The first match isn’t due to tee off until the morning of Friday the 13th of September, weather permitting – and given the current volatile climate that’s no idle proviso – but I’m already getting excited about travelling to Gleneagles for the Solheim Cup.  For the non-golfing reader that’s the biennial match between the women professionals of Europe and the United States of America.

Tim Glover, a Welsh journalist with a way with words, described it as “the Ryder Cup with lipstick”.  It’s a phrase that some people loathe but I still love it, it has a touch of genius, even in these oh-so-correct times that ban ads featuring Dads being distracted enough – by what?  Cars, chocolate, betting on football, washing machines? – to lose the kids.  Nowadays, there’s often face paint as well as lipstick but the rivalry is real and the play as intense as any Ryder Cup.

Celine Boutier, of France, one of Catriona Matthew’s four picks, will be making her debut for Europe and said, “I have been dreaming of playing Solheim Cup since I was a little girl and it really is amazing to know that my dream will come true in a month’s time…..”

That should make me feel old because I was at the first Solheim, a hastily arranged affair at Lake Nona in Florida, in 1990.  It doesn’t seem that long ago but it must be if it’s got to the stage where little girls dream of playing in it.  It also means that Louise and Karsten Solheim’s dream of making a lasting difference to women’s golf has become a reality.  Whatever their other contributions to the game – and there are many – the Solheim Cup has established itself as one of the world’s great sporting contests,  a lasting memorial to two great people.

A star-studded (no exaggeration) United States team had little trouble beating an overawed and outclassed Europe in the first match and some commentators reckoned it would be 100 years before the match became competitive.  It took two.  Well, maybe a little longer before it became seriously competitive but Europe upset all the odds at Dalmahoy in 1992 and won handily.  It was one of the great sporting upsets.

“This has to be one of the sporting achievements of the century,” said Europe’s captain Mickey Walker (who’ll be in charge of Europe’s Junior Solheim team this year).  An exaggeration maybe but not by much.  “It’s unbelievable,” she said in the euphoric aftermath of an amazing victory. “We didn’t just beat them.  We outplayed them totally.  I really believe that when they came over here they thought they would win comfortably.  Now I think they’re in shock.  So am I, for a different reason.”

Dottie Mochrie (nee Pepper and now Pepper again), the world No 1 at the time, said that she barely spoke on the flight home.  The Americans, with 147 titles and 21 major championships between them, had been taken to the cleaners.  Golf, as some underdog once said, is played on grass not on paper and on this occasion the Europeans shredded the form book.

At The Greenbrier two years later, the favourites, still hurting from the humiliation in Scotland, justified their status with a commanding performance, inspired by a ferocious Mochrie, hair dyed red for the occasion.  The home side, captained by the iconic JoAnne Carner, were tense, fearing losing again more than anything but they played outstanding golf when they needed to and regained the trophy.

The Americans will be favourites as usual this year and they’re going for three wins in a row under the captaincy of Juli Inkster, as ferocious a competitor as you could hope to find anywhere.  However, it’s always hard to win away from home and Catriona Matthew, Europe’s captain, a Scot from North Berwick, is also a competitor par excellence.  She may be understated but she should never be underestimated.

She’s already made an interesting choice by announcing Suzann Pettersen as one of her picks.  Pettersen, who has hardly played any competitive golf since the birth of her son Herman nearly two years ago, was due to be one of Europe’s vice captains but finds herself playing instead.  “Catriona knows that match play brings out the absolute best in my game and that I will be ready to deliver points for her come September,” she said.  “I honestly believe that my best contribution to our Solheim Cup campaign will be on the course and I am very grateful to Catriona for having the confidence to choose me for this year’s team.”

Well, almost every captain makes a contentious choice – Matthew herself was a surprising omission from Dale Reid’s team at Loch Lomond in 2000 – and they stand or fall by the result.  Win and you’re a genius, on a par with the luckiest generals, lose and you’re an eejit, incapable of seeing the obvious hitting you in the face.

