It’s more or less back to business as usual now, with players back to strokeplay – even though the Dunhill Links is not just some same old same old event, given the stellar cast of amateurs from sport, stage and screen, not forgetting assorted family and friends of varying degrees of skill and some of the best courses in the world.

Don’t laugh but many years ago, in the dim, distant days when I worked for The Times, I got an invitation to play (and write about the experience).  I said yes of course but my back, which was even dodgier then than it is now (thank you Clare in Bristol, Esther in California and the life-enhancing Gokhale Method), gave out and I had to withdraw long before I got anywhere near St Andrews and environs.  I was never invited again.

On reflection, years later, I wondered if it had been psychosomatic in some way, caused by nerves, fear, stage fright, panic, whatever.  The back was definitely bad – I could barely walk let alone swing – but I do remember worrying, not just about the golf but also about making my deadlines and writing readable stuff.  There was also the certain knowledge that I wouldn’t recognise a single, solitary mega famous pop or film star, renowned all over the globe except chez Davies.

I’m not sure if it was during the Tandy period, when the computer screens were so small that you could only see four or five lines at a time and connections were as dodgy as my back.  All that would have added to the anxiety, so perhaps I was just giving myself a bit of a pass, suffering from a physical ailment to relieve the pressure of being expected to perform.  It’s not uncommon, so who knows?

For whatever reason, Europe’s Ryder Cup team were not at their best at Whistling Straits (did I tell you that I’ve played there, without distinction, a story for another day?) but they poured their heart and soul in to the match and on this occasion came up well short, beaten by a better team over the three days.  Gutting but hardly the end of the world.

There’s a whole lot of guff spouted about strategy, pods, pairings, players too young, too old, to rest or not to rest, singles line-ups and so on.  We all do it, pontificating and speculating, mostly badly but apparently one punter won a million dollars for an $8 stake by getting all twelve singles results right!!!  How he must have cheered when Paul Casey’s putt at the last, to halve his match with Dustin Johnson, slipped agonisingly by – it looked in to me for most of the way; or when Harris English hoicked his approach to the 18th into a ditch/stream to lose to Lee Westwood; or when Matt Fitzpatrick gifted Daniel Berger the bottom match with a woeful duff at the same hole.  Two matches finished all square, so could have gone either way and must have shredded a few more nerves.

If I were captain (suspend disbelief for the moment) of the Ryder or Solheim Cup or the Curtis or Walker Cup or any team for that matter, I’d  want only two things:  all my players playing well on the days of the competition and putting the lights out.  See Leona Maguire for details.

Roll on Rome for the Ryder and Spain for the Solheim.  And, please, please NO booing of the Americans on the first tee.  They are our guests:  we welcome them, then we MANGLE them, smiling politely as we do so.

Being involved as I still am, always will be, in the never-ending search for the perfect bag, I was delighted to receive a press release from a company called Meg & Bee, after its founders Meg Tudball and Bee Paul. They, it turns out, make bags and their “Classic Kit Bag” was at the Ryder Cup, doing duty with the European wives and girlfriends as they tramped the fairways putting a brave face on a pretty dire situation.

That might just do me for my treks to watch the not-so-mighty Spurs – room for tissues (to mop up the tears), lippy, glasses, purse, hand gel, mobile, pencil, notebook (old habits die hard), car keys, all those awkward but necessary things that tend to make bulges in bags that are too small.

Of course the perfect bag doesn’t exist; it’s the search that’s the fun.

Not sure if there’s such a thing as a perfect jean but I just have to mention that the US Ryder Cup team had official jeans – no idea when they wore them and I think they retailed at about $500 but the great thing is that they had them and, even better, they were made in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Doesn’t ring any bells?  That just means that you’re not an Elvis fan.  I wasn’t particularly but my mate Kate is fanatical, so I absorbed plenty of Presley tidbits and I know for a fact that he was born in Tupelo, in a tiny shack that is now a museum.  I went there once – the US Women’s Open was not that far away – and bought Kate some souvenirs, served by two women sporting the most amazing, jaw-droppingly perfect beehives and well-nigh impenetrable southern drawls.  Perfect.

Finally, I couldn’t resist sharing this photo from Golf Ireland, of Tuam’s GolfSixes team.  They’ve got to the national finals at Portmarnock on October 24th, along with Co. Louth, Millicent, Kilkenny, Doneraile, Tipperary, Lurgan and PORTSTEWART (sorry for the bias, home club!).  Imagine the excitement.  Good luck to everybody.

