I’m a dinosaur, I admit it but am I alone in enjoying the Solheim Cup immensely (apart from the fourballs on the first day)?  Manglings happen in sport – and life – but that doesn’t mean we should give up and bail out.  Just take stock and try and do better next time.

The teams were well matched – the singles showed that – and the Europeans rose to the occasion and scared the heck out of the Americans on the last day.  Of course, going into the singles five points adrift is not ideal and it’s 99.9% certain to be, at best, a BBU (brave but unavailing) but last Sunday Annika Sorenstam’s players raised it up a level to a BBBBU (bloody brilliant brave but unavailing).  As far as you could tell via television, the American fans, who seemed to be out in the predicted large numbers, were unusually quiet for much of the day, always a good sign for the visiting team.

The noise increased as the day went on, as the Americans reeled the Euros in and secured the win that now has some people suggesting that the Solheim Cup is a second-rate affair, a bit of a dead duck, of no real interest or benefit to anyone.  They say, bring on the South Koreans, the Chinese, the rest of the Rest of the World.

Well, frankly, that’s an insult to the people who played their hearts out in Des Moines and produced golf that was anything but second rate.  The fans loved it, the television ratings were good – everything was a record apparently – and I can’t see the point of building something up so painstakingly only to knock it down just because one team has won twice in a row.  Weren’t the Europeans going for a hat-trick of wins only two years ago, in Germany, only to be scuppered by a US comeback inspired by a burning sense of injustice over the concession that wasn’t?  It was scintillating stuff then and it was scintillating stuff last weekend.

The Solheim Cup is building up a history, consolidating its place in the annals of the game, inspiring the likes of Anna  Nordqvist and Lexi Thompson to ridiculous heights.  World rankings are a gross irrelevance at such times.  As someone once said, golf is played on grass not on paper and although it matters not a jot in the world-wide scheme of things, to the people involved it matters more than anything while it’s happening.  Otherwise, what’s the point?

The Solheim Cup ain’t broke.  It may not be perfect but they’ll be doing their best to fix that at Gleneagles in 2019.  See you there!

As for the LET, it’s in one of its limping-along phases but this time it’s at such a low ebb that both the men’s European Tour and the LPGA are talking about getting together to give first aid and see what they can do to get the patient back on her feet.  An outbreak of solidarity for the good of the game can’t be bad.   And in the end it’ll do the bottom line no harm at all either.  A win win for the pragmatists and the romantics.  Ole.

Thank goodness for the time difference between Cheshire and Iowa.   It means that on Saturday afternoon I can cheer Whittington Heath’s women on against Wychwood Park, near Crewe, in the Annodata Matchplay UK Golf Club Classic, then settle down in front of the telly to roar on Europe’s women against the USA in the Solheim Cup.  It’ll be an emotionally draining weekend but fun.

Away matches are always tough, whatever the level and the emotions will be the same on both sides of the Atlantic, even if the skill level and the crowd noise won’t be.  Stomachs will be knocking, knees churning and brains scrambled (even spectators and commentators suffer meltdown to one degree or another!) as players vie to play their best when it matters and not let their teammates down.

There was plenty of drama towards the end of the USPGA Championship last Sunday (congrats to Justin Thomas on winning his first major) but nothing comes close to team matchplay.  At Little Aston last Friday, I found myself welling up as Ireland beat England to win the women’s home internationals, lots of memories flooding through and making me very teary.  I was also tired of course – late blogging the night before and on the 33rd hole of 34 that day, trolley-pulling for the delightful Maria Dunne.  We (!) were on the 17th, two down in the last match against fellow Curtis Cupper Rochelle Morris, when word came through that Ireland had won.  Are you sure?  Weren’t we struggling?  Hadn’t our captain Clodagh said, on the 9th tee, “We need your point?”

She had indeed but her team turned things around, with the most spectacular recovery coming from Annabel Wilson, a deceptively innocent-looking 16-year old, who came back from 5 down after 9 to beat her Vagliano Trophy teammate Sophie Lamb on the last.  Lamb, who’d travelled down to the Midlands from Kingsbarns, where she’d pipped the all-conquering Leona Maguire as leading amateur at the Ricoh Women’s British Open, had nothing left to give, running out of steam at the end of a long season.