Pettersen, a Norwegian who has played in eight Solheims, is a competitive animal to her fingertips and her social rounds probably have the ferocity of a Solheim or Ryder Cup decider but it’s quite an ask to throw her in at Gleneagles so lightly raced.  Whatever, I gave up questioning captain’s picks a long time ago because that’s what they are:  the captain’s pick.  Not mine, not yours, not anyone else’s.  Every captain follows his or her gut instinct and they usually plump for the tried and tested, the players they know and feel they can rely on.  As a captain, the only thing I’d want is for my players to be playing well on the match days and putting the lights out.  If that wasn’t enough to win, so be it but I couldn’t ask for any more.

Bring it on.

To end on a winning note, congratulations to Barb Waite and Mike Jones (below) on their victory in the Whittington Heath Senior Open last Sunday.

Oh, just one last thought on captaincy.  I read somewhere that Tiger Woods might pick himself for his U.S. Presidents Cup team to play the Internationals at Royal Melbourne in December because he can no longer qualify as of right.  Surely not.  He may be Tiger Woods but he can’t be that arrogant or stupid.  Unless, of course, he thinks it’s only fair to give the opposition a chance of winning what has become a hopelessly one-sided contest.

That must be it.

 

There’s been a lot going on this past week in the golf world but my eyes were drawn to one of my favourite places, Woburn, despite the fact I didn’t attend the AIG Women’s British Open this year.  Patricia was there to capture the atmosphere and witness the stunning golf at first hand but it was more than a little interesting to watch on TV, be drawn in, and yes, captivated, by the 20-year old winner, Hinako Shibuno of Japan.

It takes some force of personality to come through the screen and grab you, converting you into a fan after watching only a handful of holes but that’s precisely what Shibuno did – rather as Seve did when he first played in the Open back in 1976 at Royal Birkdale.

Shibuno could teach some of the players a thing or two – and I don’t mean just with her golf game.  I think certain players (men and women) forget that as well as being professional athletes they are also entertainers and owe it to the thousands at the venue, as well as the millions watching on telly, to make it a pleasurable experience to watch them.  I’m tired of hearing that the players who go round with a sullen look and depressing demeanour are “great fun” and “very witty” in private.  I don’t care what they’re like in private – I want to enjoy watching these great practitioners of their art and appreciate their skills.

They don’t need to be laughing and joking all the way round – just don’t look like a wet weekend and have the commentators explain their mien away as being due to being introverted.  It’s a hard commercial world out there and golf doesn’t want to lose any of its fans because it’s become a difficult, not to mention slow, watch.  So, for more than one reason, Woburn produced a great winner.

It was exciting to have three English players, defending champion Georgia Hall, local favourite Charley Hull and Cheshire’s dynamic Bronte Law in touch going in to the final round.  Alas, the glorious prospect of a second consecutive home winner slipped away early on and we still only have three home-grown victors since the Women’s British Open became a major back in 2001.  Two of those winners, the aforementioned Georgia Hall and Catriona Matthew, who won in 2009, have received an MBE, Hall in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list of 2018 and Matthew in the New Year’s Honours list of 2010.

These two former Women’s British Open champions join three other female British golfers to be recognised for services to golf by the Queen – Dame Laura Davies, Alison Nicholas (MBE) and Dale Reid (OBE).  Let me state here and now that my own feeling is that you shouldn’t receive an honour for simply doing your job well and for which you are handsomely recompensed anyway.  Be that as it may, can someone please tell me why Karen Stupples, winner of the 2004 Women’s British Open with a commanding performance at Sunningdale, is not on this list?

I suspect that living in the United States means that Karen suffers from “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome but that doesn’t cut it.  In the past I’ve been involved in supporting several applications to the Honours Office and normally a governing body is instrumental in putting together a portfolio of support for the candidate – all very hush-hush as the candidate never knows anything about it in the event of the application being unsuccessful.  Perhaps an application was made for Karen and it was unsuccessful?

Hmm, I doubt it, but if it was – it’s time to do it again, only better.  Come on England Golf – why don’t you take the lead to ensure this glaring oversight is corrected?  You currently spend huge amounts of energy and funding to support players and enable them to achieve their goals – and there’s no higher goal than a major title.  A couple of decades ago Karen had to fight and scrap for every last penny just to be able to go and play.  And, against all the odds, she made it.  She’s a perfect role model for today’s often pampered youngsters.

Please, please prove to us all that you don’t suffer from lamentably short memories.  Stupples, the pride of Kent, deserves a gong if anyone does and you can now add services to broadcasting to her list of achievements.