 

 

 

It’s hard to miss a castle if you’re in north Wales, which is more or less the fault of Edward I (1239-1307), completing a scheme he inherited from his father Henry III and adding his own amendments and improvements, in an attempt to keep the Welsh in order.  I’m indebted to the website castlewales.com (which is indebted to any number of learned historians) for anything approaching a fact on this matter and I did a lot of looking up at the castle when we were playing Harlech the other day.

The golf club, several centuries younger than the castle, was established in 1894, in the reign of Queen Victoria and the first name on the honours board is James Braid, one of the great triumvirate (along with Vardon and Taylor), golfing royalty indeed.  He won a “Professional Tournament” in 1903, no names, no pack drill but undoubtedly there would have been money handed out at the end.  It was scary how many of the winners we knew between us – I even saw Cecil Leitch, winner of the Ladies’ British Amateur Championship in 1926, in the flesh when she presented the trophy to Cathy Panton at Silloth in 1976….

A round at Royal St David’s Golf Club, to give it its official title, is always a treat and it was a lot less windy and the rough was a lot less penal, in a relative sort of a way, than the last time I played there.  Steve, the pro, is from Newcastle, Co. Down; we were playing with Pam Valentine, a good friend who’s a member (such a good friend that we forgive her for supporting Liverpool); the weather was benign; the castle peacefully hosting visitors from England and elsewhere; and we could scarcely have had a more enjoyable day, slow pace of play notwithstanding.

It gave us time to chat and enjoy the views (though Snowdon itself was hidden by cloud) and Mo admitted that during her years on tour she’d been guilty of paying little or no attention to her surroundings.  That’s the trouble with professionals, they have to be obsessively single-minded (or feel they have to be) to be successful.  Still, I challenge anybody to fail to notice the beauty around them when they’re playing up in the mountains at Crans-sur-Sierre, in Switzerland.

Dai and I used to love going to Crans, where the golf course is right in the middle of everything, a bit like an Alpine St Andrews and there was always a special buzz when Seve Ballesteros and co were in town.  The course, a skier’s playground in the winter, has its quirks but it has been a fixture on the schedule since 1923 (starting as the Swiss Open) and the list of champions reads like a veritable who’s who of world and European golf:  Bobby Locke, Kel Nagle, Bob Charles, Dai Rees, Seve (several times), Nick Faldo, Ian Woosnam, Jose Maria Olazabal, Colin Montgomerie, Lee Westwood, Ernie Els and Sergio Garcia, to mention just a few.

Now Rasmus Hojgaard, a 20-year old Dane with talent to burn, has added his name to the list, winning this year’s Omega European Masters with a final round of 63, seven under par.  It was his third win on tour and only Matteo Manassero and Seve managed to win that many at a younger age.  “I’m very proud,” Hojgaard said.  “With some of the players who have won it, it’s very special.  It’s an amazing place and I can’t wait to come back again.”

We’re now gearing up for a splurge of Solheim, defined as “any boisterous or extravagant display”, which should just about cover our behaviour as we spectate at home, showing appalling bias and a distinct lack of decorum as we cheer on Europe. The neighbours have been warned.

Let’s hope it’s a good omen that Europe’s Junior Solheim Cup team, captained by Annika Sorenstam, stunned the Americans with an amazing comeback, winning the singles 9-3 to snaffle the trophy for the first time since 2007 and for the first time ever on US soil.  Brilliant effort everybody.  Inspirational.

It’s a good thing that there’s no premier league football this weekend, so I won’t be torn between savouring the Solheim in comfort or schlepping down to north London to watch Spurs.  Last Sunday I headed off again, for the game against Watford, clutching my season ticket (it’s on the phone somewhere, along with proof of my COVID vaccinations and I live in fear and dread of losing them altogether, of them vanishing in to the ether or some sort of black hole of lost connections).

There was more method than madness in the planning this time:  drive to Milton Keynes station and get a coach to the ground, letting someone else take the strain.  Only problem was that no one at MK Central knew anything about my coach or the bus stop it was supposed to go from…Still, I’d given myself plenty of time for once, didn’t panic, bought a coffee and a croissant and after a reconnoitre or three settled on the only possible pick-up place.

