I was 6 down at the turn, it was pouring rain and I was playing tripe.  I wanted to go in.

“You’re not going in,” Dad said.  “You challenged me to a match and we’ll play to the finish.  You can’t just keep going when it suits you.”

I was 10 years old and Dad had promised me a brand new set of clubs the moment I beat him playing level.  He was playing off 7 handicap and I was so keen to win those clubs I badgered him to play a match at every conceivable opportunity.  It took me till I was 13 to get the better of him, winning at the 20th hole of our home club of Portstewart.  My reward was a set of Jean Donalds, bought from the club pro, Johnnie Hunter, a myriad of lessons learned and a lifelong love of golf.

Many years ago, Elspeth Burnside, a fellow journalist and I were at the Dinah Shore tournament (now the ANA Inspiration) in Rancho Mirage, California, when one of the Americans in the press room did that oh-so-easy but very risky thing: he made an assumption.  He was sure we were players manquees, that we would have loved to be professional golfers and that we were writing about golf for a living because we couldn’t play it well enough.