I’ve always enjoyed the company of the Swedish golfers I’ve met on my travels and Henrik Stenson’s fantastic Open victory set me to thinking back to some of my favourite Swedish moments, in no particular order.

It was 1997 and my second visit to The Masters at Augusta.  I was invited to a do in the clubhouse and a couple of us sneaked off to take a peek at the players’ locker room.  The one set of clubs left there overnight belonged to Jesper Parnevik and, very unprofessionally (most pros hate people poking at their precious clubs) we had a good ole riffle through his clubs and a couple of putts up and down the locker room with his rather peculiar-shaped putter.  Didn’t seem to do him any harm (or good).  He finished 21st.

Fun and games at Augusta

In 1993 I was recovering from back surgery and despite my absence leaving the field clear for Annika Sorenstam, the future world No 1 failed to win in her rookie year on the Ladies’ European Tour.  My first sight of her hitting a golf ball was a tee shot in a practice round for the 1994 Solheim Cup at The Greenbrier.  The great JoAnne Carner, the US captain, resplendent in a stars-and-stripes-spangled baseball cap, was also at the tee and she cheerfully called out, “NOW I see what all the fuss is about!”  At that stage Annika had only one professional win to her name – the Australian Open, which she’d won at Royal Adelaide earlier that year.  She had yet to bring America and the wider golfing world to its knees.

With the pride of Sweden (one of them!)

It was back in the early 1980s in my amateur days that Sweden stepped up a gear or two with their professional approach to the game, their preparation and their players.  They had a production line of talent and spearheading this on the women’s side was Liv Wollin – a six footer with an extraordinarily effective hockey-like swing.  She was the first player I ever saw lie flat on her tummy to read a putt, a real worm’s eye view.  There’s nothing new under the sun Camillo Villegas.

Any time you win anything in this game you can usually look back and see where the luck ran your way.  And it did for Ireland in the women’s European Team Championships at Royal Waterloo Golf Club in Belgium in 1983.  We had fought our way through to the semi-finals and were due to meet the holders, Sweden, who were being led by the teenage prodigy that was Liselotte Neumann.  At the age of 15 she had just won her National Championship by nine shots.  The team sheets were handed in ahead of the match and Lotta’s name was nowhere to be seen.  She had food poisoning and was unable to leave her bed.  Ireland went on to win the match and beat England in the final.  Rumours of sabotage remain unproven!

Not a Lotta luck for Sweden but the Irish are smiling.

Sophie Gustafson overcame tremendous personal challenges to carve out a glittering professional career of 28 worldwide victories.  One of the most popular players I know, Sophie has learned to manage her speech difficulties to a remarkable degree.  She had a debilitating stutter that disappeared whenever she sang or swore, which she could do in fluent Anglo-Saxon!  When she won the Women’s British Open at Royal Birkdale in 2000, she asked fellow professional Federica Dassu to make her winner’s speech for her.  At her eighth Solheim Cup in 2011 in Ireland Sophie recorded an interview with the Golf Channel.  It took her an hour to answer the questions for a three and a half minute interview.  I was a helper to the European team that year and I was so proud of her.  It was a real lump-in-the throat moment.

It must be 30 years since I first met Pia Nilsson who was no pushover in her playing days but became a world-class coach.  Sweden stunned the golfing world in the 1990s when they appointed Pia as the national coach to both the women’s AND the men’s teams, amateur and professional.  This was groundbreaking stuff.  Five years on she confided to me that she was finishing the job because she had “so many other things I want to do”.  I was astounded.  If I thought Pia was near the pinnacle of the game she thought she was simply in the foothills.

Two decades on she and her partner Lynn Marriott are the founders of the world-renowned Vision 54 company, as much sought after in the business as the sporting world.  A few years ago I asked her for her opinion on the differences in teaching women as opposed to men – a topic I was speaking on at several PGA conferences.  Typically, she batted the question back telling me absolutely zilch.  I challenged her about it the next time we met but she knew I’d learn more  by having to come to my own conclusions than by listening to hers.

