Spaniard Jon Rahm is looking down on the rest of the golfing world from his lofty new position as World Numero Uno, which he attained by winning Jack’s tournament, the Memorial, at Muirfield Village last Sunday.  His pedigree is not in question.  He is a former amateur world No 1, a position he held for a record-breaking 60 weeks and in the four short years since turning professional he has won ten times, four of those victories coming on the PGA Tour and six on the European Tour.

It still beats me though as to how a player can be world No 1 without a major title to his name.  Rahm has only one top-three finish in the majors and a sprinkling of top tens.  He’s 26 years of age, so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until he wins one of the big ones – but how on earth is he deemed to be the best there is at this precise moment?  Answers on a postcard please………or am I missing something here?

Still, it’s welcome news for Spain, as we hear of the likelihood of a second lockdown in the Barcelona area and this very strange golfing season limps on in unfamiliar fashion.  For all professional sportsmen and women back plying their trade it must be surreal playing without spectators present and I can’t help but think that some may be more affected than others.  Take Rory McIlroy, for instance.  He’s been a little lacklustre since the restart and his customary jauntiness and joie de vivre is, if not entirely absent, definitely subdued.  It is unlikely he has played in any tournament without a sizeable gallery since he was about 15 or 16 years of age.

The energy and reactions of those watching provide the oxygen that enables these mercurial talents to access the rarefied air in which unbelievable performance levels reside.  Without this catalyst a player needs a new skill, not the accustomed one of controlling the rivers of adrenalin flowing through their bodies, but rather one that is more of a self-starting nature – how do you wilfully flood your system with the endorphins and all those goodies that are pivotal to producing your best when there is no gallery to carry you there?  Top performance coaches and mind gurus such as Bob Rotella, Karl Morris et al may find themselves in even greater demand than normal, albeit with a slightly different agenda.

Followers of this blog will be aware of how fond Patricia and I are of Muirfield Village.  In 2009 we were guests of Jack and Barbara Nicklaus when Patricia’s husband Dai was posthumously nominated as one of the journalistic honorees of that year’s tournament.  Even as we were living through it we knew it was a week we would never forget…and so it has proved.  It was made all the more special by the fact that we had previously visited Muirfield Village in 1998 when it was the host venue for the Solheim Cup, on this occasion with both our parents and some very special, close friends.

That was unusual because Mum was totally phobic about flying and only took to the air on a handful of occasions during her long life.  We knocked her out with a good strong charge of Jameson whiskey on the way over the Atlantic, but her system was wise to that trick on the way home.  It was only down to her careful monitoring of every engine change and her superhuman willpower that we managed to stay airborne until arriving safely back home.  Cars and ferries were much more her cup of tea.  It was Mum and Dad’s only trip to the US and when I asked Dad once if he regretted missing out on some great jaunts because of Mum’s fear of flying, he replied matter-of-factly: “No – it’s the only thing that’s kept me solvent!”

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted the players wearing yellow ribbons in their caps on Sunday at the Memorial.  This was in support of a new charity launched by the Nicklauses last year, the “Play Yellow” campaign.  A joint venture with the PGA and the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, the aim is to raise $100 million in five years for pediatric care not covered by insurance programmes.  The “Yellow” part of the title has been important to Jack for the last 50 years or so, but the reason is not widely known.

Back in 1968 Jack had an ardent fan, 10-year old Craig Smith, the son of family friends.  Craig was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer which took his life when he was 13 and Jack spoke with his young fan as often as he could.  After one of his victories Craig told Jack he knew he’d win that day as he was wearing yellow, his favourite – and lucky – colour.  That’s why so much of the archive of Jack shows him in yellow – it’s for Craig, never forgotten.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed last week’s Open for the Ages and watching Jack outlast Tiger Woods round the Old Course.  So what if it was a little predictable that it should come down to being between those two?  The icing on the cake was when Nicklaus tweeted out a picture of himself with his feet up watching the denouement unfold on the final green on the screen in front of him.  He asked:  “Did I just win a 19th major without leaving my couch?”