 

 

 

It did my heart good when a friend at the golf club started waxing lyrical about the Open and how much he’d enjoyed it.  He’d only been to the first day and he loved it, revelling in the atmosphere and the quality of the golf.  His daughter and granddaughter were with him and the latter collected all the autographs she wanted, most of them delivered with a smile.  They watched the rest of the championship avidly on the telly and cheered the smiling, joyful champion at the end.

Yes, you guessed it, they’d been to the AIG Women’s British Open at Woburn and this man, a proper golf nut, was raving about a women’s event.  He’s already planning his trip to Royal Troon next year and perked up even more when he realised that the AIGWBO will be at Royal Porthcawl in 2021.  By then we’ll know more about the unexpected new champion Hinako Shibuno, who’s only 20, was playing in her first major championship and had never before played competitively outside Japan.  She’ll have to learn to cope with the attention, adulation and expectation.  Let’s hope she’ll keep on smiling and bashing her putts up to – and in to the hole.

From what I saw I doubt that Shibuno left a putt short all week on the treacherous, sloping Marquess greens that made many of her fellow competitors a little tentative.  She was unfazed when she four-putted the 3rd green on Sunday, a result of the fearless approach that won her the title.  There’s no word for ‘lag’ in her vocabulary and she bashed the winning birdie putt into the hole with such abandon that we didn’t know whether to laugh or gasp at her audacity – so we did both.  Then we cheered.

“Give her 10 years, she’ll learn,” said Laura Davies, the dame of the gung-ho approach, who moved to the Sky commentary booth after missing the cut on her 39th consecutive appearance in the WBO.  Davies won the 1987 US Women’s Open as a raw youngster, defeating JoAnne Carner and Ayako Okamoto in an 18-hole play-off, not really realising the enormity of her achievement.  She went on to have a wonderful career but never won another Open.  If Shibuno wins half as much, she’ll be doing well but growing up in the limelight is never easy.

Lydia Ko, the former world No 1, was a teenage sensation but the New Zealander seems like a bit of a lost soul at the moment, changing coach, caddie, clubs, pretty well anything that can be changed on what seems to be a regular basis; or perhaps she’s just experimenting, trying this, then that, perhaps the other and learning as she goes along, doing what most of us do when we’re young.

It must be tough when a game that once seemed so easy becomes more of a trial and the titles stop flowing and you start thinking about the cut and are asked time and time again about what’s going wrong.  With luck, the advice has been good – and listened to – and the money has not been frittered away but professional golfers are judged solely on results, on scorecards that don’t list the bad bounces or poor lies or aching wrists or knees or backs.  It is, in many respects, a brutal business and an unrelenting grind.  Lose your edge and you’ll be trampled into the turf by the latest wave of ambitious club wielders, who’ll grasp their trophies and eulogise you, saying how much you inspired them…..

There is, of course, life in golf after the wins dry up and the broadcasters at Woburn included Davies, Trish Johnson, Karen Stupples and Ken Brown, to name just a few.

The Women’s British Open may be relatively young but it has its own identity and the people in charge, namely the R&A, must be careful to avoid the temptation to turn it into a smaller version of The Open.  The WBO has plodded on, forging its own unique history and it shouldn’t forget that just because it’s come into a bit of money and security. Integration is all very well but let’s continue to vive la difference!

Nothing’s perfect of course and slow play continues to be a plague on the game, with even the players starting to get fed up.  It’s a bad habit that has filtered down to those of us who don’t play golf for a living, so have other things to do with our days.  What happened to rounds that took 3 hours or less?  When did we become so slow?  Surely two players playing a match should be able to get round their home course in nearer 3 hours than 4 without feeling remotely rushed?   We don’t have to mimic the pros when it comes to pace of play.

They’re just lucky that golf spectators are a stoic bunch with a talent for amusing themselves in between shots and hardly anyone follows the example of the sometimes irascible, frequently impatient Pat Ward-Thomas, a former golf correspondent of The Guardian, who once complained very loudly when a player took too long to take a shot:  “For God’s sake get a move on….Doesn’t he know that my life is slipping away?”