Dunne, elated, won the 17th to prolong her match, much to the exasperation of the Little Aston member manning the main scoreboard, who inadvertently issued an all-points bulletin when he used his walkie-talkie to ask his wife to bring him a pint.  Dunne lost in the end but couldn’t stop smiling, “We won at Cruden Bay in 2003 when I made my debut and now we’ve won again, in my last match.”  What could be better?  And thanks for making my week Maria.

Impressively, Ireland were without two of their best players, Olivia Mehaffey and Maguire, the British champion, who has just won the Mark H McCormack Medal, awarded annually to the leading woman in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, for the third year in a row.  Lydia Ko is the only other player to manage that.

At Little Aston, England won the girls’ title, with Ireland second and then it was over to Enville, near Stourbridge, for the British Girls’ Championship (The British Boys’ is at Nairn), an exercise in stamina as well as skill for the youngsters of the home nations.

I suppose I should mention that the LET is looking for a new chief executive to replace Ivan Khodabakhsh.  Mark Lichtenhein, recently appointed chairman of the LET board and a refugee from Keith Pelley’s shiny new European Tour, will be in charge for the time being.  At least Mark (my spelling has its limits) knows about golf and won’t be baffled by the goings-on at the Solheim, unlike one of his predecessors, who had no idea what was happening as Dalmahoy went daft in 1992 (see Mo’s post).

Many of those girls and women at Little Aston have their heart set on a career as a tournament professional and you’d think there’d be a place for a flourishing European tour in the greater golfing scheme of things but hope is sinking not springing.  “Who’d want the job?”  asked a man hardened by long experience and false promises.  Well, not long ago, Mo and I met a woman who said she’d love to give it a go.  Trouble is she’d just been head-hunted and was off to Australia to take up a big sporting job there.

Maybe she’ll be back one day……

 

There could be no hanging about with the blog this week because I’m on the tee early this morning, in the home internationals at Little Aston, Ireland v England, the match that’ll decide the title.  It’ll either be trolley pulling or watching and it’s likely to be a nerve-wracking and exhausting day for all concerned.

I like the idea of having the girls’ and women’s internationals played at the same venue at the same time but it takes a fair bit of organising and the host club has to know what it’s doing and embrace the event whole-heartedly.  Fortunately, Little Aston has golf at its heart and is well used to big events.  The home ints are not as big as they used to be – unless you’re involved with any of the teams, then it might as well be the Solheim or Ryder Cup, minus the crowds.

Little Aston, one of the best courses in the country, is not far from home – Dai and I wrote the club’s centenary history, with a lot of help from a dedicated band of knowledgeable members – and I need no second invitation to visit but I hadn’t expected to be swamped by memories this week.  Goodness knows how many home international matches Mum and Dad attended, meeting up with Bill and Bob, from England; “the little women”, a group of Irish supporters from Dublin and beyond; benign, enthusiastic golf groupies who would ink in the date every year and travel to Burnham & Berrow, Royal Dornoch, Royal St David’s, Carlow, wherever.  It was a great annual get-together and the players loved it because they knew that it wouldn’t just be their family there, if they could get the time off but a crowd of old hands who’d seen them grow up and improve and were sympathetic, win, lose or draw, whatever the nationality.

The first person I met in the car park on Wednesday (after torrential rain had caused a delay of nearly two hours) was Janet Melville, a much-garlanded former British champion, now captain of the England girls’ team and not so fresh from a night in A&E with one of her players, who had to withdraw and head home to Norfolk.  Gutting.  It’s probably the hardest job in golf, being captain of a junior team, in loco parentis and all that.  A rewarding gig but relaxing?  Not by any stretch of anyone’s imagination.

These days I’m old enough to be the players’ grandmother, so I was pleasantly surprised to realise that I knew not only Janet but several other captains, the odd manager and coach and loads of officials.  We golfers are an enduring lot.  But I’m beginning to agree with the late Dave Musgrove, who’d say, in that lugubrious, deadpan way of his, that what we played wasn’t golf.  He caddied for the likes of Seve Ballesteros and Sandy Lyle, so he was used to the outstanding but I don’t think I saw a single, solitary player here who didn’t give the ball a real tonk.  The girls belt it miles, usually in the right direction and never even notice bunkers that cause me the utmost angst as I decide whether to risk the carry or lay up.  Lay up is not a concept familiar to the modern breed of women golfers!

