Coming back to Rosses Point is a pilgrimage for Maureen and me because it was the place Dad loved most in the world and last year we scattered some of his ashes at the back of the 10th green – well, they’d be in the middle of the green now after its global expansion but that’s another story.

Remembering Dad.

It’s a great place to play Maureen because she can’t come here without being overwhelmed, so you should be at least five up by the turn and she has no hope of winning the 10th.  Once she’s paid her respects to Dad and turned her back on Ben Bulben, it’s a different story:  her game is transformed, usually, and she storms home in a flurry of pars and birdies.  That wasn’t quite the case this Wednesday past but that was mostly down to a contact lens malfunction – putting one-eyed is a difficult trick to master – and the insidious, debilitating, draining effect of having to speak with me at a function the night before.  Maureen is a confident, accomplished speaker, who prepares meticulously but throwing me into the mix is a bit like going to a Crucible press conference with Ronnie O’Sullivan:  you have to recall your Kipling and remember that triumph and disaster are twin impostors and you have to treat them just the same…..

Fame at last, on the noticeboard at Co Sligo.

Well, I enjoyed the evening immensely  – Maureen really is awfully good; I was very impressed – and everybody seemed to laugh in all the right places.  We slept well and were let loose on the course the next morning.

I’ve been to Rosses Point when it’s been so windy that getting out of the car has been difficult and it’s been a struggle to prevent the door being torn off its hinges.  This time, we played in a heatwave!  Sunscreen, lots of it, was the order of the day and there was barely a breeze.  The place looked immaculate and if the greenkeeper was praying for a bit of rain, for the rest of us it was bliss.  Even better, I was playing with Maureen and Mary McKenna and that’s a rare treat.

People are usually glad to see Maureen, who still has a bit of a reputation in Ireland but go to any golf club with McKenna and you’ll have a sense of what it must be like to be Cristiano Ronaldo in Madrid or Sir Alex Ferguson in Manchester (the red bit anyway) or Theresa May in Westminster or Her Maj the Queen anywhere. You think I’m exaggerating? You haven’t been in Ireland with the great Mary Mac!

Anyway, on the 1st tee the balls fell my way and I was lucky enough to be partnering Maeve Rooney, a young member who plays off 4 and was in training for the Irish Women’s Open Strokeplay at Co Louth this weekend – and she had a bit of a masterclass on Wednesday.  The two double Ms are not so finely honed as in their heyday, both are recovering from various ailments and creaking their swings back into gear but it would be hard to find a more competitive, crafty pair anywhere.  They still love the game and never give up without a fight.

Maeve the brave, taking on the double Ms.

McKenna’s par at the 4th, a short hole that would grace any course anywhere in the world, would have had any golfer you can name – Vardon, Watson, Nicklaus, Woods, Sorenstam, McIlroy, Ballesteros – beaming and preening.  Having missed the green to the right (not a difficult thing to do), the doyenne of Donabate, from deep in the dip, ran the ball up the hill, kept it on the green (a very difficult thing to do) and holed the putt.  It’s the sort of thing that keeps us playing this game and was a salutary reminder always to expect the ridiculous in matchplay!

After the match, which Maeve and I won – well, Maeve won it really but I did claim the glory by managing an unlikely par at the last – we had a tour of the Cecil Ewing room with Ann Bradshaw, Cecil’s daughter.  It’s full of wonderful photos, trophies, medals, letters and invitations, all documenting a sporting life second to none.  “The great Cecil Ewing”, as our Dad always referred to him, put Rosses Point on the golfing map, thanks to his exploits in championships far and wide, in the Walker Cup and numerous other international matches.

In the Cecil Ewing room with his daughter Ann.

One of Cecil’s great friends was Charlie Yates, who beat him in the final of the (British) Amateur at Troon in 1938.  Charlie, an ebullient Georgian who was a member of Augusta National and a close friend of Bobby Jones, putted the lights out that week and a few days later, at St Andrews, also defeated Cork’s Jimmy Bruen, a teenage prodigy and genuine golfing genius, in the top singles in the Walker Cup.

Great Britain and Ireland still managed to win the trophy for the first time – Cecil won his singles – and it was Charlie Yates who led the crowd in a rousing rendition of “A Wee Deoch an Doris” at the presentation.  Years later, he said, “I think back over my golfing years and realise that the friends made along the way are far more important than victories or defeats.”

