What will Tiger’s swing be like in his 40s?

The striking thing about Tiger Woods during his comeback in the Bahamas last week was how happy he looked.  He was positively beaming.  He exuded enjoyment and even bonhomie.  He seemed to engage with everyone around him, looking interviewers in the eye as though they were fellow members of the human race, not treating them with the ill-disguised contempt of his playing prime.

No matter how many majors you’ve won, how many records you’ve broken, how much money you’ve won, if you’ve been away from the game you love for nearly 16 months, you’re going to be ecstatic to be back.  Just playing five rounds in a row (including the pro-am) was a triumph for a man who confessed that there had been days when he couldn’t get out of bed, let alone walk, let alone hit a golf ball, let alone play a few holes, let alone compete in public.  Anyone who’s had back trouble – and they say there are two sorts of people in the world:  those with backs and those without – will empathise.  It’s scary as well as painful and debilitating.

Tiger is an ultra when it comes to training and working out, so he’ll do all the stuff needed to keep his back and the rest of his body in some sort of working order and then trust to luck that a sneeze here, a tweak there or a slip or missed step or two don’t put the kibosh on all his best efforts.  He’s in his 40s now, so there should be a lot of life left in him, his prime even, just not on the golf course.

Tiger had a golfing prime like few others and he’s not going to get that back but as an ever-formidable competitor, he’ll doubtless be coming back cleverer, cannier, hungrier (in a different way) and even more determined to show that he can still win against the best.  It should be fun to watch, especially if he keeps smiling.

Rory McIlroy, who watched the event on telly, said, “The excitement levels are huge any time Tiger tees it up and he looked comfortable, he looked happy, which I thought was the most interesting thing.  He looked happy to be out there, which we probably haven’t seen in a while.

“Any time we saw him on a golf course in the last couple of years he had the furrowed brow and he’s been so concentrated.  But he looked happy so obviously that tells you he has been away and he has come back out happy and he is in a better place.”

Rory clutching the AGW Trophy, one of many, at Troon.

Rory was talking to Brian Keogh (see the ever-informative irishgolfdesk.com) in Dublin after winning Sportsperson of the Year at the Excellence in Sport Awards in aid of the Irish Youth Foundation.  Padraig Harrington, ever positive and generous, was also impressed with what he saw of Woods:  “Before last week I wasn’t sure if he’d ever win a major again.  I think he will now.  There were a lot of good signs…….It’s exceptionally good for golf that he’s back.  It’s incredibly big for the game.”

Not quite as big but very important from a European point of view and huge for the man himself was the announcement of Thomas Bjorn as Europe’s Ryder Cup captain for the match in Paris in 2018.  The Dane played in three matches (all won) and has been a vice-captain four times (only one defeat, at Hazeltine last year), so he knows what it’s all about.  He made his debut under Seve Ballesteros at Valderrama, winning his second day fourball with Ian Woosnam against Justin Leonard, the Open champion and Brad Faxon.

Leonard had had five birdies and an eagle in that defeat and he continued in the same vein when he set off in the singles – against Bjorn.  Four down after four, the Dane was counselled to relax by his peripatetic (and very unrelaxed and unrelaxing) captain.  “I AM RELAXED,” Bjorn bellowed from the depths of his soul.  Seve retreated and his rookie managed a very valuable half point (although he lost the last when his captain reappeared).

Bonne chance en France, Thomas.

Will Europe come out on top again in Paris?

‘Tis the season of golf’s most brutal examination, both physical and mental:  the dreaded Final Qualifying School.  Those who have earned a tee-off time at this slugfest have either battled through a couple of regional qualifiers to make it or have slid down the greasy pole from the main tour, failing to secure their playing rights for the following season.  Last week marked the very last Q school for the LPGA (Ladies’ Professional Golf Association) in America.  After this year, access to the main tour will be through serving an apprenticeship on the Symetra Tour, the feeder tour to the LPGA tour.

