Do you ever think there are times when it’d be really lovely to be a fly on the wall?   For me, one of those times occurred a week or so back at the Irish Golf Tour Operators’ Association’s awards when they presented Wilma Erskine, club manager of Royal Portrush Golf Club, with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Wilma’s is a name that you will hear increasingly over the next eight months as she steers the club towards hosting the Open Championship next July, returning after a gap of 61 years.  This would be a huge task for anyone, but to navigate through the extremely choppy waters of the Northern Ireland troubles to what we all envisage will be a successful staging of one of the world’s greatest sporting events is nothing short of miraculous.

I remember it was early to mid-1980s when a fresh-faced Wilma turned up at the club to take over the reins.  Needless to say, my pals and I were all delighted, if not a little astounded, that a woman – a YOUNG woman – had got the job in such a male-dominated environment.  Rumbling around in the background, however, were mutterings and harrumphings about the suitability of this girl for the job.  Wilma has since told me she was very well aware that some of the older members, who were very set in their ways, subtly let it be known that they believed she couldn’t hack it and would be gone in about six months.  Well, safe to say she outlasted them all.  Looking back, however, it was a decision of outstanding foresight on the part of the then captain and council to make the appointment, especially as there had been a couple of short tenures immediately preceding Wilma.  She didn’t let them down, but it can have been far from easy in that climate.

By the time the 1990s rolled around Wilma’s vision for the club was expanding, looking ever more outwards for opportunities to put Royal Portrush on the map.  And so a new era began for the club – a decade of cutting their teeth in the arena of staging top-class golf events.  First it was the Amateur Championship, then five successive Senior British Opens.  I’m not sure at this juncture that even in Wilma’s ambitious brain there were thoughts of one day bringing the Open itself back to Northern Ireland.  Lessons were being learned, however, experience gained and, most importantly, relationships formed and forged with some of the great shakers and movers in the game.  And you have to remember that, running alongside all of this, Wilma had to juggle the not inconsiderable task of her “day job” – running the club and keeping the members happy.  Not everyone wants the upheaval of tournament golf with the attendant time-consuming activities impacting their course and their regular weekly games.

There’s no doubt, also, that the stars were aligning out in the professional tournament arena as regards Ireland shouldering to the front and centre of the golfing consciousness.  Padraig Harrington’s three major successes, followed by Graeme McDowell’s US Open win, Darren Clarke’s Open victory and Rory’s run of four majors gave the island nine majors in a space of seven years.  Interest in these players and Irish golf was at an all time high and every one of them used their influence to support and push the idea of the Open’s return to Portrush.  They couldn’t have delivered at a better time as regards drawing the eyes of the golfing world Irelandwards.

A vital step in the whole process was to host a really large scale event and so it was that the European Tour’s Irish Open came to Portrush in 2012.  Attendance figures smashed the all-time records for a European Tour event and the television pictures beamed around the world delivered on every front.

Two years later the R&A made the announcement we could only have dreamed of – and here we are, on the cusp of staging the 148th Open Championship at Royal Portrush.  To say we’re all beyond excited is an understatement.  It has been a mammoth collective effort but there’s no doubt that at the heart of it all is Wilma Erskine, driving the process with tremendous energy, wit, diplomacy and a no-nonsense, can-do attitude.  She has quietened the doubters, harnessed the support of the global golf heavyweights, constantly acknowledged and praised her team and pulled it off.

She says she plans to retire after the Open – what a legacy she has created, because I’m absolutely sure this won’t be a one-off Open.  This is so much more than golf – the R&A tell us that the economic benefit to the host region is £100 million.  Mind-boggling stuff.  So, as you walk the fairways next July or watch on the telly, roaring on your favourites, you will be witnessing something very special indeed.

Whoever wins, you’ll be watching Wilma’s Open.

What a week!  Laryngitis which turned in to sinusitis; four games of golf in five days during a trip to Ireland; a visit to the Guinness factory and a performance of Cirque du Soleil.  One thing topped it all for me, however.  On Sunday Becky Morgan, a 44-year old from Abergavenny in Wales, won her maiden professional tournament after grafting on the main tours of the world for 18 years.  She captured the Hero Women’s Indian Open, a tournament she has been a faithful supporter of since its inception in 2010, by two shots from a gaggle of players, including the resurgent Solheim Cup Swede, Caroline Hedwall and Englishwoman Felicity Johnson.

For those of us whose paths have crossed with Becky over the years there will only be one reaction – sheer delight for the unassuming, low-key player with a fine line in understatement and droll humour.  Widely recognised for some time as the best player not to have won a title Becky was beginning to wonder would she ever provide that exclamation point to her career.  We spoke last year and she said, “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.”  Recognising this fact prompted Becky to increase her appearances on the LET schedule which has given her one of the longest commutes to work that I know of.  She is currently living in Portland, Oregon – so that was a helluva trip back home after her victory.  It did, however, afford her the time to catch up with her social media accounts and she was thrilled to read one from the inimitable Gary Player.

