Well, now that Catriona Matthew has agreed to become the first professional captain of a Curtis Cup team, there’s a real treat in store for GB and I’s top women amateurs.  They’ll be learning from one of the best, a woman who won the Women’s British Amateur in 1993, the Women’s Open in 2009 and even more pertinently, led Europe to victory in the Solheim Cup at Gleneagles in 2019 and at Inverness Club, in Ohio, in 2021.

Elaine Ratcliffe, Catriona’s esteemed immediate predecessor, did play on the tour for several years but was reinstated as an amateur well before she became captain.  It’s no easy task, even at home, when the matches tend to be closer than the recent batterings away in the United States.  Only four countries to call on, not the whole of Europe and players, however good, still mostly at the early learning stage.

The Scot from North Berwick, who played in three Curtis Cup matches in the early 1990s (one loss, one win, one draw, a real rarity), trained on to become the epitome of a model professional, one of Europe’s best for many years, nine times a Solheim Cup player and a mother of two daughters to boot, with husband and oft-time caddy Graeme.  You don’t do all that without an immense amount of help, organisation and determination, not forgetting talent.

“As a player I remember the emotions of competing in the Curtis Cup,” Catriona said.  “The excitement of being on a team rather than competing individually, as well as the desire to perform well for your team and pressure you put on yourself not to let them down.

“As a captain it is my job to navigate the players through these situations and to help them believe what is possible.

“Through the Solheim Cup I have gained experience in building a high-performing and successful team, including bringing together individual athletes from different countries and recognising whose strengths will combine well to create successful pairings.

“My goal is to channel all my playing and captaining skills into this Great Britain and Ireland Curtis Cup team to optimise their performance.”

It’s an exciting prospect and Catriona has enlisted Kathryn Imrie and Karen Stupples as her trusted lieutenants.  I for one will be busting a gut (it’ll probably be even bigger next year than it is now) to be at Sunningdale, one of the world’s best venues, for the week of the match (Friday 30th August – Sunday 1st September).  Put it in your diary, it’ll be a wonderful occasion.

Now the whispers are that the Walker Cup could go pro too, with Padraig Harrington mooted as a possible captain for the 2024 match at Cypress Point.  Start saving now, whoever the captain is.  Cypress Point is a beautiful place and it’s not on the normal tourist route, so where better to watch some of the world’s best amateurs stretch their skills and nerves to the limit and beyond.

Away from golf and with Totspurs off duty because of the international break (giving us all time to absorb our manager’s rant about selfish players and so on), I went to my first women’s football match and what a joy it was.  For one thing, it was close to home, at Walsall’s Bescot Stadium and it was a (Women’s) FA Cup quarter-final between Aston Villa Women and Manchester City Women.

What a joy it was.  The players were skilful, fast, fit and just got on with things.  The lack of moaning, rolling around in agony and arguing with the referee was a revelation, so refreshing; it made me realise just what pampered plonkers the men are, allowed to get away with behaviour that should be beyond the pale.  What’s more, the fans were intermingled, sitting next to each other, not segregated at all and I don’t think I saw a single, solitary police person.

Villa won 2-1 aet (after extra time for the non footie fans) and will play Chelsea, the holders, at Villa Park, in the semi-finals on Sunday 16th April.  Manchester United, who beat Lewes, play Brighton.

The only downside was the loos, sez she who is used to up-to-date luxury at Spurs – off the pitch if not on.  There were two of them, woefully inadequate and not (wo)manned, so it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience.  The stadium opened in 1990, so perhaps they didn’t expect many women to go to matches, let alone be playing there in front of lots of women and children.  Thirty-three years is a long time in football…

Mustn’t forget to congratulate the amazing Ireland rugby team, who won the Grand Slam in Dublin on Saturday, beating a stubborn 14-man England 29-16.  Ireland were just ahead, 10-6, when England full back Freddie Steward was sent off just before half-time and an independent disciplinary committee has since decided that it should have been a yellow card not a red.  Oops.

After the rugby it was off to listen to the City of Lichfield Concert Band and the wonderful Everybody Sings choir, under the direction of Helen Williams, with Clare Butterriss at the piano.  The perfect end to a perfect day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most golfers don’t have a clue about the rules; they probably know that there are some but that’ll be about it.  I think I know the basics but don’t question me too closely these days, now that we’ve had yet another update and are meant to look things up on an app.  I suppose the booklets we used to get every few years were expensive to produce en masse (who remembers the sponsors?) and paper is passe (still haven’t sussed the acute accent, so what hope have I of differentiating areas, penalty or otherwise, on the course…?)

