I was sitting mulling over the possible content of this week’s blog when the phone rang.  That is an unusual occurrence because it was the house phone and I keep forgetting we have one.  There is only one person in the world who ever rings it and that is a neighbour who refuses to do texting or mobiles.

Intrigued, I answered it and after a beat of silence an automated message began, informing me of a dodgy £800 charge on my Visa card for online gambling in America.  Due to the suspicious nature of this charge the Visa team had put a hold on the transaction (lucky me!) and, the voice continued, if I wished to stop this payment going through I was to press 1 and I would get straight through to the fraud squad.  I have no doubt whatsoever that had I pressed 1 I would, indeed, have found myself talking to a fraud squad, just not one with my best interests at heart.

Returning to my blog musings and wondering whether to start with Leona’s great win in the States (see pic at top) or Rory’s brave but unavailing attempt (known in this family as a BBU) to add another major title to his haul, I got sidetracked into pondering the amount of endeavour and work these scammers put in to relieve innocent folk of the contents of their bank accounts.  They’ve obviously got decent brains but have decided a life of crime is more rewarding than honest graft.

If you’re a touring, professional golfer relying on your winnings for your livelihood then your entire life is dependent on good, hard, honest graft and as with most things in life there are absolutely no guarantees.  That’s why I was greatly heartened to read of  Northern Ireland’s Olivia Mehaffey’s fabulous 64 in the opening round of last week’s Amundi German Masters on the Ladies’ European Tour.

Olivia, now 25 years of age, played during her formative years at Royal County Down Ladies’ and had a very successful college career in the States, which included two invitations to play in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.  She turned pro in 2021 but was stopped in her tracks last year with the death of her father, ultimately deciding to take a break from the tour to grieve and work on her mental health.  Her 64, the lowest round of her career, paved the way to a top 12 finish and hopefully will be the start of her finding success and joy in her life again.

Meanwhile, the same week, Olivia’s erstwhile fellow international, Leona Maguire, was shooting her own 64 – this time in the final round of the Meijer LPGA Classic for Simply Give.  This catapulted her to her second LPGA Tour victory and to 12th in the women’s Rolex world rankings.  A grafter supreme, Leona credited some key up-and-downs in that final sparkling round as the moments that cemented her win.  She had spent some time last summer with fellow Irish professional Padraig Harrington, one of the hardest workers in the game, a three-time major champ and all-round good egg.

Padraig is more than ready to share his knowledge and skill with younger players and he had a willing pupil in Leona, who says she’s going to see if she can repeat the exercise, diaries allowing, some time this summer.  She’s keen now to take the next step and become a major champion.  It could even happen this week as she’s currently in New Jersey playing in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, the second of the five majors the women play each year.

Harrington had his own major last week and proved at the US Open that he still has the game to compete at the very highest level.  Now 51 years of age, Padraig finished 27th at Los Angeles Country Club on two over par and as an eternal student of the game, no doubt he feels he is still learning.  And he is still giving back.

Anyway, he will always be a favourite of mine for winning me a bet with Peter Alliss many moons ago.  After his (Harrington’s) sparkling 14-month spell back in 2007/2008 when he won three majors, the victories dried up.  Peter and I were discussing this one day and the great Mr Alliss decreed that, sadly, he didn’t think the Irishman would grace the winner’s circle again.  I stoutly disagreed and one of our spirited discussions ensued, resulting in the wager of a “decent bottle of red” over the outcome.  It took until 2015 before Padraig won the Honda Classic – and, yes, Peter was as pleased as I was.

Ok, so now I’ve mentioned the US Open I have to mention Rory.  I hadn’t the staying power to sit up through the night and watch but I did record the broadcast.  When I heard the result in the morning, I was gutted for him.  He has achieved so much and set the bar so high that a 2nd-place finish in the US Open is another heavy disappointment.  Contrast that with the talented Aussie Min Woo Lee who tweeted out in triumph, celebrating finishing 5th in a major.

This is how it’s going to be for Rory, though – and his supporters, I suspect.  However unrealistic, nothing but 1st will suffice.  He’s vowed to keep trying and promises that his fifth major victory will be the sweetest of them all.  Another grafter supreme.

I deleted the broadcast without watching it.

So, this blog seems to have turned into a bit of an Irish ramble.  You’ve just been saved from more of the same – literally, by the bell.  There’s the phone……the house phone.

Oh oh!

Where to start?  With golf, I suppose, having been told off by a sister who shall remain nameless for not mentioning the game at all last week.  Some weeks just go like that – and the non golfers don’t mind a bit.  Let’s start at the top, with the Coronation Frolics (the initial caps are a bit grand for a 7-hole comp but it was that sort of weekend).  As you can see, the Whittington Heathens pulled out a few stops.

At least the weather behaved itself, which was not the case a few days later when the Hamer Cup, one of our biggest competitions, was washed out.  You might ask why it was being played so early in the season but the minds of schedulers move in mysterious ways and the golfing gods made their feelings known with thunder and lightning of near-biblical proportions.  Perhaps it was something to do with HS2 – although there’s not been much movement on that front recently – but I could have sworn that Noah was out there gathering wood.