I, for one, am sorry about this decision.  Any time competition is stifled I am not a fan – and goodness knows, there is precious little in our sport now that is truly open.  Annually, we hear heartwarming stories of players, their hopes and dreams, and we watch with interest as they pit their all, quite literally, on securing their ticket to the dreamland of the main tour in the world.  We need more of this – not, I suggest, a dusty list of stats, scoring averages and the like, chronicling identical routes to the holy grail of a tour card.

Several storylines have caught my eye in this final of Final Q Schools.

Bronte with the European Amateur Championship trophy.

The brilliant Bronte Law from Cheshire is in her final year at university in the States and has taken the jump to the pro ranks early in an attempt to bypass a year bouncing around on the Symetra tour.  She failed to secure a full card but has qualified well enough to merit loads of starts and a player of her class should, hopefully, be fine.  However, she will be juggling her first steps as a professional golfer with taking exams, writing a thesis and all that finishing your degree entails.  Not ideal, but she feels her hand has been forced. It will be a tough year on multiple fronts.

Beth Allen – the first American to top the European Order of Merit.

Beth Allen, the engaging American, who won the Ladies European Tour Order of Merit before a ball was struck in the ultimate tournament this week in Dubai, is another to win through to the highest arena.  She’s been there before, briefly, but now married and settled in Edinburgh, she is definitely “one of  ours” and at 34 the Californian is planning on playing both tours next season.  She’s another I will be following closely.

And finally, here’s a name to conjure with – Olafia Kristinsdottir.  The 24-year old from Reykjavik is the first Icelandic player to win an LPGA card.  She attended Wake Forest University, where she was inspired by fellow alumna Cheyenne Woods, Tiger’s niece, turned professional two years ago and played on the LET in 2016.  She is a product of sound coaching structures introduced into the country nearly 30 years ago by the Icelandic Golf Union who turned to PGA professionals here to provide a lead.

One of those early trailblazing professionals was Pat Smillie, who also had phenomenal international success coaching the English women’s golf teams for 15 years or so.  Pat loved her time in Iceland, travelling extensively from her base in Akureyri to small clubs in the northern part of the country.  From May to September golf was embraced with an almost manic enthusiasm such was the appreciation for this new, available, golfing expertise.  Pat remembers starting her final lesson of the day at 11.30 pm on those long, long summer days.  The number of clubs has more than doubled since then and all memberships are full, with waiting lists.

Pat did manage to squeeze in some tournament play while there, winning the Arctic Open, a great event played over the weekend nearest to the longest day. It is open to amateurs, professionals, men, women and children, with the first round starting at midnight and the second round at midday. Many of the competitors use black golf balls – amazingly much easier to see in the bright sunlight.

Two of Pat’s souvenirs of her Icelandic days

Kristinsdottir was surprised to find herself a little like a pied piper at the Q school.  She knew no one when she started her week but fellow countrymen came out of the woodwork to support her and she ended up having the biggest gallery of all the players there.  She rewarded them with a second place finish, a precious card and that famous Icelandic celebratory clapping we learned about at the football in the summer.

Olafia leading the Icelandic Viking Clap.

The ink is not quite dry on 2016 but I, for one, just can’t wait for 2017.

The late great Peggy Kirk Bell

There can’t be too many people who’d lend a classic Cadillac to someone they’d only just met, then quietly melt away when said someone, concentrating on not hitting the tree behind the car, reversed and swung the long front nose into a tree in front….The inept driver was me, on my first visit to America and the generous, kind-hearted, thoughtful and tolerant owner of the car was Peggy Kirk Bell, who has died at the age of 95.

A good golfer who played in the Curtis Cup in 1950, she became a founder member of the LPGA and in true pioneering style flew herself all over the country, playing and promoting.  She played fewer tournaments after she married and started a family but she had a degree in education and put it to good use.  Peggy taught thousands of people over the years, many at the famous Golfaris she and her husband Bullet, who had played basketball professionally, established at Pine Needles Lodge and Country [now Golf] Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina, next door to Pinehurst.  The dynamic couple and their family built Pine Needles into a venue fit for the US Women’s Open and Annika Sorenstam won the first championship there in 1996; Karrie Webb won in 2001 and Cristie Kerr in 2007.

