Well, that’s another Solheim Cup in the books and another win for Europe which means that after twenty iterations of this contest the scoreboard reads:  eleven wins to the USA, eight wins to Europe and one match halved.  I’ve attended ten of the matches in some capacity or other, witnessing five wins for Europe and five for the US – and, let me tell you, winning is so, so much more fun.

This year I was accepted into the ranks of a feisty group of golfers from the sister’s club Whittington Heath and eight of us, including the sister, made the trip to Bernardus golf club in s’Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) in the Netherlands.

Living the experience of the rank and file golf fan makes me appreciate so much more the rather privileged and easier existence I’ve experienced for most of my life by being inside the ropes at golf tournaments.  It put me in mind of Peter Alliss’s avowal that golf fans are the best in the world.  They walk miles up hill and down dale to watch their favourites,  held back by nothing more than a skinny bit of rope.  They’re instructed to stand still, keep moving, cross here, keep quiet, cheer louder – and don’t dare complain when the TV cameramen plonk themselves directly in front of you at a green, completely blocking your view.

The golf fan queues for everything – transport in and out of the tournament sites;  the loos;  food and drink;  and when they can walk no longer seats in the grandstands.  The next day they get up and do it all again – and they pay through the nose for it all.

Both sets of fans are generally affable, always long-suffering, often opinionated, and at the Solheim Cup they do a nice line in supporters’ fancy dress – always with a twist of humour.  On the Saturday morning I was on the 06.04 train from Eindhoven to Den Bosch and it was standing room only.  There was a party of eight women, none of whom had got a seat, dressed from head to toe in yellow and blue and looking every inch the European supporters they were.  They hadn’t quite completed their outfits though – and suddenly eight wigs were produced, four yellow and four blue, followed by numerous hairbrushes and styling implements.  The twenty-minute journey became an entertaining, hilarious scenario as they helped each other sort out their patriotic hairdos to their satisfaction.  Satisfied with their final look, they boarded a shuttle bus for the half-hour ride to the course and the start of eleven hours of tramping and singing and supporting.

The American fans were obviously outnumbered but enjoyed all the banter, entering equally eagerly into the spirit of outrageous dressing-up.  As with their European counterparts, they knew with certainty what every pairing should be and in which order for the best possible result of each session.  And, as I’ve said before, and had reinforced last week, the best commentary always comes from outside the ropes.

Hats off to the lot of them.

This being Holland bikes were the preferred mode of transport in and out of the venue for many of the fans and workers at the tournament.  One of the marshals, who lived sixty kilometres away and who cycled in each morning for his shift and then rode home, was a little nonplussed by our admiration.  He brushed away any exclamations of surprise (and envy) by saying with a shrug,  “It’s a nice ride – and we’re used to it.”  I’m sure he won’t mind me saying he wasn’t in the first flush of youth either.

Meanwhile, the important business of the week was taking place inside the ropes.  After the frenetic goings-on on the first tee of walk-on music, dancing, singing and chanting, the players on each team somehow managed, for the most part, to wrap themselves in an oasis of concentrated calm.  They succeeded in accessing the ability to deliver quality golf shots under extreme pressure – particularly, I thought, in the foursomes, that most difficult and awkward of formats.  The course was set up to deliver exciting matchplay golf and it allowed the courageous, accurate player to prosper.  The testing pin positions demanded precision short-iron play and well-executed European shots prompted rolling waves of support to echo round the property.

There were certainly moments that will figure on every highlight reel going forward:  Carlota Ciganda rolling in her putt across the last green in the final Friday fourball to square the match against the mighty Nelly Korda and Lauren Coughlin;  Maja Stark holing her second shot at the first in Saturday’s fourballs;  Jennifer Kupcho’s outrageous putts on the 17th and 18th greens (some 30 yards and 30 feet respectively) on Saturday evening.

There were also some quiet personal achievements.  Linn Grant played four, won four, happily reversing her results in the 2024 match;  America’s Alison Lee also played four, won four, with the highlight a scintillating comeback from four down in her singles against Esther Henseleit;  with her foursomes win on Saturday morning Leona Maguire broke the record for the fastest to ten wins in terms of matches played.  The previous record was jointly held by Dottie Pepper and Nelly Korda who required fifteen matches to reach the ten-point mark.  Leona required only fourteen.