Mo in action, just to prove she can still swing. [Photo by madillgolf’s ace photographer Mary McKenna]

What has Lydia Ko, who celebrated her 20th birthday on Monday, had nine of and yet Phil Mickelson, who is 46 has only had one and Tiger Woods, aged 41, has totalled three?

Phil Mickelson and Jim “Bones” McKay

The answer is – caddies!

Lydia – still more trophies than caddies

Amazingly, the super-talented and well-grounded Kiwi, who also happens to be world No 1, keeps firing her bagmen.  It certainly isn’t down to hotheadedness or impulsiveness, given that Lydia has displayed an amazing degree of emotional maturity from long before she won her first professional event at the tender age of 15.  She is not alone on the women’s tours of the world.  The employment security for caddies is not high – it is much safer, and more lucrative, on the men’s tours.  Of course, there have been some long-term female player/caddy associations – think Annika Sorenstam and Terry MacNamara;  think Karrie Webb and Mike Paterson – and there have been plenty of short explosive ones on the men’s tours.  There is no doubt, however, that the caddy roundabout spins a little faster on the women’s tours and the first list picked up on a weekly basis by the media is the caddy list to see who is working for whom.

Paterson and Webb spent 15 happy, productive years together

Many of the successful caddies who were on the Ladies’ European Tour when I was a player are now extremely successful on the PGA Tour.  Mark Fulcher, who steered Alison Nicholas to her British Open title at St Mellion in 1987  and her US Women’s Open title ten years later, has been at Justin Rose’s side since The Players Championship in 2008.  He and Rose have currently annexed a US Open title, a gold medal and half a sleeve of a green jacket the other week.  Craig Connelly, aka Wee Mon, worked for former world No 1 Martin Kaymer, did a spell with Paul Casey and is now back with his German employer.

So why are there so many hirings and firings by the female bosses?  Caddies have the unenviable task nowadays of having to have at least a dozen strings to their bows and be all things to all people.  Of course, they must take care of the equipment and have basic addition and subtraction skills; be physically fit enough to lug a huge tour bag around five or six miles cross-country; be a psychologist; a cheerleader; the calm voice of reason; read the game (and their player) well; have a coach’s eye; and know when to be supportive and when to stand their ground.  There is no room for indecisiveness.  Oh, and a crystal ball doesn’t go amiss either!

A number of good female caddies are out on tour but the concensus of opinion amongst the caddies themselves is that it’s mostly down to the prevailing male/female dynamic that exists in any workplace.  If two blokes have a bit of a barney at work they can still go and have a pint together at the end of the day.  Two women who fall out at work would no more go for a drink with each other than fly to the moon.  Male colleagues may not particularly like each other, yet work well together.  Females don’t operate the same way – at least they don’t operate at their best.  Mostly it’s important they LIKE their work colleague or, in this case, caddy.

And when Lydia’s agent, Michael Yim, was asked what prompted the latest firing (at the time of writing), of Gary Matthews, he was quick to emphasise that Matthews’ work wasn’t faulted at all.  “He’s more of a quiet person, so I think that’s where she wanted more of a friend, someone she could talk to.”  Yim added, “It was just a personality difference.”

So, it appears that it’s very important for the women to like and feel comfortable with their caddies.  There is an indefinable extra layer of compatibility required alongside the purely strong working  business relationship that can suffice in isolation on the men’s tour.

Peter Godfrey with Ariya Jutanugarn at Woburn

News has come through that Ko has appointed Peter Godfrey as her new looper. Godfrey has just been named Caddy of the Year by his peers, principally for his outstanding results working with South Korea’s Ha Na Jang last year and for bringing home Ariya Jutanugarn at Woburn in the Ricoh Women’s British Open for her first major.

Good luck to them both as they embark on this new chapter together and, well, if Lydia, winner of two majors already and current world No 1, finally finds the perfect on-course partner – just look out everyone else!

If I were forced to put a date on it, I would say it was the end of the 1990s when I first met David Armitage.

A fresh-faced, slightly spotty teenager turned up at Carden Park’s driving range keen to do all the odd jobs going, just for a chance to be allowed to hit golf balls.  He couldn’t afford to pay for them so a barter system was firmly in operation. Fast forward to the present day and the very same David Armitage has just become one of the youngest professionals to achieve PGA of America Master Professional status.  It’s been a remarkable journey.

