The MBE in the headline is a bit of a cheat in the name of what passes for symmetry in this parish and refers to Mary McKenna, a bona fide golfing legend from the Donabate club, just outside Dublin.  She played in nine consecutive Curtis Cups, from 1970 on, is a past president of the ILGU and is a proud Irishwoman who was happy to accept her honorary MBE from the British ambassador in Dublin in 2012  in recognition of her services to golf throughout Britain and Ireland.

McKenna is at this year’s Curtis Cup in Dun Laoghaire doing what she does best, looking after her many friends not just from Ireland but from across the Atlantic and the Irish Sea, leaving centre stage to the latest protagonists, most of whom are playing in the match for the first – and only – time.  If they’re lucky, they’ll already be starting to realise just what a special group they’ve joined even if they’ve set their sights on turning professional and making their fortune.

They’ll meet people like Jeanne Bisgood, Bridget Jackson, Belle Robertson and Angela Bonallack, who’ll bring players like Philomena Garvey, Bunty Smith, Maureen Garrett, Elizabeth Price and Jessie Valentine back to life.  They might want to learn more about Polly Riley, Tish Preuss and Anne Sander Quast Decker Welts, in no particular order – at the last count she’d had twice as many Curtis Cup appearances as husbands.  And if you ask, you’ll find someone who can tell you first hand exactly how good a player Barbara McIntire was.  In fact, if you ask Mrs Robertson, she’ll tell you all about playing with and learning from Tom Morris – or maybe it was Tom Watson……Certainly, she quizzed Seve on his practice routine and has picked up tips from all the greats.  For a golf nut, Dun Laoghaire is the only place to be this weekend.

Sadly, Carol Semple Thompson (CST), McKenna’s American soul sister, whose total of twelve Curtis Cup appearances as a player will surely never be equalled, is not here because her husband Dick is in poor health.  We wish them both well and really miss Dick’s signature stars and stripes stovepipe hat, a look he carried off with aplomb and no little panache.

Legends-in-arms, CST and MMC team captains at   St Andrews in 2008

McKenna and Semple Thompson, competitors to their core, were quintessential team members and lifelong amateurs but they share a bond with two women who chose a different path:  Laura Davies and Michelle Wie.  Davies, a blonde bombshell from Surrey, who confounded the headmaster who told her she’d never make any money out of golf and became a Dame, played in the Curtis Cup at Muirfield in 1984 and Wie, a 14-year old wunderkind from Hawaii, played at Formby in 2004.  They were exceptional talents who stood out from the crowd even then and have continued to do so.

Michelle Wie in Ireland – Killeen Castle 2011 Picture – LET

This week, Davies and Wie are at Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, Seattle, playing in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, hoping to add to their tally of major championships.

Dame Laura Davies with the Solheim Cup, Killeen. Picture – LET.

Davies is now in her 50s and Wie, a wealthy woman the moment she turned professional as a teenager, has had enough injuries to make the strongest heart quail but they are both driven by a passion for the game and the competition.  And that, more than anything, is what links them with Dun Laoghaire this week.

These days women’s amateur golf tends to be a specialist subject, relegated to a nano niche barely visible to the naked eye and who knows quite how the R&A, who have been financial saviours of the Curtis Cup for some years, will cope with their impending merger with the LGU.  An alarming number of ladies have morphed into women but perhaps that’s a subject for another day!

In the meantime, it’s game on.  Good luck to all.  Play away please.

Enid Wilson, who played in the first Curtis Cup match at Wentworth in 1932, was never less than trenchant in her views.   She described the organisation as a shambles and she had a point.  The home side arrived at teatime the day before the match, discovered the foursomes pairings on the way to the 1st tee and, not surprisingly, lost all three matches.   The Americans, much more on the ball, had been practising hard for days, paying particular attention to the alien alternate shot format.

Enid endured what she described as “the worst day I have ever spent on a golf course” and her mood didn’t improve when she came in and found that there was no food left – the spectators had scoffed the lot.  It didn’t bother the visitors because they had made arrangements to eat at their hotel.

