For as long as he has a memory Seamus Power will never forget Sunday 19th July 2021.   It was the day that the big Irishman from a wee place called Tooraneena in county Waterford realised a very big dream and won his first title on the PGA Tour.

While young Collin Morikawa was in Kent winning the Open Championship with insouciant ease, Power was in Kentucky, winning the Barbasol Championship at the sixth hole of a not-so-sudden play-off, outlasting J.T. Poston at Keene Trace GC in Nicholasville.

It was joy unconfined, the reward for years of toil, dedication and unwavering self-belief, working his way up from a golf scholarship at East Tennessee State (he graduated with an honours degree in accounting, magna cum laude, exceptional), turning professional and, eventually, hoisting aloft a trophy on the world’s biggest, most lucrative tour.  Not bad for a lad who started out at West Waterford GC, a few miles from Dungarvan and was hooked on the game from the age of 12.

Power’s mother Philomena died when he was just eight and his twin brothers Willie and Jack were 10.  Ned, the boys’ father, a farmer, said, “I can’t emphasise enough what West Waterford meant to me when Philo died….the club and my great friends John and Celia Walsh were a great help to me….”

It was the late Celia who took Seamus out one day to carry her bag and that was the start of it all.  By 2016 West Waterford had themselves an Olympian when Power represented Ireland in Rio, alongside Padraig Harrington and now their most famous son has joined Harrington, Darren Clarke, Graeme McDowell, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, the only other Irishmen to win on the PGA Tour.  Note that they are all also major champions…

“This changes everything for me,” Power said.  “For ever now I’ll be able to say I am a winner on the PGA Tour….I couldn’t be more proud.  My caddy Simon Keelan…all of the Spratt family, my own family, all the members at West Waterford…I have just too many people to thank.  It’s unbelievable….It’s an incredible day……career-changing, life-changing, all that kind of good stuff.  It’s not going to sink in for a while.”

With all the partying that’s undoubtedly going on at West Waterford – all being well Seamus should be home by now – there’s a lot of worry too because the receivers are in and, according to a piece on irishexaminer.com the club is going up for auction next week.  The course, designed by the legend that was Eddie Hackett, opened in 1993, is still busy and popular and the members are hoping to raise enough money – just over a million Euro – to buy it.  Good luck to them and fingers crossed they succeed.

And many thanks to the tireless Brian Keogh and his daily updates on IrishGolfDesk.com for keeping this blog well informed.

The world’s best women are on the shores of Lake Geneva at Evian-les-Bains for the Amundi Evian Championship, the fourth of their five majors and the seniors are at Sunningdale for the The Senior Open Presented by Rolex.  It’s a lovely, nostalgic wallow, a case of all our yesterdays and a bit of a test to recognise some of the players, what with beards, white hair, no hair, avoirdupois (Pooh and his stoutness exercises come to mind – as do the words pot, kettle etc).  It’s easier when they start swinging and the signature moves are still there, if a little creaky in some cases.

They’re still worth watching, especially on a lovely golf course at a wonderful venue.  Not sure how many people are being allowed in but Sunningdale is always worth a visit.

The Olympics in Tokyo have already started – Sweden’s women beat the USA 3-0 in the football and American talisman Megan Rapinoe was first on my Olympic IIWII chart:  “It is what it is,” she said, “we got bopped…They’re one of the best teams in the world….”

It’s only the group stages, so the Americans, the world champions, have time to recover from the shock.

Here in the UK, we’re eight hours behind Japan, so there’s loads going on even as we sleep, available on the radio, the BBC red button, who knows quite where.  The opening ceremony is scheduled for some time today (Friday) but it’ll all be a bit odd, with no spectators to generate excitement and inspiration and most events taking place in a bit of a vacuum, with most of the reporters thousands of miles away and the athletes on red alert for a virus whose variants are more real than virtual.

Good luck to everybody.  Stay safe.

It’s all a far cry from the first Olympics that I remember:  Tokyo 1964.  I still recognise the BBC’s theme music and names like Mary Rand, Lynn Davies, Jim McCourt, Ken Matthews, Ann Packer, Abebe Bikila.  I looked up Irish Olympians and found out that Tokyo was the great Maeve Kyle’s third Olympics.  At the age of 36, she reached the semi-finals in the 400 and 800.

When she became Ireland’s first woman Olympian in track and field at Melbourne in 1956, Kyle was a real pioneer, excoriated by some who called her “a disgrace to motherhood and the Irish nation” according to one letter in the Irish Times.