Carden Park – where it all started

His father, a scratch golfer, had died when David was 11 years old but it wasn’t until he discovered his Dad’s set of clubs some three years later that the youngster decided to give the game a go and that was what led him to Carden, where I was based at the time.  The other young pros working at the range cut him no slack at first, giving David all the worst, most menial jobs – basically all the ones they didn’t want to do themselves.  This included hand-picking thousands of golf balls off the range first thing in the morning, digging them out of the frozen ground in winter and wading through the soggy morass that we had in the spring before a few blissful summer weeks meant the ground was firm enough to drive the ball-collecting buggy.  He was the habitual errand boy sent out to get the bacon sandwiches and coffees for the staff but the brownie points translated into free time for hitting (free) golf balls and working on his game.  Over time David’s resilience and work ethic earned the admiration of the other lads but it was his never-say-die attitude that earned him the nickname of “Feisty”.

Garry Houston, the best player attached to Carden Park at the time, took Feisty along to caddy for him in a number of pro-am and Challenge Tour events.  This was an opportunity for Feisty to experience a different side of golf and when Garry achieved his full European Tour card, the young Feisty knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life involved in the game.  His old love of rugby had been well and truly supplanted.  Golf reigned supreme in his life.

At around this time Feisty moved to the home of golf and started working at the St Andrews Links Golf Academy.  We were only in sporadic touch over the next dozen years or so but I did keep a wee eye on his progress.  How could you not be impressed by the roster of golf clubs where he worked?  Whistling Straits in Kohler, Wisconsin; Isleworth Country Club in Florida; The Renaissance Club in Gullane, Scotland; and currently Trump National Doral in Florida?  Of course, being American-born has proved hugely beneficial in his easy transatlantic movement from one position to the other in his ceaseless quest for knowledge and self-improvement.

Trump National Doral – current workplace

And then in 2015 at The Open at St Andrews we met again, with us both involved in the broadcasting side of the sport.  Feisty does a show on Sirius/XM and is often part of that talented broadcast crew with whom I work on occasions.  So, suddenly, we have become work colleagues again and I have seen yet another string to his bow.

All in a day’s work – broadcasting…..

…coaching….

…working out.

I find it hard to think of any other individual who has progressed so much and come so far in 15 years or so.  There are 28,ooo men and women who are members of the PGA of America and as of last Monday only 358 had attained Master Professional status.

Feisty cites Jim Farmer and Jim McLean as being massively influential mentors in his development.  Well, I’m sure the young boy who turned up at Carden Park all those years ago will do his own fair share of mentoring.  It’s been a giant leap for the lad who couldn’t afford a range ball to one whose hourly lesson rate is now in the region of $235.  Golf can truly take you anywhere.

Rock on Feisty!

Portstewart’s two MMs

Warning:  this is not an ad as such but an invitation to those of you living in the Portstewart area to visit a local hostelry called The Mermaid this evening (Friday) where Michael Moss, the retiring (but far from shy) general manager of Portstewart Golf Club (about-to-be-home of the Irish Open, Rory McIlroy and all) will buy you a drink.  At least, that’s what I think he really meant.

This is the less-than-modest, stop press release that he sent us late last night and because he insists on doing all his own editing, punctuation and promoting, it is unexpurgated (apart from the odd apostrophe).  Apologies, in advance, if deemed necessary.

“Today at Portstewart in the local alliance the former General Manager [his caps] of Portstewart Golf Club swept the field with a magnificent 39 pts.  Moss when interviewed made light of the responsibilities of his daughter’s impending wedding [Does his wife Sandra know? ed] and the upcoming Irish Open (of which he is Tournament Director in case you didn’t know) [Does Rory know what he’s doing? ed.]

“The modest Moss said ‘I thrive in these sort of situations and when you’ve gotta finish the Strand Course 2, 4, 4, 4 then it’s great to know I’ve the tools to close it out.’ [Tools nearly as decrepit as the man himself when last seen.]  Moss can be found in the Mermaid tomorrow night [Fri] for those of you who would like to shake his hand and buy the champion a drink.”

Just in case, take some money with you.

Well done, Michael.  See you in May.