Yes, you really did, Jack.  So that’s now 19 major titles and 19 second places.  Tidy.

 

 

Last week, my birthday week, was a good one.  My better half and I decided to eschew a few days away in the sun, opting instead to turn the car north and head to the land of his birth.  We had booked a cottage up in the north-west highlands intending to get in a bit of walking although the forecast didn’t look promising.  As we were firing walking boots, waterproofs, woolly hats and mitts into the car he challenged me when he saw I had set ready a pencil golf bag with five clubs in it.

“You taking your clubs?” he queried.  “Well,” I said, “You never know.  You sometimes find lovely little nine-holers in these remote places and it’d be awful to miss out.”  So, when the boot was finally packed I noticed that he, too, had put in a handful of clubs, tucked away in at the back.  The next time we look at those will be when we get back home, I thought.

Our home for the next few days was a tiny little place called Badachro away up, an hour or so south west of Ullapool.  It’s the land of the wild, and usually horizontal, wheelie bin.  If these frisky beasts aren’t securely tethered with ropes and chains to stop them roaming, they are lying quietly down behind dry stone walls out of the gales.  I grew quite fond of them, so much more interesting than our own which do nothing but stand sullenly beside the oil tank, never moving independently or taking on a life of their own.

On our first exploratory foray we went in to the village of Gairloch and couldn’t believe it when we chanced upon Gairloch Golf Club, nine holes of challenging beauty wrapped around a stunning bay with the most beautiful sandy beach.  Gale force winds kept us from getting out our clubs but on our last day there the wind abated and we went to have a game.  It was 1100 on a Sunday morning and we could see a fourball out on the course.  Apart from that it was virgin territory.  It was more than a little nippy and the little clubhouse was unattended and locked up but welcoming notices abounded and we were invited to leave our money in the honesty box.  Cards and pencils were there and everything else you could need, so off we set.

There’s nothing more exhilarating than being transported back to your childhood and long, happy days before you were introduced to the insidious poison of keeping stats and monitoring every performance in search of trophies and success.  There were short holes (91 yards), long ones (526 yards!), blind ones, ones through the bushes and ones along the beach, a veritable pot pourri of delights.  A variance of tees in the second nine provided some different angles and the whole added up to something in the region of four and a half thousand yards.

It set me thinking back to other times I’d put my money in an honesty box at a golf course.  Many moons ago I played Portsalon in north-west Ireland and it only took a couple of coins in those days to allow you to step on to the links.  I’m not even sure there was any sort of a clubhouse in those days.  I think a local hotel was the centre of operations.  Portsalon is now a proper grown-up course hosting national championships but back then it had fences round the greens to keep the sheep off.  Bala, in Wales, is another where, years ago, we put our money in the box but, for the life of me I can’t think that I’ve ever had that experience in England.  Surely there are still some of these remote little gems around somewhere?  Please let me know if you know of any.

And so it’s back to normality, back to being contactable by the outside world and back to the news that Patricia has had the second hole-in-one of her long, not-so-illustrious golf career.  It happened at the 13th hole at Whittington Heath, a hole she announced to me only a matter of months ago was, for her, one of the hardest of the course.  Ringed with bunkers it requires a carrying shot and if she takes a big enough club to fly it all the way she can’t keep it on the green.  No doubt there’ll be a tale there of some sort of pinball wizardry – or perhaps even skill.  In the meantime, I think I may just have found myself a new hobby – finding more gorgeous little “honesty box” golf courses to play.

This golf is a funny ole game.

Long considered to be the domain of predominantly white, middle-aged, middle-class males, it is easy to be disheartened at the seemingly unchanging attitudes and fuddy-duddiness of it all.  Yet, at last, I really do detect the winds of change whispering across the sport.

As I mentioned last week there is the new joint venture between four pillars of the game:  the LPGA and the LET, (the female professional golf sporting bodies in the States and Europe respectively); the governing body of the game, the R&A; and the European Tour.  There appears, finally, to be more than lip service being paid to supporting and boosting the presence of women in golf.  Undoubtedly the R&A’s Women in Golf Charter has been significant and Martin Slumbers, the boss up there in the auld grey toon of St Andrews, has more than once stated his intent to encourage more women and girls to take up the game.

