There’s been a feast of golf to watch and read about this past week and it’s always fun following your favourite players.

The Ladies’ European Tour finishes its 2023 schedule on Sunday down on the Costa del Sol at the wonderful Las Brisas golf course.  Caroline Hedwall, who delivered under the most intense pressure in the Solheim Cup in September, is the defending champion.

It’s a fabulous golf course, one of the early ones on the Costa del Sol and still capable of holding its place as a “must play”.  I once played there with Sean Connery – or was that at Aloha?  No matter, – I do remember we had a halved match and an extremely pleasant, if seriously competitive fourball.  Over lunch in the clubhouse afterwards our table was approached by a steady stream of fans with autograph requests and the great man graciously and tirelessly fulfilled every single one.  But, I digress.

I had a trawl down the Race to Costa del Sol rankings and was a little disappointed to discover the four home countries only had half a dozen players in the top 30 between them.  Five are English players and in 27th spot is the Welsh player Chloe Williams who hails from just up the road from me in Wrexham.  My long association with Welsh women’s and girls’ golf means one of my first ports of call is seeking out how the players from the Principality are faring.

Chloe’s form since mid August has been very encouraging – and solid – and I thought she just might make her big breakthrough last week in Mallorca.  Leading by a shot going into Saturday’s final round she slipped to a round of 76 which dropped her down to a tie for sixth spot, her fourth top ten of the season (not counting team events).  Despite her understandable disappointment at her final round I think she’s done remarkably well considering that half way through the season she was in danger of losing her card.

She said she “gave herself a good talking to” which consisted of threatening herself with a return to Q-school.  The subsequent hard work to change her mindset certainly seems to have paid off and I look forward to her continuing to fly the flag for Wales next season.  There is no reason she can’t follow in the footsteps of previous Welsh winners on Tour, namely Helen Wadsworth, Becky Brewerton and Becky Morgan. (Hope the old grey cells are still working sufficiently not to have omitted anyone – an unforgiveable error!)

The LPGA tour and the two main men’s tours have all drawn a line under the 2023 season and I confess I was looking forward to a break until I discovered (with not a little horror) that the first tournament of the 2024 season on the DP World Tour started YESTERDAY down in Australia, the first competitive action of what now pleases to call itself “the opening swing” of the schedule.  What’s happened to an off-season for goodness sake???

I thought the Solheim and Ryder Cup excitement of six or so weeks ago virtually impossible acts to follow, but apparently not.  The guys have been doing their utmost to startle us all with their brilliance and boy, have they succeeded. The DP World Tour was playing its Tour Championship on the Earth course in Dubai when Matt Wallace lost the run of himself, went on a tear and and recorded NINE consecutive birdies on the back nine on Saturday!

What on earth?!!!  A dazzling, bewitching, other-worldly performance that resulted in a third round effort of 60, four better than anyone else could manage all week. Eventually he finished in joint runner-up position, two behind Danish Ryder Cup twin, Nicolai Hojgaard, who, at 22 years of age, was the baby of the Old World Ryder Cup team in September.  Nicolai has now notched three wins but this was easily his most impressive.

This sensational golf was matched stateside by a sublime performance by another European Ryder Cup rookie – Ludvig Aberg – in the RSM Classic at Sea Island, Georgia.  Aberg (see pic at top) emerged victorious, snaffling his first PGA Tour win after shooting 61-61 on the weekend, equalling all sorts of records along the way.  For goodness sake!

How do you even begin to describe the Swede’s first five months of his professional career?  In a nutshell, he turned pro in June having become the first player to secure a PGA Tour card through the new university graduate scheme.  In the next few weeks he won on the DP World tour; he was a member of the winning European Ryder Cup team and then rounded things off nicely with a win in America.  His succinct summing up of things was that it was “six months that I’ll never forget”.

Sounds like he’s a master of understatement as well.  Has he won a major yet?  The short answer is no – he’s yet to play in one!  Ah well, not long now till April.

The world of golf has gone crazy – in a good way.  Scoring is lower than it’s ever been before, on courses that are longer than they’ve ever been before and the quality of shot-making and putting is simply off the charts.  It’s becoming akin to watching a golf video game and I sincerely hope that increasing familiarity with witnessing sheer, unadulterated brilliance doesn’t inure us all to the skills on show.

The madness of exhilarating performance isn’t restricted to the professionals, however.  Even one of our oldest friends is producing some never-to-be-forgotten golf.  An excited email thudded into the inbox from him this week.  He entitled it “Age Concern”.  Here is an extract:-

It’s not been a good week.

No, I’m afraid I’m not exaggerating.  In fact, it’s a massive understatement – but just how do you describe losing two friends your own age to cancer in under forty-eight hours?