If most of us were to take the R and A rules exams, well – we wouldn’t.  They’re a lot of work, requiring reading, revision, remembering and knowing where to look when remembering isn’t enough.  Then there’s moving up the ranks from the smaller events, amateur, junior, all those things that require organising and officiating, even if the competitors scarcely notice.

All the big amateur events, local, regional, national, international, need rules officials and so do the professional circuits, big and small.  As the events get bigger, so does the pressure but if you were a rules official at The Open, for instance, or the Ryder Cup or any big event, if you felt yourself floundering, intimidated by the player, flummoxed by the complexity of the situation, overwhelmed by the occasion and the television cameras, you knew you could relax, breathe, reactivate the brain cell, because there was no need to panic.  You were not alone.

Whenever John Paramor, who has died, far too early, at the age of 67,  was on hand, all was well.  You knew you were backed up by the best, the undisputed world No 1, a giant of the game in every sense.

At least one regular reader of this blog (many thanks for your support) will not have a clue who John was and will have missed the marking of his retirement a couple of years ago.  Sadly, the dreaded cancer buggered up the rest of his life and he and his family and friends had known for some time that he was not going to do.  I sent him a WhatsApp message on St Patrick’s Day a year ago and he, ever the gentleman, replied the next day.

“….Thank you very much for your message…Hope both you and Maureen are well….I am not quite at my best and sadly will not be improving that much in the foreseeable future either but it’s lucky as I have probably lived two lifetimes in one!…Take care and hopefully will get a chance to see you one of these days…JP.”

That was not to be and Mo and I send our condolences to his family and  his many other friends worldwide.  JP was that rare being:  a person respected for his knowledge and expertise but above all loved for his kindness and generosity of spirit, as Alistair Tait put it in his lovely tribute on alistairtaitgolf.com.

Looking back, it’s ridiculous how kind the greatest rules guru of his day was to a plonker who needed clarification and happened to have his contact details.

I remember losing my ball marker, a pale green plastic thing that should never have been allowed to reach any golfer’s pocket, on a green in bright sunshine (it was, amazingly enough, in the UK);  you had five minutes to look for your ball in those days, so I suppose a lost marker was the equivalent of a lost ball and it took a heckuva long time to pace up and down the green looking for the suddenly invisible marker….”It was about here…..it must be here somewhere….what happens if we don’t find it?….”

I remember Woosie at a World Cup picking up his ball and forgetting to put his marker down because he was desperate to get to the loo…but losing the marker altogether?…

I contacted John later to ask what the correct procedure was and have now completely forgotten what he told me!  But the very fact that he answered my query tells you all you need to know about the man.  He was a marvel.

He spent a large part of his life on the perennial problem of pace of play and when the US Open was at Shinnecock Hills in 2018, I sent him an email entitled “Shot Clock” that included the question:  “Is it my imagination or was Jacquelin once one of your slowcoaches?”  Heaven knows what I’d witnessed on the telly but sometimes even this blog needs to know the facts.  This is the bulk of JP’s answer, on the eve of a major championship:-

“Good to hear from you.  Currently on Long Island and enjoying being back at the iconic venue of Shinnecock.  It is in great shape and hopefully should provide a great championship.  We are staying some 20 miles away and it took us 35 minutes to get to the course (25 back) by car leaving at 9.00 am.  [Traffic congestion and access to the course were major issues.]  So I don’t know where all the traffic went but am glad they were clearly somewhere else!  The only hold ups were a roundabout with road works and where police were trying to cone off the road….and with a potential departure time from the hotel at 5.00 am each day, I am hoping we don’t have any problems….famous last words.  Saw Maureen yesterday touring around in a buggy.

“Rafael [Jacquelin] might have been on the average side (not particularly slow) of speed but I think he has improved as most others have gone the other way….

“Brilliant last week with players being ready to play when it was their turn to play.  Hallelujah!  Exactly what I have been asking for every year when I send them out a timing procedure report.

“Enjoy viewing and hope to see you at Carnoustie.

“Best regards.

“JP.”

No wonder we all loved him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t quite a blast from the past but it was as near as dammit.  Justin Rose, most people’s favourite Englishman (though born in Johannesburg), popped up from goodness knows where to win the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Monday (inclement weather).  It was four years on from his last victory, at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines and the pictures tell you just what it means to win again and show yourself – and everybody else that you’re not past it – far from it.

After all, he’s only 42, it is a Ryder Cup year and he has been on three winning teams.  He missed the rout two years ago at Whistling Straits, when the Americans outplayed the Europeans by some margin and should be brushing up his Italian for the match in Rome in September. I’ve just put Duolingo on my phone and feel confident I’ll be well able to order a coffee come the autumn.  And a golfer must always be looking for some useful way of passing the time during those weather delays.