European Tour chief Keith Pelley is also to be congratulated for his vision of having male and female professionals tee it up together.  The European Tour has introduced the mixed GolfSixes team event to its schedule, and last year players from the Ladies European Tour, the Staysure Tour (seniors) and the Challenge Tour competed against each other in the inaugural Jordan Mixed Open.  Small steps you may say but fingers crossed for more giant reverberations similar to the aforementioned new alliance.

And there’s more.  Take the Berkhamsted Trophy, a longstanding top amateur men-only tournament.  The Berkhamsted Golf Club, who have run this event for 60 years, have decided to invite female amateurs to compete alongside their male counterparts, thus creating a world first for elite amateur golf.  Club manager Howard Craft explained their thinking:  “We are not afraid to challenge the status quo here.  There is a lot of talk in golf about embracing change but the pace at which things fundamentally change in the sport can be a little slow.  We are enthusiastic supporters of the R&A’s Women in Golf Charter and what could be a more shining example of this than allowing men and women to play together in competition at the very top of the amateur game, as they naturally do anyway in general play?”

Unsurprisingly, but gratifyingly, this bold move has been universally acclaimed and it came as no surprise to me that the idea was first gently put to the club by none other than Peter McEvoy, one of the greatest amateurs that Great Britain and Ireland has ever produced.  A former winner of the Berkhamsted Trophy, as well as a two-time Amateur champion and much-decorated Walker Cup player and captain, McEvoy had been engaged by the club in his role of course architect to consult on the course.  [No putting in any bunkers, McE! – ed.]  No stranger to thinking outside the box it was McEvoy who introduced the idea of six-hole golf to us 20 years ago and any idea he puts forward merits serious consideration.

“I am thrilled that Berkhamsted Golf Club has made this move, and to have such enthusiastic support from the R&A and Engand Golf is the icing on the cake.  Berkhamsted is a superb test of golf and particularly course management skills.  It will be fascinating to watch men and women compete for the same trophy over 72 holes on such a magnificent golf course.”

The Berkhamsted course winds its bunker-free, yes, repeat, bunker-free, way through glorious Hertfordshire heathland with gorse and heather abounding.  It’s certainly on my list to play in 2020.  We must all support any club with this sort of forward thinking, so, if you can, why don’t you go along anytime from April 2nd to 4th to watch the 61st playing of this venerable trophy?  It is, after all, a rare opportunity to witness a world’s first.

Changing tack a little, I was astounded to learn that Jack Nicklaus turned 80 last Tuesday.  I mentioned it to Patricia and, of course, we immediately started reminiscing about “the greatest golf trip we have ever taken together in our lives”.  For those of you new to the blog that would be a trip in 2009 to Jack’s tournament, the Memorial, at Muirfield Village, to represent Patricia’s late husband Dai, who had been selected as one of the tournament’s journalistic honorees.  Jack and his wife Barbara, whom Patricia had got to know a little bit when writing for The Times for so many years, were gracious hosts and threw their home, tucked away back from the 9th fairway, open to us.  I still have to pinch myself that for that week we were invited “to drop in any time” for coffee or whatever.  And we did.

There was only one day of that glorious week when I could get out on the golf course on my own to watch some golf without any pressure of watching the clock to see when the next appointment or meeting was (all with wonderful people I hasten to add, so it was no hardship).  I was relishing a little time on my own, however and was thrilled when the day dawned bright and sunny.

By this stage I was beginning to run out of clean clothes so decided I could get away with a  top that had seen better days.  But it would be just fine on a VIP-free day and I’d be off out on the course all day….and no one would know me anyway.  I’d casually mentioned to Patricia that I was going out to watch Olazabal and we arranged a meeting place at the end of the day.