Overall it was a wonderful sporting contest, conducted in the proper manner.  No one who knows anything about women’s golf would pretend that here were the best two dozen women golfers in the world.  Quite patently the powerbase lies in the east in Thailand and Korea and I would even go so far as to include Japan.  I certainly have seen vastly superior Solheim Cup teams in the past but that doesn’t take away from the spectacle of seriously good sporting competition that we enjoyed at Bernardus.

It’s time, however, to give those Korean, Thai and Japanese players a proper global matchplay platform upon which to display their skills.  Change the drab, uninteresting, one-sided Presidents Cup (which no one cares about) into two mixed teams, six men, six women, America versus the Internationals.  Now, that I would eagerly watch.

Finally, to Europe and to Anna Nordqvist, very well done indeed.  It was a well-deserved victory, marvellous to witness and a pleasure to experience in the company of those Whittington Heath members.

Thanks one and all.

 

 

 

 

It’s the morning after the Sunday of the AIG Women’s Open as I write this and I can’t help but wonder how on earth Lydia Ko is feeling as she opens her eyes and remembers she has just won a major round the Old Course at St Andrews.

It’s been a  fairytale fortnight for the Kiwi with a gold medal-winning performance at the Olympics in Paris and now this, her third major title coming more than eight years after her last.  She described these past few weeks as “Cinderella-like” which should serve as a reminder to us all that Cinderella spent a lot of time unseen and unappreciated, methodically working through her chores with no reward.

Hard work and persistence do get rewarded in the end in all good fairytales, however, and Lydia has navigated the difficult waters of unprecedented early success (she was the youngest-ever world No 1 at a mere seventeen years of age) followed by a relatively barren period with no majors to her name.  Her resilience, perseverance and steadfastness then enabled the slow steady climb to the realisation of all her dreams – that Olympic gold, entry into the LPGA Hall of Fame and her third major.

The firsts keep coming for her – she’s the first New Zealander to win the Women’s Open;  the first player to win both the Smyth Salver for the low amateur, which she did in 2013, and then the title itself at the same venue, in this case on arguably the most famous course in the world.  And she’ll be the first champion to defend her title in Wales, which she will do next year when the championship moves to glorious Royal Porthcawl.  It’ll be Lydia’s first time to visit Wales as well, which she is looking forward to, and all this chat reassures me that her retirement from the game may be slightly further away than I previously thought.  Thank goodness for that.  She’s very special and the longer she graces the fairways of this world the better our game will be.

The winner of the aforementioned Smyth Salver, which is presented to the low amateur each year, was England’s Lottie Woad.  What a thrilling moment for her to stand beside Lydia at the prize presentation and realise that eleven years ago Lydia was receiving that very same salver.  Lottie must be hoping and thinking that she has what it takes to win the big prize sometime in the next decade or so.

At 20 years of age she is already building her own impressive resume.  In April of this year she was the first European to win the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and now she has snared the low amateur prize on another storied venue.  Lottie entered the final round five shots ahead of her nearest challenger, Spain’s Julia Lopez Ramirez, which you may have thought would provide her with a comfortable day.  Not so.  Out several hours ahead of Lottie, Julia must have frightened the life out of the Englishwoman when she birdied five out of her first ten holes.  The difficult, swirling conditions on the back nine derailed the Spanish challenge and Lotte took the salver by four shots, signing off at the last with a birdie and a creditable tied tenth finish in a major.

So, now it’s on to the Curtis Cup for Lottie…..and for this humble blog and many of its friends.

Over the course of the last week the two teams contesting the Cup have descended on the wonderful heathland venue that is Sunningdale and on the day this blog is posted Lottie will proudly lead out her Great Britain and Ireland teammates in the greatest women’s amateur golf event of them all.

Past players from both sides of the Atlantic are present, relishing their reunion and reaffirming friendships made way back when.  There have been friendly contests – the Supporters’ Saucer and the Past Players’ match;  there have been lunches and dinners and drinks receptions and lots of chat, reminiscing and catching up.

