Have you noticed you simply can’t believe a word you hear, see or read nowadays?

No, not a single thing.  From fake news to the erratic, varying, misleading and contradictory statements emanating from across the Atlantic to……well, to the Madill golf blog.  Yep.  Mea culpa.

Last week I waxed lyrical (well, I hope it was lyrical) about my lovely time at Kooyonga golf club in Australia way back in the seventies when I was on the GB team selected to play in the Commonwealth tournament.  It was a fabulous trip (true);  I met and made lifelong friends (also true);  the venue was superb (again true) and the tournament was played at Kooyonga golf club in Adelaide.  Alas, that last fact is, well, not a fact at all.

My very own personal edition of BBC Verify, namely Gillian Stewart, who was on that team, texted when she’d read the piece.

“Blog fact check!  The Commonwealth tournament was played at Lake Karrinyup in Perth.  We then went on to Royal Adelaide where we played in the Australian Ladies’ Open.  You been on the gin?”

I don’t know if this is all made worse by the fact that I HADN’T been on the gin, or on anything at all, but I did feel slightly better when Gill’s next text read, “Well, it was 47 years ago.”

So, apologies all round – particularly to Kooyonga and Lake Karrinyup.  I got my two special Ks mixed up.  I actually played Kooyonga as a professional some years later and it just goes to prove that time frames can shrink to nothing and become blurred the further away you get from them.  Ah well.

I can’t leave the topic of Australia without lauding that country’s current leading female professional, Perth-born Hannah Green.  Hannah has just won the Australian WPGA Championship, her third victory in her last three outings.  She won in Singapore and then travelled home to Oz and tucked away two more wins – such an enormously difficult thing to do for any athlete competing on home turf.  The attendant pressures from carrying the hopes of a nation do not sit lightly but, with her husband who was caddying by her side, Green was immense, impressive, tough and gracious in victory.

“It feels really amazing,” the 29-year-old said. “Again, it hasn’t really sunk in, but it’s been a really crazy month. I guess it’s been four weeks since I won in Singapore. But it’s been really special to be able to do that in Australia.”

Green has made history by being the first Aussie, man or woman, ever to record three consecutive victories and, as always, she was quick to express gratitude to the great Karrie Webb (with her in the featured picture at the top).

Webb, as many of you will be aware, is the owner of seven majors, 41 titles on the LPGA tour as well as multiple other victories worldwide.  Even when she was at the height of her powers as a player Karrie was creating foundations and scholarships to support the legions of young Australian girls who were hoping to follow in her footsteps.  Hannah was the recipient of one of those scholarships more than a decade ago, receiving financial aid, travel expenses and coaching and mentoring from Webb.  She has never forgotten it.

Karrie, a sporting legend and now 51 years of age, is still very relevant in the modern game, her door always open to any young aspiring golfer seeking mentoring or help.  Talk about giving back.  Bravo the Aussies – and how marvellous to hear that she is once again to captain her country’s golf teams at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

From summer Down Under to the ravages of the weather in the northern hemisphere, I can report that I am now back in Blighty – and very happy to be so.  A nasty weather system and Storm Theresa rolled over the Canaries which meant that for the last three full days of our time in Tenerife we were pretty much confined to our AirBnb.  A state of National Emergency was declared with road closures, rock falls, torrential rain and lightning and it was stressful wondering if we’d actually make it to the airport at all.

Happily we did and my hubby took an inter-island hop over to Gran Canaria where he has met up with some pals for a week’s motorbiking.  So far they’ve just had one wet day and the worst is certainly over but I was a teensy-weensy bit alarmed when he forwarded a photo of how GC had suffered a couple of days before he got there.

This is on one of their biking routes and may give you an idea of what these islands have been through.

Thankfully we didn’t encounter anything like that on our way to the airport but we did see the civic maintenance crews out on the mountain roads clearing away the rock falls and landslips.

And I used to think five footers were scary!

Hannah Green (above with the Australian Open trophy) must be enjoying life at the moment.