Imagine my surprise when at the 6th hole I saw Patricia in a buggy driven by Andy O’Brien, Jack’s go-to man for everything.  And they were obviously looking for me.  Quickly reassured there was nothing amiss at home I let out a sigh of relief only to be told to get into the buggy as we were going straight back to the house to have our photograph taken with the Nicklauses.  The resultant pic sits on Patricia’s desk at home and I cringe every time I see it – I doubt I’ll ever forgive her for setting up that photo opportunity with golfing royalty on that day when I was in one of my wardrobe disasters.

Needless to say, it’s one of Patricia’s favourite photos – it makes her roar every time she looks at it!  A couple of years ago I banned her from reproducing it here in the blog but, hey, life’s about a few laughs – so, here it is!

Aboyne.  A place I’ve known of and been aware of for many decades but had never visited until a couple of days ago, but let’s take a moment to rewind.

It was 1980 and I was playing in the second round of the Women’s British Open Strokeplay Championship at Brancepeth Castle in Durham.  My partner was a shy, quiet Scot from Aboyne named Pam Wright.  And, oh yes, she was only 16 years old.  This precocious kid shot 5 under that day and displayed a talent and all round game I hadn’t seen before.  We had a lovely week together and have been friends ever since despite seeing each other only once in a blue moon.  Pam ended up going to college in Arizona and playing successfully on the LPGA tour, representing Europe three times on the Solheim Cup team and being a vice-captain on a further two occasions.  She is now back in Arizona and a successful teaching pro but it was Pam who put Aboyne on the map for me all those years ago.

Mind you, the golfing genes were spectacularly good.  Pam’s Dad Innes was the pro at Aboyne for many years having built up a tidy record himself.  He represented Scotland at boys and full international level, was a Walker Cup reserve and played in a couple of Open Championships.  Her Mum Janette was a four-time Scottish champion, four-time Curtis Cup player and winner of a host of accolades.  With that background it really would have been careless of Pam and her brother Innes if they hadn’t been able to swing a club!

And so it was that Gillian Stewart, Mary McKenna, Sandra “I’m from Nairn” Ross and I arrived at Aboyne ready to play the other day.  If you haven’t been, do go if you get the chance.  The welcome is warm and friendly and the course, particularly the back nine, is terrific, with the most spectacular scenery.  There are lovely photographs of Innes and Janette on the wall going up the stairs to the bar with their impressive list of golfing achievements itemised in detail.  Our only disappointment was there was no history or record anywhere of Pam’s achievements.  We did find one photo in the locker room but nothing to celebrate Aboyne’s most famous player.  A member who is a three-time Solheim Cup player is a rare beast for any club and is of huge interest to any visitor.  Hmm, maybe time for an extension and a few spare walls ready to be filled with photos of Pam and her record?

Another candidate for space on Pam’s wall was sharing the photo with her down in the locker room – Julie Forbes.  Ah, Forbsey – another high-achieving Aboyne player, universally popular in the amateur and professional ranks alike and mere mention of her name always brought delighted smiles to many faces.  Her brother Stevie caddied for me for a couple of years on tour – at least he did until he wrote off my sponsored car whilst travelling from one tournament to another in Europe – but that’s another story!  Another brother Colin is head greenkeeper at Aboyne and obviously resoundingly good at his job, if the condition of the course is anything to go by.  Gary, a third brother, is pro at Murcar, I believe, so the golfing genes are strong in this family too.

The air at Aboyne is obviously conducive to producing top-class female players.  As we played the front nine we looked across to the practice ground and saw a couple of players hard at work.  Kimberley Beveridge is the current Scottish champion and Shannon McWilliam is bidding for a second consecutive Curtis Cup cap next year.  They are following in the inspiring footsteps of these strong, resourceful female players who have been such ambassadors for their club worldwide – I’m confident they will continue the trend.

We ended our day by calling in at Janette’s home for a cup of tea and a much-needed catch up – we had last seen her, with Pam, at the 2012 Curtis Cup at Nairn.  I sent the picture below to Pam in Arizona and, time difference notwithstanding, she was on the phone to her Mum in a jiffy so we all had the added bonus of a chat with her.  The inter-connections in golf are many and varied and the years have a habit of rolling away no matter how seldom our paths cross.

For me it was the perfect end to the day that I finally made my acquaintance with Aboyne.