“You could call me an athletic suffragette, I suppose,” Kyle said.  Read all about her exploits on hersport.ie, it’s fascinating and I’m just sorry I didn’t realise quite what a huge star and amazing woman Maeve was when she hoped that I would make a long jumper….

 

 

 

 

Scotland is hosting both The Amateur and the Women’s Amateur this year and home fans were delighted with last week’s result in the latter, which was played at Kilmarnock (Barassie) Golf Club.  Louise Duncan (above), a 21-year old from just up the road at West Kilbride became the first Scottish winner of the title since 1997 when Alison Rose won an all-Scottish final against Mhairi McKay at Cruden Bay.  Not that that particular fact was on Louise’s mind at all during the match – she wasn’t even aware of it but was delighted when told of her feat.

She said, “I wasn’t even born in 1997;  I wasn’t even a thought.  So I am unbelievably proud to be the first Scot to win the Women’s Amateur Championship in that amount of time.  I am happy to have brought it home.”

Duncan lost the opening hole in the 36-hole final but after that everything turned to gold as she romped to a 9 and 8 win over Johanna Lea Ludviksdottir, Iceland’s first-ever finalist in this venerable championship.  As always, to the victor the spoils and the Scot can now look forward to teeing it up in three professional majors – the Women’s Open and the Evian this summer and the US Women’s Open next year – as well as the Augusta National Women’s Amateur next April.  That will certainly keep the Stirling University student and R&A scholar busy.

I wonder if she’s the first Scot to win the biggest title in women’s golf this side of the Atlantic in her own county, never mind country?

In total Iceland had three players in the Championship and they can be justifiably proud of their collective efforts.  Ragnhildur Kristinsdottir topped the 64 qualifiers after the 36 hole strokeplay section with fine scores of 74, 66 to be six under par.  Unfortunately for her the curse of the top seed was reinforced when she fell to Ireland’s Aine Donegan of Lahinch in the opening round of the matchplay.  It was bad luck, too, that the other Icelandic players met in the first round with Ludviksdottir beating her fellow International, Hulda Clara Gestsdottir on the final green.

A number of Johanna’s  matches went to the wire and she just seemed to run out of steam in the final.  However, she was still delighted with her week in Ayrshire and with making a little bit of Icelandic golfing history .  “I am very happy with myself and proud of myself to achieve and go this far.”

I can’t help but think back to my first ever Ladies’ European Team Championship for Ireland back in 1979, at Hermitage in Dublin.  It was also Iceland’s first time to play in the championship and their team arrived with cobbled together equipment and only one set of playing uniform each for the entire week.  I remember the team being welcomed and supported by all the other teams, as well as by the host club and union.  Any good performances, whether an individual strokeplay round or a good individual match score, were made a fuss of and highlighted.

We welcomed Iceland as they took their first steps into the golfing world abroad and it’s a joy to see their players now cropping up on every tour in the world.  Some wonderful teachers from the UK travelled over to live in Iceland and share their knowledge.  My pal Pat Smillie, ultimately the England coach for so many years, was an early pioneer who laid strong foundations there for the growth of the game.  It must be a wonderful thing to reflect on your career and realise that you helped introduce so many to the game in a non-golfing country and then helped keep the interest alive until it became self-perpetuating and rolling along, more or less, of its own accord.  That takes sustained effort on the part of many.

Sustained effort is something Jonathan Caldwell knows all about.  It has been a long, slow and frequently unrewarding grind for the Ulsterman to the summit, which he achieved last Sunday when he won the Scandinavian Mixed Hosted by Henrik and Annika.  In a groundbreaking venture 78 men and 78 women played the same course for the same trophy and it took a very special final round of 64 by Caldwell to edge out Spain’s Adrian Otaegui by a stroke.  Alice Hewson was the highest-placed female a shot further back and the only player in the field to shoot all four rounds in the 60s.

I first saw Jonathan play in the 2007 Walker Cup alongside Rory McIlroy.  Ulster, Irish and British & Irish teammates, the players’ paths diverged drastically after that Walker Cup.  Rory amassed four majors and a number of other wins in very short order but Jonathan struggled to gain a sound footing on tour.  He lost his playing rights, bounced around on a few mini-tours and had to work in a golf store to finance himself to get some starts in the minor leagues.  He stayed in the arena, however, and Sunday was the reward for all that unseen work, toil, effort and doggedness.  No wonder his eyes were damp as he told the members at his home club of Clandeboye to get a tab started at the bar and “crack on” with the party.  I suspect they didn’t need telling twice!

Kudos too, to Henrik Stenson and Annika Sorenstam for hosting this unique event, giving the women’s game an amazing platform to show just what they can do.  When the professional men players see the women as simply “players” we are making great strides and wider recognition will surely flow from the rest of the golfing and sporting worlds.  And the good news is Annika and Henrik will host the event again next year.