We live in a world of seemingly instant success, instant stardom and instant achievement.  That is what many value these days but it’s not the only way.  Becky has had a solid, honest, hard-fought-for career, painstakingly put together over two decades with resilience and stickability at its core.  That refusal to be bested, the dogged determination to stay in the game, the steel that is relentlessly honed in the heat of battle and the lessons learned with each disappointment are the components that finally added up to this fine, fine, and oh-so-popular win.  My golfing pals and I raised a glass to the Welshwoman last week and I look forward to next year’s Women’s British Open at Woburn where we can raise a glass together – slainte Becky!

From one Welsh player to another and Amy Boulden, who is currently embroiled in a marathon tussle out at the legendary Pinehurst resort in North Carolina in a bid to gain a card on the LPGA for the 2019 season.  Earlier in the season Amy told me she was filling her schedule with as many playing opportunities as she could, including taking part in as many corporate outings as possible.  The reason was two-fold – play as much as you can and save as much as you can with a view to an assault on the qualifying process for the premier women’s tour in the world in the autumn.  Well, the time for that assault has arrived and Amy couldn’t have got off to a better start, jointly topping the field at Stage 2 Qualifying in Florida with a score of ten under par. That has advanced her to the newly minted Q-Series rolled out by the Tour this year, where, numerically at least, the odds are pretty decent.  The full field is 108 players with the top 45 and ties earning a precious LPGA card for next season.  The rest of the field will be afforded status on the secondary Symetra Tour, so it looks like Amy will be stateside next year in some capacity or other.

The marathon tussle I referred to is just that.  Two four-round, no-cut tournaments with a three-day break between the end of one and the start of another.  The score is cumulative throughout the eight rounds, a real test of skill, stamina and mental fortitude.  Friends and family at home will be following every live scoring update, as will I.  It’s a nervewracking time for all concerned but this is a big opportunity for Amy.  I wish her well.

Time for another dragon to roar.

 

 

Mo is having a bit of a lie down this week – well, she’s in Ireland playing golf with some other old dolls – to recover from her Ryder Cup tour de force, so where better to start than with the Senior LPGA Championship.  Presented, appropriately enough, by Old National Bank and played on the Pete Dye Course at French Lick, a rather grand resort in Indiana, it featured a field of over-45s that made me feel very nostalgic.  All my yesterdays were there and I was delighted to be able to watch them (on the telly, hooray) battling away in ferocious conditions.

The players had carts – I think it’s that sort of course – and there didn’t seem to be that many spectators but I suspect that was largely because it’s not much of a walking course and if the players are in carts, you’re never going to catch up.  It was also Arctic, Baltic, blooming freezing and although the rain stopped and the sun came out eventually, it looked as though the wind scarcely let up.

Dame Laura Davies, who’s just turned 55, was suitably imperious – she’s still competing regularly, unlike a lot of her contemporaries – and broke par in all three rounds to finish on 208, eight under.  She finished four shots ahead of Helen Alfredsson and Silvia Cavalleri, who ended up missing the crucial putts that the grande dame holed, with Michele Redman the only other player under par, on 215.  Trish Johnson, the defending champion, was a respectable 6th on 219, three over.

It was great to see Alfie, still fidgeting and contorting into her trademark Body Swedish, still making a bit of a bog of putts she could have, perhaps should have holed, saying goodness knows what in Swedish to her husband Kent, once as big in ice hockey as Ian Botham was in cricket (I believe, rather hoping that ice hockey buffs will know bugger all about cricket and vice versa).  And there was Lotta Neumann, muffled up against the chill but still managing to exude elegance.  And Brandie Burton.  Brandie Burton!

Who knows what might have been if the big-hitting American, a Solheim Cup player who won two majors and lost to an inspired Laura Davies at Dalmahoy but beat her at The Greenbrier, had been blessed with better feet and ankles?  She was very good very young, set to break every record going but her body let her down.  She’s only 46 but was due to have her 20th, 30th, 40th surgery – not sure of the total but it is more than anyone would want in several lifetimes –  just after the championship.  She doesn’t play much these days but she had a 66, six under par, in the second round and finished 5th, on 217, one over par.  Outstanding.

Neumann, Maria McBride (nee Hjorth), Catriona Matthew, Europe’s Solheim Cup captain at Gleneagles next year and the combative American Rosie Jones shared 7th place on 220, four over par, which meant that there were two Englishwomen, one Italian, three Swedes, one Scot and three Americans in the top ten.  Juli Inkster, who’ll captain the USA Solheim team, for the third time, at Gleneagles, shared 12th place with Jane Crafter, an Australian wine buff and TV commentator, now in her 60s (what a great decade!), who is a passionate cheerleader for the senior women and their Legends Tour.

