, not surprisingly because in the end that shot earned him a share of third place and more than $1 million.  It was also a tad unconventional because he was not far short of the green, only about 20 yards from the pin and used a fairway wood.

The ball bobbled a wee bit before settling down as it reached the green and rolling sweetly in to the hole.  Played like that, it’s a useful shot to have in the armoury, perfect for tricky winter conditions off dodgy lies, so I decided to give it a go.  The maestro used a 3-wood but I no longer have one of those, so opted for my 5-wood.  Success?  None whatsoever.  Off the toe every time, miles off line and miles too far.  Must take the practice ground off my out-of-bounds list.

By sheer good fortune, Adrian Sadler, Sheringham born (always described thus by Dai in his copy) and the professional at Whittington for many decades, was in my coffee shop with his wife and son.  We got chatting and he gave me a tip that should sort out the problem, providing I put a bit of work in.  Sadly, that’s where I tend to fall down when it comes to coaching:  anything too complicated, my dedication wavers and I end up hoping to improve by some sort of osmosis, even though I know that’s not going to work.

I’ve had the dictionary out a few times this week not least because a friend, annoyed at my undiplomatic response to a bit of bombast – I called it “bollocks”, not designed to endear myself I admit – responded with an uncomplimentary word.  “That’s the first thing you’ve got right this morning,” sez I, whereupon she gathered up her belongings and stomped out, reiterating, “I don’t talk to fuckwits.”

It’s not a word I use often and I wasn’t offended but thought I’d check the exact meaning.  The first definition was mild, no more than a slightly annoying foolish person really but my trusty Chambers upped the ante:  “a contemptibly stupid person”.  Ah.  Stupid I can cope with but contemptible?  Oh dear.  Just goes to show that some words have to be used with caution and not bandied about in cavalier fashion.  Dare I look up the exact meaning of bollocks!

On the subject of words, I see that President Trump is being roped in to help sort out the problems/impasse/whatever between LIV and the PGA Tour.  Several of his courses have been used for LIV events already, though, of course, his Turnberry is not on the Open rota at the moment.  Good luck to all of those involved in the negotiations.

Finally, two classic photos to finish:  first the sainted Alice in a winter wonderland and then a Mary McKenna special.

 

 

 

The week started with one of those jobs that I had been putting off for as long as possible.

Having reluctantly decided at the end of last year that I had to accept the inevitable and acknowledge that my golfing days were now behind me, it was time to visit my club, Delamere Forest, and inform Adam, our secretary, that it was my intention to resign my membership.  It’s surprisingly difficult to take those final steps even though my last full round had been as long ago as October 2021 – a couple of weeks before Covid came calling and changed everything for ever.

In the interim I had managed a couple of nine holes, a six-holer and a four-holer – and that’s pretty much been my lot.  My body doesn’t like rotating any more and as for attempting to apply power – well, you can forget it.

The search has been on for a new pastime and that prompted me to have my first Nordic Walking lesson last week.  It was a one-on-one with the fantastically knowledgeable Shelagh and I really, really enjoyed it.  What I love about it is there’s a degree of technique to get your head around, which seems to resonate with my golfing background.  It also promises that the more proficient you become the more you will benefit from an all-over body workout.  That, for me, makes it much more interesting and beneficial than simply power walking, which was my exercise of choice when trying to regain a little fitness over the last three years and with which I failed to build up any arm strength.

It’s early days, for sure, but I am excited to keep exploring and see if I can improve and, in the fullness of time, find a few congenial groups to join.

So, if faced with your own last-ever round of golf which venue would you choose……..and which companions?

Over many years frequenting TV compounds and media centres at golf tournaments I have listened to and taken part in numerous conversations on the above topic.  These chats always provided enough fodder to while away interminable rain delays and such like and, depending on who was around, threw up some interesting and intriguing choices.

Some folk name a bucket-list venue, others their home club or a holiday favourite.  As regards the make-up of those playing, many choose family members, some choose global stars and yet others close friends.

Dai, my late brother-in-law’s choice of course was one I’ve never played – Royal West Norfolk, aka Brancaster.  He was granted his wish but, of course, you never think at the time that it’ll be your final round.  My final round was at Delamere, a club that I have had a close association with since the early 1980s and a course I love.  In the interests of total transparency, given a choice, I would probably have picked Portstewart or Portrush because rounds of golf there, for me, are inextricably bound up with decades of memories of family, friends and competitions going back to an idyllic childhood.  The emotional ties are strong.

But I have no complaint whatsoever about Delamere – it would always have been tucked in there closely behind the two Irish courses and the emotional ties are strong there too.  My companions on that day were my “Tuesday Four” and I have to admit (secretly) that I was as blessed with my companions as with the venue.  I didn’t tell them that though!  I told them I was still in recovery but I have to admit there was a tear in my eye when one of them said:-

“I absolutely loved our times out on the course.  We laughed so much – happy days.”

I concur.

It’s interesting the rounds of golf that stick in our minds – out of the thousands and thousands that we play.  Obviously rounds that mark a great personal achievement will figure but perhaps not as much as you think.  At the recent PGA Merchandise show in Florida Tom Watson was doing a one-on-one interview to a selected audience when he was asked if he’d share his favourite memory about the game of golf.

Would it be his phenomenal performance on the sun-baked fairways of Turnberry in 1977 when he and Jack Nicklaus traded one brilliant shot with another in what came to be known as “the duel in the sun”?  Watson prevailed and won the second of his five Open Championship titles there.  Perhaps it would be his chip-in at Pebble Beach’s 17th hole on his way to his US Open victory?

The dewy-eyed Watson, owner of eight majors and pretty much every other award the game could throw at him, bypassed all of those magnificent achievements in favour of a quiet round with his Dad and his Dad achieving his goal of breaking 90.

And right there is why this game hooks so many of us in.  Most of us haven’t the skill or application to win lots of stuff – there are tons of people better than us, after all – but we’ve all enjoyed rounds with pals, parents and children.

Perhaps we’ve met folk on the 1st tee who’ve gone on to be significant in our lives – that might make for a favourite memory.  Whatever it is that causes one round to stand out over another you can bet your bottom dollar it revolves around the amount of fun, banter and laughter you’ve all shared as well as the frustrations and emotional highs and lows that seemingly accompany every round.

Cups, trophies, handicap reductions – yes, they’re all great if they happen to come along, but, it’s the craic that we remember and hold in our hearts.

Ah yes, it’s a great game.