The 29-year old Australian has risen to No 7 in the world rankings due, in no small part, to her stellar play over the last two to three weeks.  Now in her ninth year on the LPGA tour, Green recorded her seventh win on that circuit at the HSBC Women’s World Championship which was played three weeks ago at Sentosa golf club in Singapore.  Every win is special but this was made doubly so by the fact that she had her husband Jarryd Felton on the bag.

Jarryd obviously carried out exemplary caddy duties because the duo then travelled together down to Adelaide for Hannah’s next start in the Women’s Australian Open which has featured for many years on the Ladies’ European tour (LET) schedule.

It had seriously rankled with the sports-mad Aussie population that the last time a home player won their national Open was way back in 2014 when Karrie Webb topped the leaderboard.  This year’s edition was at the beautiful Kooyonga golf course and Hannah and Jarryd wowed the home supporters by carving out a one-stroke victory.  The huge media interest and subsequent column inches, photographs and videos about the wife-husband partnership will provide oodles of material for the family album.  A home player lifting his or her national open is second only to winning a major…………….perhaps.

And did I mention Hannah already has one of those – a major?  The 2019 Women’s PGA Championship.  I doubt it’ll be her last.

Ah, Kooyonga.  The Adelaide club holds a special place in my heart.  It was the venue for the 1979 Commonwealth Tournament and my first overseas outing for a British team.  We had a lovely week or so of preparation before the serious golf began – it gave us time to get over the huge journey and to adjust to the significant time difference.  We were assigned members of the home club as caddies, all good players, and we had the benefit of several practice rounds with them.  But, how times have changed!

Back then we, of course, carried yardage books – or rather, notebooks.  I don’t recall my book having too many yardages in it.  It tended to be filled with shorthand notes that would indicate to me, for example, that a good tee shot on the fifth might leave me level with the third banksia tree on the left.  From there, into a one-club wind, a five iron would reach the middle of the green.  Nary a number hit the page.

This may sound mad in this precise, laser-measured era but it worked well enough – up to a point.  My caddy was unable to be present for one of the final practice rounds so I played a few holes solo with much consulting of the notebook and assiduous learning of the borrows on the green taking place.  I was challenged, however, by the unfamiliar array of trees, undergrowth and flora – very foreign to a (not so) wee girl from Norn Iron.  Without my caddy by my side, just which of these exotic-looking things were banksia trees?  Were they those low ones over there or that run of taller ones at the back?  No idea whatsoever.  Cue much relief when my caddy returned and I was a big step closer to having numbers in my book.

I made many friends at Kooyonga, particularly Dulcie Doherty who was the hostess for the British team.  She looked after us so well – nothing was too much trouble and she and I kept in touch from then onwards.  We corresponded for many decades and I looked forward to receiving a lengthy missive each January, filled with news and observations about the grand slam tennis (one of Dulcie’s passions) which takes place at that time of year.  When she celebrated her 80th birthday Dulcie and her husband, Jack, hired a Harley for a day and I still have at home the photo of the two leather-clad octogenarians.

I’m still in Tenerife looking for the sun and obviously can’t access any photos from home so I emailed Gill Stewart to see if she could put her hand on her copy of that 1979 team.  Within a matter of minutes she came up trumps and sent me the photo below.

I believe a copy of this picture was still hanging in the locker room at Kooyonga as recently as five years or so ago, along, I’m sure, with photos of all the competing teams.

Our captain that year was the inimitable Carol Comboy of  Cheshire, which incidentally has just been awarded “County of the Year 2026” at the prestigious England Golf Awards ceremony in Manchester.  The county has been recognised for its  “outstanding commitment to supporting its 95 affiliated clubs and delivering impact at every level of the game”.  Congratulations are in order all round.  Carol, a trailblazer herself, would be so proud of you all.  Keep up the good work.

Finally, many thanks to all of you who took the time and trouble to send congratulations re my honorary membership of the PGA.  It is much appreciated.

I’m back in England next week so my search for the sun will continue there for a while.

It’s never a bad idea to break the back of a UK winter by relocating to warmer climes, if at all possible, and I’m happy to say my next few blogs will be coming to you from the Canary Islands – that is, if any are forthcoming at all!  But, don’t worry – I’ve left the sister back on home turf holding the fort with her customary aplomb.