By this time, two other pedestrians had turned up, one with some sort of massive kitbag that ruled him out of a supporter’s role, the other, oh happy day, with a clear plastic duffle bag with a cockerel on it….He turned out to be John from Derby and he was indeed waiting for the Spurs coach.  An old hand at this trekking-to-Tottenham lark, he was kindness itself, took me under his wing and made sure I didn’t get lost.

It turns out he has three season tickets:  one for Spurs, one for Derby and one for Burton!!!  Not altogether surprisingly his partner plays golf.

 

 

 

 

 

Well, we’ve had to wait for more than a year because of the pesky virus (nothing like a bit of understatement to start with) but at last the Curtis Cup returns to Wales.  The United States team have bounced in to Conwy keen to retain the trophy they won in crushing style at Quaker Ridge three yeas ago but the beauty of team matchplay is that nothing’s ever won on paper.  The game, remember, is played on grass.

Maureen and I got up at 0500 yesterday (well, she did, I was a little bit later being lighter on the ablutions) because we wanted to be there for the off at 0745.  It was the first day after all and we knew how important it was to a lot of our friends, how long-awaited and there is something special about the start of a big match, be it Curtis Cup, Walker Cup, Solheim, Ryder, whatever.

There isn’t a Welsh player on the GB and I team but as Gerald Micklem once said of a Walker Cup team, rebuking someone moaning about a lack of one nationality or another:  “There are no English, no Irish, no Welsh, no Scots…”  It’s like the Lions really:  one for all, all for one.  If you haven’t heard of Micklem – and the people who knew him well are now few and far between and pretty long in the tooth – look him up.  He may seem like ancient history but there’s far, far too much to Gerald, a real golfing visionary and benefactor, to squeeze into a few words.

For several hundred of us, maybe more, in a little corner of north Wales it was a lovely day, catching up with any number of old friends (well, I suppose, if truth be told, most of our friends are old now…), watching some very good young golfers battling their hearts out on a lovely golf course in benign conditions.  They’ve become part of something special and will probably only really appreciate just how special years from now.  There’s probably nothing better than attending a Curtis Cup as a “past player”.  Much more relaxing than being a current player!

There were enough spectators to justify the presence of numerous white-jacketed marshals, mustered from clubs from all over Wales and possibly beyond, to keep us in some sort of order.

Quite a few people who would never miss a Curtis Cup have had to stay away for a variety of reasons, not least the current restrictions, so Mo and I took as many snaps as we could, to give a flavour of the day.  Also, modern technology means that not only can you watch the action on Sky and the Golf Channel but on the R&A’s digital platforms, live streamed (I think that just means live, as it happens) through YouTube and Facebook as well as randa.org.

A picture is worth a thousand words, allegedly and if we were to recount all the tales told yesterday, this blog would never end!  It’s a miracle we got back home at all.

GB and I, confounding the odds and the perennial pessimists, had the best of the opening day, so their captain, ever affable, didn’t have the worry of scrabbling around to put a positive spin on things.  She just had to smile and look at the scoreboard, well aware that today is another day entirely.

Sarah Ingram, captain of the USA, had a less comfortable day – being 4 1/2  – 1 1/2 down is not the start you dream of – but she probably had no need of a team talk last night, the scoreboard said it all.

The choice of an action photo is completely random – Mo just happened to be there at the time, trusty phone in hand and we both liked the image and the colour.  No Irish bias here of course….

Finally, as a homage to the incomparable Mary McKenna, who is at home in Ireland, we include a water shot, of Conwy Marina.  No birds in flight in sight admittedly but our photography is a work in progress…Stationary boats are hard enough.

 

I noticed that the old codgers, sorry, seniors, sorry, sorry, legends (probably with a capital ‘L’) were playing in Ireland last week, in Donegal – if you’ve never been, don’t delay, GO – and Thomas Bjorn won the Irish Legends presented by the McGinley Foundation at Rosapenna Hotel & Golf Resort.  It was the Dane’s first win on the Legends Tour and he beat Phillip Price of Wales at the second hole of a play-off after a final round of 65, six under par.  They finished a whopping six shots ahead of Peter Baker, Peter Wilson and Mauricio Molina.

“It was nice,” Bjorn said.  “As a sportsman there’s no greater feeling than Sunday afternoon.  It doesn’t really matter where it is, I really got into it…I recognised myself and I haven’t seen that person for quite a while, which is nice.  It’s pretty special winning any golf tournament….I’m really glad I came.  It’s a wonderful part of Ireland and a wonderful part of the world.”