No diggers in this week’s blog but the photo at the top is the current state of WHGC’s new clubhouse.  There are lots of changes afoot and yesterday we had a bit of a do for Trevor Morris, who’s retiring as head greenkeeper after more than 50 years at the club.  He’s the one third from left, all scrubbed up and accepting the plaudits with admirable panache.  If you’re playing against him, make sure you negotiate plenty of shots – there’s not a blade of grass or a borrow he doesn’t know.

Finally, congrats to the Midlands Vets, including Whittington’s own Sue Spencer and Debbie Warren, who won the Jamboree at Northamptonshire County GC yesterday, finishing ahead of the North, the South and Scotland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I pitched up at Woburn on Wednesday evening for the 1st edition of the AIG Women’s British Open (and the 43rd staging of what is becoming a venerable, veritable, viable championship) and wondered if an old doll like me, now more or less out of the circus-like loop that is professional golf, would still know anybody at all.  And would you believe it!  The first person I saw was Jo Morley, the pride of Sale, a former Solheim Cup player who is still out here caddying such is her devotion to the game.  That made me feel better.

Woburn always makes me nostalgic, thinking of all the happy tournaments spent here with Dai in the days of Alex Hay; this is where most of us got our first sight of immense talents like Karrie Webb (the sublime swing caused immediate double takes) and Annika Sorenstam (with her Dad Tom on the bag); it’s where we yomped after Laura Davies in her pomp as she displayed her Tigeresque powers of recovery from the most unpromising positions:  how wide was the gap?  There wasn’t one…….or at least it was invisible to all but Laura.  Unfortunately, there weren’t too many gaps for DLD (she’s a Dame now you know) in the first round of her 39th consecutive Open appearance yesterday.

I wandered out to have a look at Maria Fassi, one of the new talents, who is from Mexico, so is not eligible to play in the Solheim Cup despite her US college credentials.   Thank goodness for that I thought, then relented and thought what a shame.  Fashionable and feisty, with a habit of giving her colourful skorts/skirts a Palmer-like hitch before belting the ball miles, Fassi looks like very good news indeed.

The golf at Woburn is the sort of game I was once used to watching day in, day out, so I used to know a bit about it but it’s not a game I ever played.  My current version of golf was on display (in public but not to too many people, thanks be) last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  The courses deserved better but it was a delight to play Moortown and Alwoodley, close together, virtually in the middle of Leeds, both designed by Alister MacKenzie of Augusta National fame, for the first time, on our lady captain’s stayaway and Wrexham, for the umpteenth time, as a guest on lady captain’s day.

Moortown hosted the Ryder Cup in 1929 and Samuel Ryder presented George Duncan, the home captain, with the trophy.  It’s unlikely they ever encountered anything quite like Whittington Heath’s Trolley Dollies, who brought the clubhouse down with their immaculately timed appearance and blew away any opposition in the best-turned-out team stakes.

There was another familiar face on the wall at Moortown, looking impossibly young after winning the British Women’s Amateur Strokeplay title in 1983.  Four years later she won the Women’s British Open (sponsored by Weetabix) at St Mellion and ten years after that the US Women’s Open at Pumpkin Ridge in Oregon with one of the finest performances by any European golfer anywhere, ever.  Still.  It was that good.

At Alwoodley, just down the road, which reminded me a bit of Formby with its heather and bunkers and looked sublime in the sunshine (the golf, sadly, was neither sublime nor shining), the honours board provided another chance to remember all our yesterdays and the exploits of old friends and acquaintances.

Honours boards, distinguished or otherwise, are at the heart of a club, documenting its history and should be cherished and celebrated.  If I get a chance to get into the clubhouse, I love looking at them, wherever I go.

At Wrexham on Tuesday, we were lucky because the weather held off bar a bit of a plump as we were playing the 9th.  That meant I had time to indulge in a double Pimms (small measures…) to convince myself that it was summer and that my partner and I could claw back the 3-hole deficit against Delamere Forest, represented by Mo and Ruth.  Since Lesley and I were representing the Rest of the World, we really couldn’t go down to a club pair, however distinguished and, in the end, the match was an honourable half – or tie, as modern parlance would have it.

We all hit quite a few good shots but the jaw-dropping effort of the day was Ruth’s putt on the 3rd, which was so long it was almost extra-terrestrial.  “Oh, no!” I said unsportingly (but honestly) as it approached the hole dead on line at a perfect speed.  And, oh yes, in it went.  Dead solid perfect.  Brilliant.