I’ve never played golf in the Canaries, which is a great pity because the islands, with their wealth of diverse scenery and terrain, are spectacular.  The most famous home-grown golfers, all professional, come from Gran Canaria – and from the same family.  They are Rafael Cabrera Bello, his brother Miguel and his sister, Emma.

Rafa has been a pro for more than twenty years plying his trade mostly on the DP World tour (formerly known as the European tour), hoovering up four victories in the process as well as a much deserved and coveted berth on the 2016 Ryder Cup team.  He was undefeated in his three matches at Hazeltine but it wasn’t enough to stop the Americans rolling to victory.

He’s a veteran of numerous major championship campaigns and his most successful was a tied fourth place finish at the 2017 Open.  In his most productive years on tour (2016-2018), he notched up three top fives in World Golf Championship events, not a bad return for a wee lad who grew up on a lump of volcanic rock where golf courses were in short supply.  That wee lad, however, remains to this day one of the fittest players in the world of professional golf, his passion for surfing keeping him in tip-top shape.

Miguel, the youngest of the three, has played on the Challenge Tour and is the only one of the siblings I haven’t met but I remember Emma from way back in her amateur days when she was representing her country on the international stage.  It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say her amateur career was glittering, littered as it was with numerous European national titles and representative golf.  She eased seamlessly onto the professional stage in 2008, finishing runner-up in the Rookie of the Year race and then had her best year in 2009.

However, after four seasons of playing full time on tour Emma decided to cut back on her appearances and perhaps she had had enough of the endless travelling that living on a small island necessitates.  Undoubtedly European golf  has been fortunate to enjoy the presence of the Cabrera Bello family, a talented and positive addition to our sport.

So, no golf for me in the Canaries but there is the most wonderful hiking to enjoy and as I still work away at regaining full health and fitness post Covid I was determined to heed all advice to take it easy from the off.  First day in we did a two-hour hike, all uphill for the first hour and then an hour downhill coming home.  When younger, a two-hour hike would have been roughly ninety minutes uphill and then a brief thirty minute skip down the mountain.  These days the downhill bit seems to have grown in difficulty and is booby trapped with loose scree and not the same sure-footedness of my youth.  But it was a nice steady start to things and enough for me even though my better half repeated the same hike later in the day.

On the second day I decided it’d be acceptable to upgrade to a three-and-a-half hour hike, up and over a mountain ridge and down into a famously beautiful gorge to a lovely little, “lost” village.  We’d be passing numerous little hamlets along the way, all with little bars and restaurants, so no need to weigh ourselves down with oodles of provisions, although I do always insist on carrying numerous bottles of water.  The plan was to hike there, have a leisurely lunch and get the bus back to where the car was parked.  At the last minute I threw in a couple of bananas – just in case.  Or as the caddies used to write in our yardage books beside a measurement taken in case of a visit to a water hazard – JICYFU.  I’m sure you can work it out.

Well, the last two letters of that acronym could be used perfectly to describe the hike.  All was fine for the first couple of hours – relentlessly straight uphill (the guidebook described this hike as “easy”!) and we arrived at the first recommended bar.  Shut.  Oh, well, never mind.  We hadn’t far to the next village, so we ate our bananas and moved on.

The next village never appeared – and this wasn’t even the one supposed to be lost.  We were expecting a particular turn in the trail after fifteen minutes but after an hour with nary a sign I had to concede we must have missed it……..and our phone now told us we were three and a half hours from where we were supposed to be.  It was well it was mea culpa because otherwise I’d have killed my hubby.

After five and a half hours in total we found a main road and a bus back to near the car with zero sighting of any open bars or cafes.  It wasn’t quite the gentle start I’d envisaged.

I don’t expect anyone who knows us will be surprised at our appalling lack of sense of direction – even with what I felt was sound preparation.  And no, I hadn’t downloaded any maps because, well you see, it was all so straightforward according to the guidebook.  I don’t recall ever having had that much bother negotiating a golf course.

The scenery, however, was truly spectacular.  Pity I wasn’t quite fit enough to enjoy it.