Peggy Kirk with Bobby Jones. Peggy’s future husband Warren ‘Bullet’ Bell is looking on.

It was at the Espirito Santo, the Women’s World Amateur Team Championship, at Pinehurst in 1980 that I first met Peggy and Bullet, who was to die all too young in 1984.  Thanks to the good offices of Maureen Garrett, England golf’s very own force of nature and forger of friendships, I found myself installed at Pine Needles and furnished with the sporty Cadillac.  I’ve never forgotten the Bells’ kindness and generosity and my Maureen, who played in that WATC, and I send our condolences to Peggy’s family and friends.

I met my husband Dai at Pinehurst that year and we played our first round of golf together at Pine Needles.  Despite the fact that I lost the match, shanking my approach to the 18th from a perfect position just short of the green, it and Mid Pines, another wonderfully playable Donald Ross course that the Bell family took over and restored, remain among my favourite courses anywhere.

Over the years Peggy won more awards than you could shake a club at, including the United States Golf Association’s Bob Jones Award (for distinguished sportsmanship and service to the game); the PGA of America’s First Lady of Golf; LPGA Teacher of the Year; and the Golf Writers Association of America’s William D. Richardson Award (for outstanding contributions to golf).  There are many more on the list and she was also a member of seven Halls of Fame!  It’s a measure of the woman and the influence she had that she was so respected and, most importantly, loved.

To find out more about Peggy and her remarkable life, seek out Liz Kahn’s book The LPGA:  The Unauthorized Version and the late Rhonda Glenn’s The Illustrated History of Women’s Golf.  Peggy also wrote an autobiography (with Lee Pace) called The Gift of Golf, published in 2001.  In it she summed up the lifelong appeal of the game quite simply:  “I found it more of a challenge than any sport I’d tried.”

Way back in 1966, Peggy wrote A Woman’s Way To Better Golf with Jerry Claussen, foreword by the great Patty Berg, and it’s still a sound, unflashy  introduction to the game.  The first chapter is called Anyone for Golf? and starts:  “That has a nice ring to it!  Just saying it makes me feel relaxed and wholesome.  Now you try it.

“Sort of makes you feel carefree, doesn’t it?

“Yes, golf is really a fun game.  That is it can be fun if you play for enjoyment rather than take it to heart every time you miss a shot……Take my word for it, it’s a lot of fun…no matter how well you play.”

Full of good, sound sense. Still worth a read.

The reasons for playing golf haven’t changed:  “You’re going to find that golf has the unique ingredients of fresh air, exercise and social contacts.  As a woman, what more could you ask for?”

Peggy tells the story of a friend who took up the game because she didn’t want to be a golf widow.  She explained:  “When I started going out with my husband, I found out that he was a real golf nut.  But, as it turned out, I loved him anyway and wanted to marry him.  I knew that the only way I would ever see much of him would be if I took up golf.  So now he waves to me on the course and I wave back.  He knows where I am and I know where he is.”

A cherished message.

There was nothing complicated about Peggy’s teaching.  She had the skilled teacher’s way of distilling things down to the essence and making learning a pleasure not a chore.  She made the seemingly unattainable – an effective golf swing – seem attainable.  “Actually learning how to play golf is really very simple,” she wrote.  “If you can make a bed, clean your house or push a grocery cart in the supermarket, you have the necessary physical qualities for playing golf.”  That lets most of us in, no excuses.

Peggy was passionate about golf and its benefits:  “When I am on a golf course, I can put my problems aside.  I find that when I go home, I’m refreshed and ready to meet my responsibilities with renewed energy.  I personally believe that I am a better wife and mother because of it.”

I’ve picked out one piece of advice that should still benefit all of us, not least because it involves Peggy’s great pal (mind you, she had lots of those) Babe Zaharias, Olympian, golfer, showwoman supreme.  It’s about temperament and still as important and relevant today as it ever was.  At least one of this year’s major winners would do well to take it to heart!