Now it’s up to the R&A, so keen to promote the women’s side of the game, to do their bit and lob a British Senior Women’s Open into the mix.  Over 45 or over 50?  Decisions, decisions.  What do you think?  I’m inclined to go down to 45 but am willing to be persuaded either way.  These senior majors are a real celebration of golf, a chance for a competitive get-together and a thank you to some of the pioneers of the game.  Perhaps nostalgia is what it used to be after all.

Congratulations also to Eddie Pepperell, fellow blogger, who ground out victory in the Sky Sports British Masters at Walton Heath, a proper, old-fashioned golf course that proved more than testing enough for today’s maestros.  It was often wet and windy and not everyone learned quickly enough that heather is not to be messed with – ever.  Sadly, however, there seems to be no one willing to sponsor the event next year, so Eddie might be polishing the trophy for quite a while.

Finally, I’d better explain the cake at the top of the post.  It was presented on Tuesday to Sue Marchant, who’s been a member of Whittington Heath for 50 years now and is still swinging away, fortified by a quick lesson from Mo a few weeks ago.  Celebratory cake available on request until further notice.

 

 

Sport produces winners and losers – and not in equal measure.  There are very few winners compared to losers, so it must be a very bitter pill to be firmly in the former camp only then to spend years and years unable to open that magic door into the winner’s circle again.

Last weekend two players rediscovered that magic key.  Caroline Hedwall, a 29-year old twin from Stockholm turned pro late in 2010 and won an incredible four times in Europe in her rookie year in 2011.  The following year she won again and twice in Australia in 2013, so in no time at all she had seven titles to her name.  The upward graph continued with three consecutive Solheim Cup appearances, the highlight undoubtedly coming in Colorado in 2013 where she became the first player in the history of the game to win five points out of five, a massive contribution to Europe winning the Cup on away soil for the first (and, at the moment, only) time.

And then?  Well, that’s the problem.  And then……..nothing.  Things were already beginning to unravel.  She sustained a hip injury in 2012, rumoured to be due to a change in her fitness and training programme.  It kept her out of action for much of that season but she appeared undaunted each time she returned to action.  Of course, her confidence was sky high.  Niggling injuries persisted, however, and slowly, insidiously, the game became more and more difficult.  Hedwall never slacked in her commitment but the golden touch was gone and every ounce of confidence built up by her previous stellar appearances ebbed away.  Last October she had a ganglion cyst “as big as a ping pong ball” on her wrist removed, restoring her flexibility and enabling her to begin to use driver again after twelve months of only hitting a 3 wood from the tee.  And then a week ago she teed it up in the Lacoste Ladies’ Open de France at Golf du Medoc.  An encouraging performance was transformed into so much more by a blistering record-breaking final round of 62 for a two-shot victory over Stacy Lee Bregman of South Africa, who had herself closed with a 66.  Let’s hope this win signals the end of a desperate five-year stretch for the likeable Swede and total justification of her self-belief, no matter how deeply it was buried at times.

Her joyful reaction was music to the ears of her family, friends and supporters.  “It was a long time ago since I won and it feels great to get another win under my belt. It’s been a struggle over the past years with quite a few injuries and it’s been tough on my confidence.  I haven’t felt good when I’m under pressure.  Today, I really pulled it off and enjoyed being back there and in contention.  I performed under pressure and that gives me a lot of confidence moving forward.”

Next stop is this week’s final major of the year, the Evian Championship.  A chance to build on that upward moving graph again and who knows, perhaps next year a fourth Solheim Cup call up?  I, for one, certainly hope so.

Switching continents now and gender…..  Keegan Bradley ultimately triumphed in the third of the four Fed-Ex Cup play-off events, winning the BMW Championship in a rain-delayed finish on a soggy, wet Monday in Pennsylvania.  His extra hole victory over Justin Rose ended a six-year wait since his last victory and a two-year stretch of misery during which he had to learn how to putt again post the anchoring ban in January 2016.  Starting in May 2011 Bradley had won three times in fifteen months – with a major and a WGC (World Golf Championship) event among his titles.  And then, a little like Hedwall, absolutely nothing and the slow inevitable erosion of confidence began.

“A lot has happened to me over these six years,” he said. “The belly putter was a tougher transition than I thought, and I kind of fell off the radar there for a little while.  It’s tough to go from being on Ryder Cup teams, being on Presidents Cup teams to outside the top 100 in the world.  That was difficult.”

As he got his long game back in shape the putting still eluded him.  “When I used the belly, I just putted,” Bradley said.  “There was no thought process.  And I had to really sit down and focus in on my putting stroke, which was something I had never done.”

And so he began the slow climb back up the mountain to success.  If he had thought it was difficult first time around, this was something else.

“It’s scary when I look back because I didn’t know I needed this much improvement,” Bradley said. “But to put it all together, especially with the putter the way it was this week and the way it’s becoming, is so gratifying, because for a little while, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get back to this spot, and today I did it.”