There were hordes of spectators, most expecting a home win, not least because their side was led by the incomparable Joyce Wethered, unarguably the best woman golfer in the world.  She was a player so sublime that the legendary Bob Jones said of her:  “She has the best swing, man or woman, that I have ever seen.  I have never played with anyone, man or woman, amateur or professional, who made me feel so utterly outclassed.”

Joyce was captain by default really, by virtue of her status as the best player and she later confessed that it was not a job that suited her, not that anyone had given the position much thought.  She did lead from the front in the singles, defeating Glenna Collett Vare, who was a bit of a superstar herself and won a record six US Women’s Amateur titles but never got the better of Joyce in head to head combat.

The Americans held on to win the match, however, and the Curtis Cup was up and running.  Margaret and Harriot Curtis, who had envisioned such an international match since 1905, when they played in the British championship at Cromer in Norfolk, could at last present their silver Paul Revere bowl, designed “to stimulate friendly rivalry among the women golfers of many lands”.

It was gratefully and graciously received by Marion Hollins, the US captain, non-playing, who is worth a book on her own.  She was a flamboyant character who made – and lost – millions and built the Pasatiempo resort in California.  No shrinking violet she.  Her line-up proved as formidable on grass as on paper, comprising Vare, Opal Hill, Virginia Van Wie, Helen Hicks, Maureen Orcutt, Leona Cheney and Dorothy Higbie.  Their opponents were also of championship-winning calibre:  Wethered, Wanda Morgan, Molly Gourlay, Doris Park, Diana Fishwick, Elsie Corlett, Mrs J B Watson (aka Charlotte Beddows) and Wilson.

Subsequent matches were littered with nerve-wracking contests featuring great names like Pam Barton, Jessie Valentine, Patty Berg, Polly Riley, Bunty Smith (nee Stephens), Jean Donald, Louise Suggs, Philomena Garvey, Angela Bonallack (nee Ward), JoAnne Carner (nee Gunderson), Barbara Mcintyre, Judy Bell, Marley Spearman, Diane Bailey, Nancy Lopez,  Mary McKenna, Carol Semple Thompson, the list goes on and on.  It’s worth looking through the teams of the past, it’s a who’s who of golf.

Wilson watched many a match in her role as the Daily Telegraph’s women’s golf correspondent (where is such an animal these days?)  and the US won most of them.  The GB&I team did well in the 1950s but by the time they went to Prairie Dunes in Kansas in 1986 they were on a 13-match losing streak.  When Enid heard that the team included Belle Robertson, who was competing in her seventh Curtis Cup at the age of 50, McKenna, who was a youngster of 37 but setting a GB&I record of nine consecutive appearances, Jill Thornhill, aged 43 and Vicki Thomas, aged 31, she was scathing:  “It’s a case of bring out your dead.  I think it’s wicked that these people keep on turning out instead of saying, ‘I made such a balls of it the last time, get somebody else in and give them a chance’.  We’ve lost before we even set foot on the plane.”

Enid was not in Kansas to see these cadavers sizzle in the searing heat and win by the unlikely margin of 13-5 but they sent her a souvenir programme, signing themselves “The Living Dead”.

“The Living Dead” – all smiles

Not surprisingly, I’m making no predictions about the outcome at Dun Laoghaire next week (June 10-12).

Vice Captain Elsie Brown and Captain Diane Bailley

Our condolences go to the O’Connor family who have lost the two Christys, Senior and Junior, in the space of a few months this year.  Let’s hope the big holes in their lives will be made less gaping by the love and the laughter and the mountain of memories.

Christy O’Connor,  the original and the best, the king of Knocknacarra, Himself to all and sundry, was one of those natural golfers whose swing was all his own but had been honed by hour upon day upon week upon year of practice.  It was not an accident of birth, he did not saunter up off the beach in Galway and onto the fairways of the world fully formed.  He worked and worked and worked and the hands bled as he unravelled the intricacies of shotmaking and scoring.

The result was a swing and game admired far and wide by the great and the good of the game, from John Jacobs, the renowned teacher to Peter Alliss, a devoted friend and admirer, to Jack Nicklaus.  There were few golfing sages who were not in awe of the O’Connor rhythm and his shot-making skills were the stuff of legend, all the better for being mostly true:  drivers off muddy fairways, 4-woods from the boondocks, beautiful wedges from iffy lies, he had done it all long before Seve, another man with magic in his hands, was a twinkle in any eye.