Now, no doubt, being a model professional for the guts of a quarter of a century, Justin had been beavering and tinkering away – he changed his irons just before the tournament started – and I just hadn’t been paying enough attention to realise that he was due a win.  Then, boom.

“Time flies by, doesn’t it?” the champion, the first Englishman to win this venerable title, said.  “It’s amazing how long it has been.  This is just a moment to say thanks to the people that believe in me more than probably I do.  My team have been incredible, obviously my family at home – Kate, Leo, Lottie, this one’s for you, I wish you were here with me.    What a place to win a tournament, unbelievable.”

He was talking about Pebble Beach, a course that is on many people’s bucket list and has ocean views to take the mind off the golf if it’s less than stellar.  But don’t worry too much if you can’t make it to California in the immediate future – we have plenty of great seaside courses in Britain and Ireland to be going on with, at a fraction of the price.  And not so much of a carbon footprint either.

Whittington is about as far from the sea as you can get in this country – and that’s not too far in global terms – but the views can still be stunning.   I played early the other Monday – my partner/opponent works and can’t just rock up any old time – and it was glorious, even getting warm enough to start shedding layers.  The halfway house was open – not something that happens on a Tuesday, when the course is packed with women; presumably most of us roll past without making the detour but I know I’d be tempted to have a tea or a coffee (per favore) and as the course is routed at the moment, we have two goes at calling in.  It would be nice to have the option…

I was still on a bit of a high that day, having watched the sainted Harry (Kane) score his 267th goal for Spurs on the Sunday, to become the club’s all-time record goalscorer, overtaking the legend that was Jimmy Greaves and, just as important, to beat Manchester City 1-nil.

Greaves’s record had stood for more than half a century, so, injuries permitting, by the time Harry’s finished, it’ll take a monumental effort to overtake him.  Who knows how long he’ll stay with us but perhaps we could win the FA Cup or the Champions’ League this season and hang on to him for a wee while more.  That’s football fans for you:  always dreaming!

The downside of Sunday was that it consolidated Arsenal’s position at the top of the league but, as Dad was for ever reiterating “every result makes someone happy”.  Mmmmm…

I stayed with friends in Welwyn on Saturday, arriving in time to watch most of Wales v Ireland (not quite as relaxing as I’d anticipated after our early blitz but a good win nonetheless – Mo and I were in Cardiff the last time we won there, the Grand Slam match of 2009) and all of England v Scotland.  What a cracking Calcutta Cup and what a delight to enjoy a game as a neutral, sort of.  Dad’s mother was a Scot, from Lossiemouth and one of his cousins “nearly played for Scotland”, so I was a bit biased.    Mind you, we have to go to Murrayfield and that’s always tough; not sure I’ve ever been there when we’ve won…

It was Scotland’s third successive win over England in the Six Nations and former Scotland captain Peter Brown, one of Maureen’s golfing pals, was delighted to have an earlier record matched.  In 1972, he’d led the team that beat England for the third Five Nations in a row.  The year before, at Twickenham, he’d converted Chris Rea’s last-minute try to win 16-15 and he had a great record against England:  played 8, won 5, lost 2, drawn 1.  Even so, that was trumped by his late brother Gordon, who won 6 of the 8 matches he played against England.

“He’d always mention that,” Peter said, in a lovely piece by Alasdair Reid in The Times.  “That would be his greeting to me.”

All sorts of season-ending trophies, titles and bonuses are being handed out at this time of year and the professional tours have been recognising the best of the best.  Meanwhile, the amateurs up and down the land are trotting forth to try and win a Christmas turkey, braving all sorts of adverse weather conditions and perhaps being inspired by their heroes.

In this most disruptive of years in the professional game we have had some really heart-warming stories and there’s no better place to start than in the women’s game with New Zealander Lydia Ko.  Now 25 years of age, Ko amazingly has just completed her ninth season on the LPGA tour.  In her early days she swept all before her, becoming the youngest ever world No 1 back in 2015 at the tender age of seventeen.  For a while she could do no wrong but an extended period of a revolving door of instructors and caddies derailed her to the point that she slipped outside the top 60 in the world.

Many a player would have been thrilled to have owned Lydia’s record during these “off” years.  She “only” recorded two victories on the American tour between the 2016 and 2022 seasons but her work ethic and innate charm never wavered despite her travails on the course.  I remember interviewing her after one of her rounds in the 2016 Women’s Open and not looking forward to it as she had driven OB at the last and finished with a double bogey.  Players can be very thorny after a finish like that and need to be approached warily (think Colin Montgomerie or Darren Clarke or almost anybody).  Lydia, however, couldn’t have been more courteous or co-operative and added a sparkle that I wasn’t expecting.  I’ve never forgotten it.