We should all be very thankful for Sweden’s contribution to our game. This small country punches mightily above its weight and has done so much for golf over the last 40 years and this innovative tournament hosted by two of its greats is another example of that.  And, a fellow Ulster golfer has won his first tour event………so, a pretty perfect week.

Now, how quickly can I get to Clandeboye Golf Club?

 

The Ladies’ European Tour (LET) season is finally up and running with its first two tournaments safely in the books and last week’s Italian Open was won by an 18-year old French amateur called Lucie Malchirand (photo above), who had just won the Portuguese Amateur Championship in her previous start.

Now, it’s not unheard of for an amateur to win a professional event (Bobby Jones managed it quite regularly) but it is fairly rare and those who do triumph become members of a very exclusive club indeed.  Without exception they are all already players of pedigree with several trophies and honours in their cabinets but winning at the professional level is a huge accomplishment for any amateur.

In last week’s blog I was celebrating Phil Mickelson’s sixth major victory at the age of almost 51.  His first professional victory came way back in 1991 when still an amateur and 30 years later he’s still winning professional events – and majors at that.  Perhaps this all lies ahead for Malchirand who has already represented her country with distinction and who played in the last Junior Solheim Cup.

She certainly doesn’t have to lift her eyes from French soil to find inspiration by the bucket-load.  A role model is right there for her in her own country in the great Catherine Lacoste who stunned the golfing world with an incredible victory in the 1967 US Women’s Open, in my opinion one of the greatest-ever achievements by an amateur golfer.

To date Lacoste is the only amateur winner in the championship’s 75-year history but whisper it softly, there is a slight frisson among the cognoscenti that perhaps this week will see a second amateur win the US Women’s Open which is being played at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.  Rachel Heck, a 19-year old from Memphis, has just completed her first year at Stanford and has won six of the nine tournaments she played in her freshman year, including five in a row at the end of the season, culminating in the NCAA Individual Championship.  She also won the Annika Award which is presented to the nation’s best female college golfer and set an NCAA single-season scoring record of 69.72.  And – ominously for her opposition – she has already recorded a win on this year’s venue, shooting a 66 around this beast of a course.

As if this wasn’t enough to keep her busy she has joined the Air Force ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) on campus and claims the discipline and life skills she has learned there are helpful to her in all walks of life including on the fairways.  She says being busy with all this other stuff deflects the pressure from her on the course.  “When golf is not the be-all end-all, it takes so much pressure off me.  I have a thousand other things I want to do.”  This scarily accomplished teenager is impressive, to say the least, but the odds are still against her.  It will be fun seeing how she gets on and if she will be able to join the great Lacoste in an exclusive club of two.

Perhaps one of the most heralded amateur winners of professional events over the last few years has been New Zealander Lydia Ko, who won no fewer than four times amongst the paid ranks before being able to accept a cheque.  In 2012 she became the youngest winner on the LPGA tour when she won the Canadian Open, a title she successfully defended the following year.  In early 2013 she won in her home country of New Zealand to become the youngest winner of an LET event and two years later she continued adding to her string of “youngest ever to…..” accomplishments by ascending to the No 1 world ranking.  Now 23 years old and with 16 wins, including two majors, under her belt it’ll be interesting to see if she sticks to her avowed intention to retire from the game at the age of 30.

The player Ko superseded as the youngest winner on the LET was another amateur winner of a professional event – Amy Yang, who had won the 2006 ANZ Ladies’ Masters.  Yang, South Korean by birth, took up the game at ten years of age and at 15 moved with her parents to Australia to enable her to focus on her golf.  She has subsequently built a strong career which just needs a major title to elevate that description to “great.”  You could argue a good case that she’s currently one of the best players never to have won a major.  Now 31, she could well be moving into her prime, though admittedly it’s quite tricky to determine when women players actually hit their prime, given the incredible success some of them enjoy at a very young age.

Records from the early days of the LET are notoriously sketchy, even non-existent in many instances, so I’m relying on memory here when I think of the last amateur prior to Amy to win on the Ladies’ European Tour.  If I’ve overlooked anyone – apologies, but I think that honour must go to Gillian Stewart, one of Scotland’s finest, who won the 1984 European Open at The Belfry.  As with many of the other amateur winners, that victory was a portend of things to come, ushering in a very successful career in the paid ranks.

We have been lifelong friends and last played golf together the day we went into our first lockdown back in March 2020.  We have a few games arranged for later this month at the glorious Royal Dornoch, Brora and Skibo, to name but a few.