Pia remains the consummate educator and enabler, always learning and leading others to believe that there are no limits to human potential, in golf or life.

No limits for Pia

And now Sweden have their first male major champion.  I couldn’t be happier.  To all my Swedish friends and colleagues – get used to it.  This’ll be the first of many.  #FLOODGATES!

Fred Albers is a sports broadcaster from Texas, who has been in golf for many years and knows the game from outside the ropes and in.  He’s lived the ups and downs of a professional golfer’s life because his wife Kristi spent more than 20 years on the LPGA Tour and he was with her every step of the way.  His insights are special and heartfelt.

Maureen drove us up to Royal Troon on the Monday of Open week and we wondered how it would feel because neither of us was working in an official, accredited sense.

Blog stuff, which is of course a 24-hour-a-day pressure, is also a bit of a minefield for the R&A, who have had to accept that mobile phones are now an integral part of the human condition and only detached from the human body under general anaesthetic. There are little booths labelled ‘Digital Advisers’ scattered around the place at Troon and they are manned and womanned by mostly young patient helpful people who attempt to provide novices like me with a map to the magical mystery tour that is the Open app.  Mind you, I was heartened to learn that they had to leave the booth to get a signal to connect to the wi-fi.

Total control is totally impossible, hurrah.

There are people with blue bibs proclaiming them ‘Official Social Media #The Open’ and they’re the ones allowed to do video stuff.  There are signs warning the rest of us off video but it’s impossible, sorry, we can’t help it because even the photos move now.  You take what you think is a happy snap, a still slice of life and whenever you have a wee look at it, to check the heads are in and there’s no thumb over the lens, the damned thing moves, like some portrait at Hogwarts.  You can’t legislate for that.

Angela Howe of the R&A’s Heritage Department talks archives with Patricia

For some reason the video edict did my head in (a phrase that is nearly as irritating as ‘growing the game’ but as infuriatingly useful) more than the hideously dull, sanitised, expensive one-brand Open Shop (what’s open about a place devoted to a single company?); more than the ridiculous notion that if you pay for your hideously expensive burger or your ice cream with a certain credit card, you’ll get a discount (paying for an ice cream with a credit card, it’s some sort of  inflationary joke surely?); and more than the stupid little wrist band (thank you for the song Paul Simon) you get if you go out the gate and want to come in again later, so you can’t pass your ticket on.  Not very open.

Jock MacVicar of the Scottish Daily Express celebrates another Open. His first was at Troon in 1962.

I didn’t mean to rant but it’s because I still love the Open, because it’s still special and should always remain open, a little anarchic and unpredictable. There’s a thrill and a buzz like no other – that’s undoubtedly why Colin Montgomerie, first to tee off on his home turf at 0635 on Thursday morning, was nervous enough to take 6 at a wee hole he’s probably birdied more times than he’s had a meat pie.

On Tuesday night, he was presented with an award at the AGW (Association of Golf Writers) dinner because covering golf was rarely dull with Monty about.  Rory McIlroy got an award; Diane Bailey ditto, as the last president of an independent LGU before its absorption into the R&A; Steve Willett, dad of Danny, said grace; Caroline and Padraig Harrington, Darren Clarke, Gary Player, Pierre Fulke, Peter McEvoy, Christian Hardin, Wilma Erskine and numerous other luminaries chatted and posed for photos, some of which turned out better than others.

Maureen with Ryder Cup captain Darren Clarke sporting his Royal Portrush bow tie

It was a celebration of golf and that’s what the Open is and why we keep coming back year after year, to catch up with friends and remember those no longer with us, put the world, golfing and otherwise, to rights and watch the best golfers in the world tackle the best courses in the world.  It’s still magical.

There’s not a lot that Doug Ferguson, who works for the agency AP (Associated Press), doesn’t know about the world of professional golf.  At Troon, he’ll be covering his 20th Open and his 84th major championship.  A Californian, he’s a fan of the LA Dodgers, exotic Hawaiian shirts (no logos) and shorts (no trousers, or pants as the Americans call them).  Hope it’s not too cold in Ayrshire next week.