And now she’s back to her best, tucking away a cheque for $2 million dollars last Sunday – the largest first prize in the women’s game – for winning the CME Group Tour Championship.  This was her third win of the year enabling her to scoop up the Vare Trophy for the season’s low scoring average as well as the Rolex Player of the Year award.  In her own words it has been a “dream season” and with her wedding to look forward to on December 30th it will be a year she never forgets.  She’s a class act.

Finishing runner-up to Lydia last week and pocketing the biggest cheque (US$550,000 or thereabouts) of her four and a half year professional career was another class act, Ireland’s Leona Maguire.  She notched her first LPGA victory back in February and had three other top five finishes, most notably a fourth place in the AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield.  This has all been instrumental in propelling her to a career best eleventh place in the world rankings.

Leona’s 2022 report card has not been the only positive one produced by European players, which must be very pleasing for Solheim Cup captain Suzanne Pettersen, who is undoubtedly already sizing up the contenders for the match in Spain in September.  For golf fans from these islands the maiden LPGA wins of Jodi Ewart Shadoff and Gemma Dryburgh were real high points, as was Charley Hull winning for the second time on the American tour. There was also continued good play from Celine Boutier and Georgia Hall, two stalwarts of last year’s Solheim victory.

The ever reliable Swedish production line seems to be rolling along nicely with the phenomenal new talents of Linn Grant and Maja Stark and I was particularly pleased to see Anna Nordqvist finish highly last week after a difficult season.  So, all in all, I’d suggest that it’s quite a rosy picture for captain Pettersen to contemplate.

And perhaps things aren’t quite so bad for Luke Donald either as he ponders his selections for the Ryder Cup, also being played next September and also a home European fixture.  Rory reigns supreme, having climbed the world ranking mountain to the No 1 spot again, at the same time finishing top on both sides of the Atlantic.  In my, clearly unbiased, opinion he has been No 1 both on and off the course, assuming the role of chief spokesman on behalf of the PGA tour and its players in the ongoing LIV saga.

Sterling performances from Matt Fitzpatrick, the US Open champ, the ever formidable Jon Rahm, and the resurgence of Tommy Fleetwood, Dubai’s newest resident, will surely gladden Donald’s heart.  And whenever he casts his eyes towards American shores, he’ll see Ireland’s Seamus Power sitting proudly atop the standings.

Seamus has had a golden month, starting with winning for the second time on the PGA tour at Bermuda.  He followed this up by being in contention in his next two starts, finishing third and fifth and growing ever more comfortable in the heat of being in contention.  It’s a long time till the Ryder Cup in Rome but it’s a great start.

Viktor Hovland, Shane Lowry, Alex Noren and Tyrrell Hatton will all surely be noted in Donald’s little black book but I’m sure he’ll also consider the super talented Hojgaard twins from Denmark and Scots Ewen Ferguson, Richie Ramsey and Bob McIntyre.

Perhaps Europe’s Ryder Cup team will be less affected by the LIV desertions than the Americans.  After all, who are we losing?  Sergio, Westwood, Poulter, Casey…?  All in their forties with, dare I say it, their best golf behind them.  On the other hand the Americans will be without DJ, Koepka, Dechambeau, Patrick Reed and Phil Mickelson, all but the latter potentially in their prime.  Somehow, come Rome, I don’t think we the golf fans will be giving any of the aforementioned a single passing thought – we’ll be caught up yet again in an enthralling Ryder Cup tussle.  So, no, we won’t miss them.

I started with a Kiwi and can’t finish without the mention of another Kiwi, Ryan Fox, who finished runner-up to Rory in the DP World Tour rankings.  His has been an outstanding year which is all the more heartwarming coming after difficult Covid years when he could barely get back home to see his wife and young family, so difficult was it to travel in and out of his native land.  It seemed like he was in contention every week – two wins, four seconds and a third place bear testament to that – and a meteoric rise from 213th in the world rankings at the start of the season to 27th (one ahead of Seamus) assures him of starts in all the majors for 2023.  His is a very well-deserved off-season.

I must add one PS for fear of not being allowed back into Ireland if I don’t mention Padraig Harrington’s stupendous maiden campaign on the US Seniors’ tour.  With four wins under his belt there was no one to touch him…..except Steven Alker, who also notched four victories and played golf of the highest order.

And, oh yes, Alker is another Kiwi.  There’s clearly been some sort of magic dust sprinkled on the men and women from the land of the long, white cloud in 2022.  Wonder if we could bottle it too?

Congratulations all.