And Christy kept doing it, well into his 60s and even beyond.  On the practice ground at Royal Dublin, before a seniors’ tournament, Tommy Horton, who won more than his fair share, watched enthralled as O’Connor warmed up.  “He is still a magician,” Horton said.  “Every young pro should go out and watch him.”

One young pro who learned more than most, sometimes the hard way, was Christy’s nephew, Christy Junior.  The celebrated uncle was a hard taskmaster, very hot on discipline but with his help and encouragement Junior and his brothers Sean and Frank learned to make their own way and have their own successes in the game.

Senior played in ten Ryder Cup matches and Junior had his moment of glory at The Belfry in 1989 when he hit that 2-iron at the last.  Senior, whose praise was hard won, told Junior before the match:  “You’re playing fantastic.  You’re hitting the ball magnificently.  Swing the golf club.”  Suitably inspired, Junior did just that and afterwards Senior, impressed and proud, said:  “My God, I can’t believe you made such a full follow through on that shot!”

At a more prosaic, personal level, Himself had time for the most lowly players.  In 2013, when I was ladies’ captain at Whittington Heath in Staffordshire, a group of us had a stayaway in Ireland, playing at The Heath and Royal Dublin, fiefdom of Himself.  On a suitably bright, breezy links day, we battled to the turn, where we were taken aback to see a lone man on the 10th tee.  It was the legend himself, still hitting balls but also keen to chat and check that all was well and we were enjoying ourselves.  He posed for photos, acknowledged that he should have won an Open or two and gave us advice on how to play the back nine.  We did our feeble best but for me at least the day was made.

Whittington’s women take Royal Dublin by storm

[Books used:  Himself, compiled by Seamus Smith; Christy O’Connor his autobiography as told to John Redmond; John Jacobs’ Impact On Golf, by Laddie Lucas.]

While the ripples of the loss of Christy Senior wash over the golfing world many of us will also be thinking back to Christy Junior who died in January of this year.  I had the pleasure of meeting Junior on several occasions and, as well as lighting up any room he walked into, he was always so encouraging to me about my own erratic golf game.  I never actually teed it up with Christy but I did once finish ahead of him in a charity Pro-Am.

For many years the Sean Flanagan Pro-Am has been run at Co Sligo Golf Club raising funds for leukemia research. The Flanagan family’s popularity and contribution to Connacht and Irish golf is widespread and top professionals like Christy were only to happy to lend their support.  So, some 25 years ago I found myself playing in the same event as the great man.  The evening prior to the golf there was a reception for all and sundry which helped raise loads of cash for the charity.  The format was announced – a shotgun start at 11.00am (nothing happens too early in Ireland), teams of four with the two best nett scores to count and an individual professional prize.

All was set – or was it?  Christy – only a handful of years removed from his unforgettable 2-iron against Freddie Couples in the Ryder Cup – was in huge demand and had to be down in Galway at another function by mid- afternoon.  No problem.  Christy and his team would start from the first tee at 9 o’clock and he would have a clear run at things for two hours.  We were then asked to wave him through and speed him on his way to a waiting helicopter which would whisk him off to Galway in time for his next appointment.  What could go wrong?

As it happened, my team were on the 18th when Christy and his team, followed by a gaggle of ardent fans (he was ever the Pied Piper), played through us.  We had a chat.  He was playing rather well, he confessed, in the tricky conditions.  Needed a four at the last for a 65.  Which he got.  Outstanding stuff.  We were on the green when Christy boarded the chopper, still in his spikes, and waved his trademark white cap in farewell.  A quick airborne circuit of the clubhouse and he was off down to Galway secure in the knowledge that his score couldn’t be beaten.

Imagine our surprise at the end of the day when the scoreboard showed two large letters opposite Christy’s name:  DQ.

The tournament officials had omitted to remove a sign from the first tee prior to Christy’s start.   The sign, which was nowhere to be seen by the time of the shotgun start, read:  “Preferred lies in play.”