My partners and I had just finished the 9th, well away from the clubhouse these days, when we saw the first flash of lightning (no ‘e’ in the middle – I looked it up) and heard the thunder.  Oops.  What to do next?  “Bunker,” I said.  “We’re not to stand under trees and I’m sure the advice is to hunker down in the nearest bunker.”

So that’s what we did and bloody uncomfortable it was too, even before it started to hammer down with rain.  We hadn’t put up our brollies, though I think they’re all fibreglass now and after a brief discussion, soaked and stiffening up, we creaked to our feet and headed the few hundred metres to the (nearly) halfway house – not open for business, of course, because it was a Tuesday and the women, whose competition day it is, aren’t interested in using it – except to go to the loo.  Hmmmm.

 

We amused ourselves in our inimitable style until the thunder and lightning gave us a little leeway and, cold and hungry, we decided it was safe enough and we could stand it no longer and headed for the clubhouse – as quickly as we knew how.  All souls were saved.

I think it was probably a bit sunnier in San Francisco, at Harding Park, where Thailand won the Hanwha LIFEPLUS International Crown in some style.  Don’t ask me exactly how it all works but there was a bit of minor controversy before the start when Georgia Hall and Charley Hull withdrew from the England team late on (with perfectly legitimate reasons but a bit belatedly nonetheless with the subs drafted in without much time to prep).

The USA, the favourites, as ever, featured Nelly Korda, the world No 1, Lilia Vu, recent winner of the Chevron Championship and veterans Danielle Kang and Lexi Thompson.  Pretty good but, as it proved, not good enough.  In a tight, nail-biting contest, they lost 2-1 to Thailand in the semis, with Atthaya Thitikul beating Thompson, Vu beating Patty Tavatankit and  sisters Moriya and Ariya Jutanugarn beating Korda and Kang by one hole in the deciding foursomes.  In the final the Thais beat Australia (Minjee Lee, Hannah Green, Steph Kyriacou and Sarah Kemp) 3-nil.

“It’s so much fun,” Moriya said.  “Very, very enjoyed it.  We take a lot of good things and confidence and learned a lot.  Everything more than I could ask for and I’ve very, very proud of all of the girls.”

In England, at Woburn, that marvellous venue, the first G4D Open, for golfers with disabilities, is under way, over 54 holes.  Eighty male and female golfers, from 17 countries, are competing over the Duchess course, a narrow, tree-lined test.  Whenever I visualise it, all I can see is trees, alien things that Dad, brought up on the links at Rosses Point, thought had no place on a golf course…

Weather permitting, the final round is today (Friday), with Ireland’s Brendan Lawlor just one shot ahead of Kipp Popert, of England, who is five strokes clear of Tommaso Perrino, of Italy and Spain’s Juan Postigo.  If you’re in the vicinity, go and be inspired.

On Tuesday, I set out with the intention of giving every shot my full concentration, not something I’ve managed very often.  Well, perhaps once, many years ago, when I won a much-treasured (by me) trophy at Pedrena, Seve’s home course, in the rain, with borrowed clubs.  I came off that course and said, truthfully, “I couldn’t have scored any better.”  It was knackering (a technical term used by hackers unaccustomed to concentrating for an entire hole, let alone a round, let alone a tournament).

No, I didn’t manage to replicate the feat this week and am coming to the conclusion that tidying up the course is more suited to my talents.  We had an important PGA comp scheduled for Thursday, so there was a lot of grass on the greens on Tuesday (as good an excuse as any for leaving so many putts short) and we more or less able-bodied members were asked to volunteer to help make the course look neat and tidy for our visitors.  We picked up broken tees, cigarette butts (please put them in the bin or take them home – they don’t biodegrade) and armfuls of old, shrivelled divots.

In fact, to clear them all we should really still be out there but we had a time limit and I had to go to tai chi.

Some of us were glued to the telly at the weekend, watching the coronation but it wasn’t high up on every agenda…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No matter how hard I try, does this blog get done and dusted before Thursday evening or, more usually, Friday morning early hours, the sort of time we used to stagger home in our younger days?  Does it buggery.

I’ve known for ages that the Spurs v Man Utd game was at the supremely inconvenient time of 2015 on a Thursday – it’s also Draw Night at the golf club, so I’m praying I don’t win; a sum that would pay for my season ticket, more or less.  Despite our (their) indefensible defensive debacle at Newcastle on Sunday, I drove to Milton Keynes, squeezed into the one remaining parking space (the place’ll be empty by the time I get back) and am writing this as our Arsenal-supporting driver (not a happy Gunner but a lot happier than the three Tottenham tragics who got on his minibus at MK) ploughs southwards through the rain.