Peggy wrote:  “You’ll never play good golf unless you control yourself.  That’s one thing golf will do for you, if you need it:  make you humble.  It’s terrific mental discipline not to show your anger when you fluff an easy shot.

“The late, great Mildred ‘Babe’ Zaharias, the queen of all women golfers when I was playing a lot of tournaments, straightened out my attitude in one unforgettable sentence.  We were playing together in a pro-amateur event in about 1948.  I threw a club as I missed an iron shot and Babe cut me down with:  ‘Who do you think you are?  So great that you should never miss a shot?’  I reformed right then and there.”  WATCH YOUR TEMPER.

Peggy (left) with Babe, all smiles.

RIP PKB.  Thanks for the fun.

Charley Hull at her first individual winner’s press conference in the USA

On Sunday, 20-year-old Charley Hull, a fun-loving, free spirit from Kettering, won the CME Group Tour Championship in Naples, Florida, from a ridiculously stellar field containing the very best in the women’s game.  It is her first title on the LPGA Tour in her first full year on the premier women’s golf circuit.  That victory has catapulted her 11 spots up the world rankings to No 18, one of only three Europeans in the top 20.

And to what does she owe her success?  Why, strawberry mousse , of course!

But, fear not, Charley is not about to pile on the calories or those sort of pounds.  It’s an aid to keeping her rhythm under the most severe pressure.  She says the word “strawberry” to herself by which point she has reached the top of her backswing.  then she swishes through to the brisker tempo of “mousse”.  She explains:  “Dad used to say it to me when I was about two years old to get my rhythm.  It’s just a rhythm thing.”

In so many many ways Charley reminds me of another shining star of an English player and one of the best I ever played with – Dame Laura Davies.  Both players love to give the ball a good tonk, are capable of the most sublime short game shots and both, on occasions, have battled a few putting demons.  Oh, and yes, they like to play quickly, are refreshingly open and entertaining in their press conferences and have instinctively good golfing brains.  Laura has forty-one years on tour under her belt with four majors and 79 worldwide wins to her name.

The grande dame of golf – Laura Davies

At the moment Charley has played four years on tour and has two wins, but so many of the qualities she shares with Laura are key to an enduring career.  Most impressive to me is her increasing ability to manage her time between shots and not let the situation or pressure get to her.  During the heat of competition you’ll often see her gazing into the distance, seemingly daydreaming and unaware of what’s going on.  Don’t be fooled!  She’s perfected a way to switch on and off, citing thoughts of her non golfing pals back at home and what they’re up to as to what keeps her relaxed and loose on the course.  Casual though she may seem, she’s a hard worker and always willing to observe others and give something a go.  She realised a few weeks ago that ShanShan Feng, the Chinese trailblazer, didn’t look at scoreboards, so, as an inveterate scoreboard watcher, she decided to give that a go last week.  “I’ve proved to myself I don’t need to look at leaderboards.”  It’s all designed to help her stay in the moment because as she admits, “I used to get too engrossed in my score.”

Earlier in the year I interviewed world number one, Lydia Ko, after the third round of the Ricoh Women’s British Open.  Charming and relaxed and as engaging as ever it was almost inconceivable to me that I’d watched her double bogey the last only five minutes previously.  I asked her about her remarkable good humour and she shrugged, told me her first tee shot was “off the planet”, in other words out of bounds, and that “once I have chocolate everything’s all right!”  There was a detachment there, a separation between the person’s golf score and the person.  Charley is the same.  Neither she nor Lydia allows their golf or the score to define them as people – easy to say, but very difficult to do for a lot of sports people.

Asked at her winner’s press conference on Sunday about her first four years on tour, this was Charley’s response:  “It’s been a great four years.  I just love playing golf.”  When pressed to express hopes of being mentioned in the same breath as the other young global stars in the game – Lydia Ko, Brooke Henderson, Ariya Jutanagarn – she responded, “I’m not really too bothered what people are saying.  I’m just here to have fun and play golf.”

She may have a novel use for strawberry mousse but this young Englishwoman is nobody’s fool.

The sweet taste of success