And I thought the trophy, which was what really caught my eye, was worth winning.  It was handmade in county Offaly, from old Irish native beech.  There’s no way that’ll be ending up in the back of a cupboard!

Here we are at last – the 149th Open Championship, 24 months after the 148th.  I’m sure it won’t disappoint and that it’ll be well worth the wait.

It’s 21 years since I worked at my first Open Championship as a very raw, nervous summariser for Radio 5 Live.  I was shepherded around by the inimitable Tony Adamson and learned so much from this master of nuance, teller of tales and expert at engaging an audience.  He knew when to provide biographical detail about the players, when to develop a thought or idea, when to clinically report solely on the current score and when to give way to flights of utter fancy.  I really didn’t quite appreciate then that I was learning from a golfing black belt.  What I did know was that I loved being with Tony, loved listening to him and recognised him as an empathetic golf fan to the very inner fibre of his being.  I would have paid to be with him.  Instead they paid me.

Later, a decade or so later, in fact, I moved exclusively to a television contract and my new mentor wasn’t too bad either:  Peter Alliss, the doyen of TV commentary.  Peter was helpful in every way but never shirked from telling you what he really thought.  The entire production mattered to him, not just his part in it and if you were willing to learn, he was a willing mentor.  He didn’t mind being challenged either – he rather relished it, in fact, and many’s the “spirited discussion” we enjoyed.  My last event with him was the 2019 Solheim Cup at Gleneagles.  I would have paid for that decade-plus of being with him.  Instead they paid me.

I didn’t work at the Open in 2019 – purposely and with great intent.  A member of Portrush for more than 50 years, I wanted to return to being a fan at this particular major.  I wanted to drink in the experience from the proper side of the ropes, experience the Open “in the raw” for the first time in two decades, unfettered by hours and hours of research and the requirement to present a neutral and unbiased front.

And so it was that I walked every step of that final round with Shane Lowry, in amongst the rest of the Irish population, in the cold, in the strong winds and driving rain right up until that final, triumphant surge up the last fairway to the 18th green, encircled by a giant horseshoe of a 7000-seater stand that was bristling with pride and pulsating with energy.  The sounds of the “Fields of Athenry” rang out along with “Shane-O” and “Ole, ole, ole”.  An unforgettable experience.  And this time I wasn’t being paid for it!

And so to Royal St George’s and my first thoughts turn back to 2011 and that famous windswept links on the Kent coast.  I seem to remember that that was the first year that readmittance to the course for spectators was not allowed.  In other words, if you returned to your rental house or hotel room or just nipped into the town for a cup of coffee, you were barred from re-entry that day.  I never did like that particular edict, smacking as it does of the humble fan getting the thin edge of the wedge yet again.

That year it was another triumphant Irishman on a victory march up the 72nd hole.  Darren Clarke had taken his lifetime to harness his mercurial skills, his stubborn temperament and his years of golf and life learning, bringing everything to a climax on that July Sunday afternoon.

I stood at the back of the final green for the closing half hour with Darren’s parents, Godfrey and Hettie, lovely, lovely people.  Hettie had on her “lucky” earrings, emerald shamrocks and nervously chatted on about this and that.  Finally, when Darren’s ball rested on the last green and he had several putts for the win she allowed herself to breathe, bursting out with an emotional, “I’ve waited 20 years for this.”

By contrast, Darren’s Dad stood silently by, tall and still.  I don’t think he’s a man of many words and certainly at that moment when his son become the “Champion Golfer of the Year”,  he had none but emotion and pride oozed from every pore.  Private, private moments when your offspring achieves incredible things and you are in full public view with no hiding place.  It can’t be easy.

This year will be very different for me, and lots of others, as I’ll be watching from my sofa, frankly not too disappointed to avoid pandemic bubbles, rules and regulations and the like.  Of course, that’s easy to say when you harbour a treasure trove of Open experiences and memories but I can’t wait for the possibility of a potential life-changing, unforseen drama unfolding on our screens come the weekend.

Perhaps we’ll have a two-horse race a la Mickelson and Stenson at Troon a few years ago;  perhaps it’ll be a full-throated roar greeting a home winner again; perhaps Royal St George’s will usher in another complete outsider as champion as it did in 2003 when Ben Curtis took the spoils.

Whatever it may be, the Open has a magic about it, unmatched by any other major and is enjoyably riveting from a whole host of different perspectives.

Yes, even from your sofa.