We usually have a proper coach (unlike Spurs – cheap crack, come on Ryan) but there are only eleven of us (wonder if we could get a game?) on the list tonight.  Four got on at Bedford, two at Shefford and two at Hitchin.  Was it Robert Louis Stevenson who said, “Tis better to travel hopefully than arrive?”

Ah well, United aren’t really that much better than we are (famous last words) though they have won a trophy already this season, are in the FA Cup final and do have a man in charge now who seems to have a plan and has a suitably scary death stare.  Everything points to another close contest…*

If you’re not an eejit with a Grand Canyon-sized streak of optimism and resilience, don’t support a football team.

Talk of deadlines and death stares is probably not the most tasteful lead in to tributes to three friends who have died recently but two were journalists, members of the AGW and the third, an artist and Manchester United fan, also had a way with words; they were all well into their 80s, so not much would surprise or shock them.

I’ll start with Peter Haslam to whom I’ll be forever grateful for giving me my start at Golf World, as the editorial assistant.  There were only four of us in the editorial department – Peter, the editor, not long arrived from the Kidderminster Times; Neil Elsey, the deputy editor, who knew a lot more about golf and the magazine business than Peter did and was to die far too young; and Dave Oswald, the art editor, a talented, Chelsea-supporting Scot with whom I shared an office and from whom I learned language that still gets me into trouble 40-odd years later.  [NB  Francesca Elsey, please DO get in touch with Dave, who knew your Dad as well as anybody.]

The office was in Bermondsey, so I stayed in St Margaret’s (between Richmond and Twickenham) with my cousin and her husband, the visitor who arrived for two weeks and stayed two years!  Peter revelled in the job, relishing the golf, the players and particularly the travelling.  As I remember, he wasn’t an always-in-the-office editor, he ruled with a light touch.  Hawaii was one of his favourite trips and he made friends and contacts wherever he went.

Whatever the reason, Peter didn’t bat an eyelash let alone an eye when I, also very new, suggested that I should cover the World Amateur Team Championships in Pinehurst, North Carolina.  Maureen was on the GB and I Espirito Santo team, with Mary McKenna and Belle Robertson, though Mc had back trouble and had to be subbed by Jane Connachan.  Maire O’Donnell, of Murvagh, was the captain and I slept on the sofa bed in the team’s apartment.

I also stayed on for the Eisenhower Trophy, staying in Pine Needles Lodge and Country Club courtesy of Peggy Kirk Bell, a friend of her fellow legend Maureen Garrett, one of GB and I’s great cheerleaders.  I met Dai that second week, so Peter has a lot to answer for and I can’t thank him enough.

John Ingham was on Maureen’s and my list of people to chat to for the blog but sadly we never made it down to Wimbledon to be entertained and enthralled for hours by his tales, tall and otherwise.  I put him on a par with the likes of Mark Wilson, Michael Williams, Mike McDonnell, Peter Dobereiner and Renton Laidlaw, to name just a few, old-school newspapermen who brought golf to life and could spin a yarn with the best of them.

John was press officer all over Asia and Africa and had a wonderful story about employing a local witch doctor to make sure that the monsoon, or whatever, held off long enough for the tournament to go ahead as planned.  Sorry to be so vague on the details but it was a bit of a miracle and the event got acres of coverage back home.  It was hard to stop smiling when John was in full flow.

Last, but never least, the incomparable Harold Riley, a promising footballer in his youth in the days of the Busby Babes but a magician with pencil and paintbrush.  A real artist, protege of Lowry (who was also a son of Salford), youngest student at The Slade, painter of popes and presidents, chronicler of footballers and golfers, luckily for us.

Golf was one of Harold’s loves and he attended many an Open, Ryder Cup and AGW dinner; many a menu ended up covered with his sketches and treasured for ever.  He agreed to do the illustrations for Dai’s and my book Beyond The Fairways – “almost a classic” as one Dutch publisher described it, to my delight and Dai’s fury.

Sadly, our publisher, who shall remain nameless, cared more about the bottom line than posterity, panicked at the mounting cost, demanded a simpler layout, more words, cheaper paper and fewer illustrations, essentially throwing Harold’s work away.

It broke Dai’s heart – I don’t think he ever opened the book – and hardened Harold’s.  The publisher later suggested another project to him and got a very blunt, northern response from an affable, good-natured, urbane and courteous man with high standards.

One last Harold story.  When he was still a student at The Slade, he was asked to do the illustrations for a new edition of Gray’s Anatomy, requiring hundreds of meticulous medical drawings.  Having completed the work, he tentatively asked about the fee.  “Don’t worry, Mr Riley,” came the imperious reply.  “You’ll get a prominent mention in the foreword.”

Lesson learned.  Harold knew his worth and there would be no starving-artist-in-the-garret nonsense for him.

Thanks for all the happy times and priceless memories, Harold, John and Peter and love and condolences to your family and friends from Mo and me.

Finally, to end on a joyous, raucous note, congratulations to Wrexham on their promotion and return to the Football League.

*Spurs 2 Manchester United 2!

 

 

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.