When they announced, a few years ago, that the 2025 Walker Cup was going to be at Cypress Point, one of the world’s greatest – and most scenic – courses, I said to some friends:  “We’ve got to go.”

Sadly, for a variety of reasons, we’re not in California this week.  We’ll be watching and cheering from afar.  I hope the weather’s good, so we can see the Monterey Peninsula in all its glory and understand what all the fuss is about.  If you look up Geoff Shackleford and his blog The Quadilateral, he’ll tell you everything you need to know about what he calls “Alister MacKenzie [yes, the man who went on to craft Augusta National] and Robert Hunter’s masterwork.”

The whole project was set in train by a formidable woman called Marion Hollins, who was a good enough golfer to persuade the architects that it was feasible to play the 16th, with its carry over a large swathe of the Pacific, as a par 3.  Look at the photos and weep!  And remember that these people were working in the late 1920s when most golfers were still playing with hickories.

Looking at a card from 1981, when the Walker Cup was first held at Cypress Point, the course measured 6506 yards.  This year it’s 6620, titchy by today’s length-obsessed standards but it’s a strategist’s dream and if the wind blows – and it’s rare for the wind not to blow – the players will have more than enough challenges to test their modern skills.

Here’s a scorecard from 1981, rooted out from my jumble of  boxes, a disparate collection if ever there was one.  Note that the par was 72.  This year it’s 70, not that it matters a jot in match play.

And here’s this week’s card.

Good luck to all the players, who should be having the week of their golfing lives.  Let’s hope for a close contest and a rare win for GB and I!  Sorry USA but unchallenged dominance isn’t good for any contest.  And we’re tired of BBUs.  (That’s brave but unavailings for the uninitiated.)

I was even more green than I was cabbage looking at the 1981 event, hob-nobbing with golfing royalty – both players and writers.  That’s my excuse for looking so uncomfortable in this snap with Dai (left), then at the Birmingham Post, Raymond Jacobs of the Glasgow Herald and Pat Ward-Thomas, the Guardian’s golf correspondent from 1950-1977 and long-time writer for Country Life.  As you can see, Pat and Raymond adhered to a dress code that was a lot higher up the rankings than mine…

I seem to remember that Dai and I flew in to Seattle and drove down through Oregon to California.  Mount St Helens, a volcano in Washington State, just fifty miles north of Portland, had erupted the year before causing massive destruction and there were still roads that hadn’t been repaired, with big gaping gaps here and there.

The highways were in better nick further south and I was done for speeding in the tiny town of Dorris – sorry, just looked it up and it’s a city of 800 or so souls, the number varies slightly according to the source of information.  It’s not big anyway and the craftily-positioned policeman who clocked me was probably the chief of police.  He was very unsympathetic and was one of the few Americans who didn’t love my accent – or didn’t love it enough to let me off with a ticking off instead of a ticket.

It was getting dark and the sun was setting and I failed to appreciate the severity of the bend where he was parked.  I didn’t endanger any other drivers but admit it wasn’t cornering of the controlled variety.  My contrition didn’t wash and peering at the ticket – yes, I still have it – my speed was estimated at 48 (mph) when the limit was 25….Oh dear.

It got worse when a few weeks later, I was in even more trouble because I hadn’t pitched up at court to pay the fine.  It was 65 dollars, a substantial enough sum in those days and I fear Dad had to bail me out and organise a money order to avoid a criminal record…The letter accompanying the payment was grovelling in the extreme – and immaculately typed, not usual for me.

Not surprisingly, Dorris is not on my list of places to revisit and apparently, according to Wikipedia, the only attractions are “the flagpole and county library”… Must be some flagpole.

Which brings me to flags, a bit of a hot topic hereabouts.  They’ve suddenly started popping up on lampposts – mostly at roundabouts – and because they’re only halfway up, it looks to me as though the whole place is in mourning.  Bloody depressing.

A bit like the mighty Tottenham’s 1-nil loss to Bournemouth last Saturday – at our place too.  It could have been worse – our goalie made some good saves and they missed a sitter or two – so so much for delusions of grandeur and glory.

Anyway, to cheer myself up, I’m including a pic of one of my more successful planting efforts before it’s washed away by the rainstorms that are starting to head in this direction.