Well, the shipping forecast means that I’ve footered about into Friday again but if you’re in the vicinity of Little Aston, which is on the outskirts of Sutton Coldfield but affiliated to Staffordshire (hooray, lucky us), follow the yellow AA signs and come along and join the fun.  You’ll see a lot of good golf and may even catch sight of a pioneering cycling referee, promoting golf’s green credentials – and his own fitness – by using pedal power.

 

 

 

Last week I found myself in the car pounding down the A49 which runs down the Welsh/English border on my way to a course and a club that has figured quite a lot in my golfing life, namely St Pierre in Chepstow.  I played Curtis Cup golf there and dipped my toe into the swirling cauldron of golf broadcasting there, sitting alongside the inimitable Tony Adamson, then the golf correspondent for BBC Radio.

The occasion this time was the Monmouthshire Ladies’ County Golf Association’s lunch where I was the guest speaker.  (Thanks to John Cavaciuti for the following two photographs.)

It was a chance to reconnect with old pals, namely the president, Liz Edwards, who had been for decades one of the main shakers and movers in Welsh golf at a time when I was the coach to the girls’ and women’s international teams.  Liz was there at Royal Dornoch in 1999, arguably my proudest coaching moment, when Wales won the home international matches for the first time in their history, matching the efforts of the girls’ team a few weeks earlier.  We shared many nailbiting moments over the years, as well as a lot of laughs.

The lunch was also an opportunity to make new friendships and I spent a delightful evening beforehand with Annette Brimble, the captain of the county and her husband, Ian.  Their hospitality was second to none and yet again it struck me how easy it is to drop into someone else’s life when the common denominator is golf.  Aren’t we lucky?

Monmouthshire is the smallest of the Welsh county organisations with a mere 21 clubs, yet they pack a powerful punch as evidenced by their recent successes, particularly at junior level.  Their success does stretch back a number of years, however and they proudly lay claim to being the home county of Becky Morgan, in my opinion the most successful Welsh female ever to play the game.  So, there was a nice symmetry to the fact that a handful of days after the lunch I once again found myself in the car, this time pounding northwards to Kingsbarns to commentate at the Ricoh Women’s British Open.  I was thrilled to learn that Becky had been successful in procuring the final exempt spot for the Open by being one of the top three LET (Ladies European Tour) members at the Scottish Open not previously qualified.

Becky took up the game when she was twelve, instantly excelling at a sport that did not capture the imagination of her twin sister Rachel.  Becky attended university in the States, winning ten collegiate tournaments and played on two Curtis Cup teams before joining the paid ranks in 2000.  She secured her cards for both the LPGA tour in America and LET in 2001, choosing to live stateside so she could “jump in at the deep end” and play mostly on the LPGA.  She feared that playing and finding her feet in Europe first would work against her with the subsequent jump in standard to the American tour being possibly overwhelming.  So, it was in for a penny in for a pound, or in this case, dollar.  And what a smart decision that turned out to be!

Here we are almost 17 years on and the low-key, unflashy Welshwoman is still keeping her bank manager happy despite the change in the game, particularly over the last decade.  The courses have been lengthened considerably in a futile defence against the vast distances the players now hit the ball, therefore favouring those very players very heavily.  As Becky says without rancour, “You can’t compete against players who are always hitting wedges into the greens, even though it is often from the rough.  I may be in the fairway but I’ll have a 5-iron in.  There isn’t the same premium now on hitting fairways as there was ten years ago.”

Luck is needed in any walk of life and being largely injury-free has certainly contributed to her longevity but at 42 years of age and with a new home recently acquired south of Portland, Oregon, thoughts of slimming down the schedule are in her mind.  The constant travel and living out of a suitcase wear you down eventually and a new-found role of helping out with the Oregon State University golf team is something she really enjoys.

So, how does she reflect on her own career?  “If you’d told me before I turned pro that I would do what I’ve done, I would hardly have believed you.  But then after two very good years in 2003 and 2004 I am disappointed not to have won a tournament.  I still feel I can win but my best opportunity now would be in Europe.”

So, perhaps, as she reduces her playing schedule in the US over the coming few years we may see more of her in Europe in search of that elusive victory.  Her career deserves a couple of wins, in my opinion and it would be the icing on the cake.  Mind you, the cake’s pretty tasty already, with north of £3.5 million in winnings.

To me, the greatest compliment you can pay anyone is to say they fulfilled their potential.  And Becky Morgan, pride of Monmouthshire, has certainly done that.