Many of you will have seen Dale Reid’s obituary on the Ladies’ European Tour website and the accolades paid to her when the sad news of her death filtered through from her home in Townsville in Queensland.  One of our favourite blog readers, Gordon from Enniskillen, sent a lovely note about her, but I felt unable to write anything last week.  Unfortunately, I’ve known for five months how unwell Dale was, so from that point of view it wasn’t entirely unexpected news.  My other friend, however, was a shock of seismic proportions and my not mentioning her doesn’t mean anything other than it is all too raw and far, far too soon to think of sharing any stories.

Dale was a good Fifer, hailing from Ladybank Golf Club and she is the reason that course was always on my bucket list of places to play.  Six years ago Gill Stewart, Mary McKenna, Sandra Ross and I (aka the July Club although we always had our annual golf get-together in October!) paid a visit to Ladybank on one of our little Scottish forays.  Indulge me by allowing me to reproduce here a little of what I wrote at the time.

“So, next it was on to Ladybank Golf Club, the original stomping ground of our old pal Dale Reid and the principal reason this course has always been on my bucket list.  Dale, one of Scotland’s finest women golfers, now living in Oz, was a ferocious competitor through her multi-titled amateur and professional days, recording 23 professional wins worldwide and topping the European Order of Merit twice.  She played in four Solheim Cup teams and captained two, most famously in her homeland in 2000 when Europe defeated the USA at Loch Lomond.

“An honorary member of the Ladies’ European Tour, she was awarded the OBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List.  Although short in stature, Reidy gave the ball an almighty thump and Gill remembers her using an old wooden-headed 2-wood off the tee.  No driver for Dale!  She just loved that 2-wood.  It wasn’t always the same story with her putter, however, which I remember she was frequently changing.  But when she had her eye in – look out!  She was well-nigh unbeatable.”

Dale and her long-term partner Corinne Dibnah were a tour de force wherever they went and it’s hard to write about one without writing about the other.

I was fiddling about the other day on social media (has there ever been a more time-wasting activity?) when I came across a little video of Charlie Woods, son of Tiger, teeing off in the second round of something or other.  The announcer started off with a bellow, ” ….and now the 06.32 tee time …” and a mini Tiger came out of the early morning gloom and teed up his ball.

Then a strange thing happened.  This young man turned into Rory McIlroy, right down to the identical follow-through and the ball was dispatched into the mist.  Charlie strode off the tee, turning to hand his club to his caddy, 15-time major champion and Dad, Tiger, who, it has to be said, looked as if he was walking normally, a rare occurrence over the last decade.

It was an early start for the pair and it set me wondering as to what time the alarm had been set for.  To my knowledge most players with an early start on tour set their clocks for three hours prior to their tee time.  Towards the end of Tiger’s career when he was succumbing to the inexorable demands he had put on his body for so long it took him five hours from bed to tee.  I can’t imagine that the caddying duties would be quite so onerous though and he looked happy to be there, even at that ungodly hour, striding along after his son.  I wonder if the roles will be reversed next April at Augusta?

I had a number of very good caddies when I was on tour, one of whom was the multi-talented Angie Bell, who used to tow her caravan from her home in Yorkshire to all the tour venues in the UK and on the European continent.  From early April to the beginning of November Angie criss-crossed her way across Europe, calling in at the tournament sites a month or so ahead of time to walk the course, measuring it with a wheel (no lasers in those days).  She would then produce in excess of a couple of hundred course planners, some in yards, some in metres, for the players and caddies and these would be waiting for us when we arrived at the tournament.

Aside from this, she became the first-ever tour rep to travel on the Ladies’ European Tour, employed by Ping to look after their players.  Angie did all the regripping and minor repairs required and carried supplies of extra Ping brollies, gloves, headcovers and the like, attending to the needs of some fifty players a week.

She fitted all this around looking after me, getting up at the crack of dawn every day and often working on clubs well into the evenings.  As if that weren’t enough, a group of us often went to the caravan for one of Angie’s legendary chillis for supper and the conversation would frequently turn to the topic of where exactly would the impending cut fall.

One player, who often travelled with Angie, was an absolute mastermind at predicting said cut, arguably because she spent most of her career sitting on that very line.  She had an uncanny ability to assess the weather, the strength of the field, the state of her game and sundry other imponderables.  Once she got her opening tee shot away on Thursday morning her brain was consumed by where the axe would fall.  She was rarely wrong.

These memories were triggered for me a few evenings ago when I rustled up a chilli con carne, something I hadn’t cooked in an absolute age.  The sister was present for food that night (as she often was for an Angie supper when she was covering our tour) and out of the blue I recalled those long-ago days when we used to enjoy Angie’s chilli.  Once again we were aboard the reminiscing train, an increasingly frequent pastime the older we become.  (The featured picture at the top of the blog is of The Glacier Express, which runs from Zermatt to St Moritz.  It’s on my wish list for the near future.)