Can’t wait.  Can’t wait to take the money!

 

Many congratulations to Phil Mickelson, his brother Tim and all their family on that amazing win at Kiawah.  It couldn’t have been more compelling, not least because there were a lot of players who also had their chances to win….but didn’t.

A lot of people thought Brooks Koepka, styled a macho major man on the basis of winning four in very short order, would take the title but he fell short.  Again.  Don’t forget, he knocked himself out of the Open at Portrush with four bogeys in the first four holes and he’s had quite a few injuries since.  Perhaps, like the sainted Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth, he’s discovered that this major-winning business isn’t as easy-peasy as he first thought.  At least Phil, about to be 51 (can’t remember what on earth that’s like) has given them all hope that there’s plenty of time yet.

However, they weren’t the only ones pushing themselves to the limit last Sunday.  Here, in rural Staffordshire, where it was more than breezy enough, if not quite as blustery as on one of the world’s toughest golf courses, beside the Atlantic in South Carolina, Maureen, Brian and I were on our bikes.  We were taking part in the Cycle Spring 2021, raising money for St Giles Hospice – £1000 and counting thanks to all our generous family and friends, we’re beyond grateful, gobsmacked really that we’ve raised so much, chuffed but not chafed.

Maureen and I did 27 miles – proper cyclists, please don’t laugh – and Brian did 52.  He has all the gear and more than an idea but I was pleasantly surprised that I suffered very few ill effects despite a training regime that was, in all honesty, non-existent.  I did get the bike serviced but baulked at going out in the rain and wind that followed, it wasn’t worth the risk to life and limb.  Mo and I did manage a very pleasant practice ride (about 15 miles in total) a couple of weeks before the real thing but that was it.  Obviously the trick is a steady pace, plenty of fuel (don’t ignore the pit stops) and proper padding.

I’m not sure that you can be penalised for slow cycling in a charity bike ride but I see that John Catlin, the American who has won three times on the European Tour in short order, was penalised a stroke in the first round of the US PGA for taking too long.  He had rounds of 75 and 79 to miss the cut but it beggars belief that he was the only man to breach the PGA of America’s pace-of-play regulations during the week.  Even more astounding is the fact that, apparently, he is the first player to be done for slow play in a major championship since Hideki Matsuyama at the Open Championship at Muirfield in 2013.

Perhaps Catlin, who received a special invitation to play at Kiawah, can console himself with the thought that his fellow slowcoach went on to become the Masters champion eight years later.  No rush then John.

In Las Vegas the other day, at the Bank of Hope LPGA Match-Play, Carlota Ciganda, one of the blog’s favourite players, lost her opening match when she exceeded her allotted time on the 18th hole.  So, instead of winning the hole with a birdie, Ciganda lost the hole – and the match.  The Spaniard, one of Europe’s Solheim Cup stalwarts, is well known for taking her time but it’s a mystery to me that these penalties are relatively rare.  Professional golfers as a breed are glacial, ponderously slow, with a penchant for sponsorships from high-end watch brands that presumably specialise in making time stand still.

On the subject of slowness, I had a few moments to be cherished as I laboured up an inconvenient hill not far from our first feeding station on Sunday.  Aware of traffic behind me, I heeded Brian’s advice to use the gears, keep going and not to panic.  The pace was barely above a crawl but no one could pass because of bends that were more inconvenient than the hill.  I ploughed on, successfully holding up several other cyclists, one or two cars and, best of all, a tractor.  Revenge is sweet.

Earlier this week the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) announced Mollie Marcoux Samaan as their new commissioner, the successor to Mike Whan, who could hardly have done a better job and is heading over to the USGA (United States Golf Association) to see if he can work his magic there.

Marcoux Samaan, currently director of athletics at Princeton University, her alma mater, is no mean golfer herself and has won the club championship at North Fork Country Club in Cutchogue, New York, five times.  At college she played soccer (sorry!) and ice hockey, so presumably you mess with her at your peril.  She has a husband and three children and is raring to go.

“The LPGA commissioner role is one of the best jobs in sports today and the opportunity of a lifetime,” she said.  “I’m passionate about the game of golf and have been an LPGA fan since I was a little girl….

“I believe passionately that sports have the power to change the world.  and in this moment in time – with the positive energy around women’s sports, women’s leadership and society’s commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion – I believe the LPGA has an incredible opportunity to use our platform for positive change.

“I’ve devoted my career to developing character, confidence and opportunities through sports.  My mission and the LPGA’s mission are fully aligned:  providing women and girls the opportunity to achieve their dreams through golf….”

We wish her well.