Anyway, in the interests of keeping anno Domini at bay and recapturing former tour days, I had another foray up to Delamere this week to hit a few more balls.  The real draw, however, was lunch with the lovely Karl Morris, the mental skills guru who has helped so many players unlock and achieve their full potential.  I must have known Karl for thirty years or so and we now find ourselves members of the self same golf club.

Despite some of his own health challenges Karl appears to show no signs of slowing down and, though he won’t admit it, he has been a major contributor to Kiwi Ryan Fox’s incredible last two or three seasons.  He prefers to remain in the shadows but I know his job satisfaction must be high.

It’s hard to believe it’s twenty years since the two of us did a mini lecture tour alongside the four Harmon brothers, Dick, Bill, Claude and Butch.  It was at a time that Tiger had just fired Butch as his coach and his three brothers didn’t half give Butch some stick.  They claimed Butch was the only coach to be fired by two world No 1 players, having previously been given a red card by Greg Norman.  The conversations over dinner were amazing…….and unabridged, and something I’m sure neither Karl nor I will ever forget.

Oh dear.  Choo!  Choo!  There’s that reminiscing train racing down the tracks again!

While some of us are creaking our way towards the pension others are bounding along, seemingly without a care in the world apart from, of course, polishing up that portrait in the attic.  I’m referring to the evergreen Trish Johnson, who has just won the US Senior Women’s Open title at Waverley Country Club in Portland, Oregon.  That’s Trish, tired but happy, with the trophy in the pic at the top.

Trish has played in all five editions of this championship and had already recorded a couple of podium finishes.  She has always coveted a USGA title and she was certainly made to earn this one, squeaking home by a shot from Leta Lindley of the United States and by two from the redoubtable Scot Catriona Matthew.  There was nothing to choose between the three players over the ebb and flow of the final round but birdies by Johnson at the 15th and 16th gave her a cushion that absorbed a bogey at the 17th and allowed her a par at the last to seal her win.

For those of you who are new-ish to the game (in other words, who’ve played for less than twenty years!) Trish has put together a formidable career, full of titles, success, grit and longevity.  I remember her first as a hugely talented, although somewhat volcanic-tempered,  16-year old playing in the British Amateur Strokeplay at Royal Norwich.  Her shotmaking skills were as breathtaking as her outbursts but I think we all realised how much trouble we’d be in once she learned to channel her energies in a positive way.  And we were right.

Amateur titles were followed by a professional career that included winning the Ladies’ European Tour Rookie of the Year award in 1987 and by 1990 she was Europe’s No 1 player.  In all, she amassed 18 LET victories, three on the the LPGA tour in America and was selected for eight Solheim Cup teams.  Easy to write in one sentence, but, like most sports people, Trish has weathered ups and downs, good times and bad, and the Madill households were not the only ones rejoicing at this latest victory.

Who knows, it might even put her in the spotlight for possible selection for next year’s Madill Trophy team!  Watch this space.

There is arguably other, more important, selecting going on at the moment with Solheim and Ryder Cup teams being seemingly finalised at every turn.  Stacy Lewis has named her picks for the US Solheim team and as the youngest-ever captain she will face a challenging task in Spain trying to prevent Europe from winning their third contest on the bounce.  For what it’s worth, I have a good feeling re Europe’s chances.

I’m not so sure about the Ryder Cup, however but do admit to feeling greatly cheered and a little more optimistic after Zach Johnson’s picks.  I’m relieved (as a dyed-in-the-wool European fan) that he didn’t pick Keegan Bradley who has a couple of wins this year, has been really consistent and has been passionate about his desire to make the team as his confidence has soared.

I’m also delighted that Zach DID pick Justin Thomas.  There’s no question that Thomas is a quality player but he is in a particularly rough patch at the moment and there hasn’t been much of a trend to suggest he’s coming out of it any time soon.  With only one top-five finish since February Thomas has had a sprinkling of missed cuts and scores in the 80s in the majors but Zach sees him as the emotional centre of the team and says, “You just don’t leave JT at home.”  Hmm, let’s see.

These are all good talking points, but that’s all they are.  Not long now to wait till the action and see how things play out on the course – the only place it actually matters.

And finally………

The sister took on the recent Open Championship venue, Royal Liverpool, the other day.  Have a look at her tackling the infamous par 3 17th hole, Little Eye, below.  Fingers crossed the link will work.

Ten seconds of ease and grace with a little bit of the Scottie Scheffler school of dancing thrown in.  But where do you think the ball ended up?  And what did she score on the hole?  If you’ve read Patricia’s blog, you’ll already know the answer.  Looks can be deceptive!

Have a good week.