Hopefully, the following snaps will give a flavour of proceedings so far.

 

The week is already a colossal success from the point of view of us oldies and watching the skill and athletic play of the two teams, always a joy and a delight, is still ahead of us.  What a privilege to be even a small part of it all.

 

 

I know where I wish to visit next and which golf course I’d like to play.  Yes, it’s time to think of hitting the M6 and going north again to Scotland, this time to the Kingdom of Fife and Dumbarnie Links.

Dumbarnie Links, a handful of miles from St Andrews, near Leven, has been open for a whole 14 months so must surely qualify as the UK’s newest links course.  It looks like it’s been there for years and last week it played host to the Trust Golf Women’s Scottish Open. The television pictures really did paint a thousand words and it was certainly to the liking of 34-year old American Ryann O’Toole, who won for the first time in her professional career.  A co-sanctioned Ladies’ European Tour (LET) and Ladies’ Professional Golf Association (LPGA) event, it was O’Toole’s 228th start as an LPGA Tour player but the first time she had led after 54 holes and only the second time time she’d played in the final group in the final round.

We get accustomed to seeing a smiling face and tears of joy on a Sunday at the end of a tournament but very nearly all of these players have an interesting backstory.  Ryann’s first year on tour was 2011 when she was plucked from relative obscurity by Rosie Jones, the US Solheim Cup team captain, who awarded her one of her captain’s picks.  Even the Americans didn’t know this rookie.  It looked like they’d found a potential regular in the side when she played in four out of the five matches, recording two wins and two halves.  Her half in the singles cut deep however.  When bad weather led to a suspension of play the American was two up and two to go on Europe’s Caroline Hedwall.  When play resumed Europe won the closing two holes and halved that match, ultimately winning the trophy by the slenderest of margins.  It was a long time before we heard of Ryann O’Toole again.

The intervening years saw her lose her card, fight back and change coaches and it was when she started to work with the uber-talented Jorge Parada in 2014 that she felt she could turn things around.  Her final round of 64 on Sunday was as close to flawless as it is possible to be and despite admitting she’d been very nervous on the Saturday evening there was no trace of that the next day.  She even stopped to pat a spectating dog on her way to the 72nd tee.

A closing par and a cosy three-shot victory was achieved and then followed a winner’s speech as eloquent as her golf had been elegant.  The last decade, the hours spent practising, the grind, the constant travel were all worth it, she said, “for this moment”.

The instant she finished she FaceTimed her Mum, who had been nervously watching at home back in California.  I’m not sure Mother O’Toole was awfully impressed with a Scottish links, declaring that Ryann looked like she’d “been playing on the moon!”  Just wait, Mum, until you see Carnoustie!

Ah, Carnoustie – often considered the most ferocious, the most unforgiving of all major championship venues.  This week it’s the test that faces the women in the AIG Women’s Open, the last of the five majors in the annual female golf calendar.  Someone will have gone to bed two nights ago little realising they are about to follow in the footsteps of the greats.

Fair to say, it’s a pretty exclusive club, including Ben Hogan, who won in 1953, his only appearance in the Open, Gary Player who won in 1968 and in 1975 it was Tom Watson winning on his Open debut, beating Jack Newton in the 18-hole play-off. Almost a quarter of a century later, in 1999, Paul Lawrie realised every little Scottish boy’s dream, winning the greatest prize of all on home turf.  Padraig Harrington opened the floodgates to Irish major championship success with his extra holes win over Sergio Garcia in 2007 and in 2011 it was the incomparable Yani Tseng who stormed to victory, successfully defending her Women’s Open title procured the previous year at Royal Birkdale.  Finally, 2018 saw Francesco Molinari hold off Tiger Woods, amongst others, to etch his name on the oldest trophy in the world, the first Italian to do so.

Carnoustie is not for the faint-hearted and it is more than fitting that the best women players in the world get to tee it up at one of the most exacting venues.  It gives credibility to the women’s game and it gives a fitting stage to these athletes.  Cool, drizzly weather with a bit of a breeze is the forecast – foreign conditions indeed for many of the LPGA players accustomed to following the sun.

And for anxious Mums watching on from California it might just look exactly like the players are on the moon.

Well, chalk one up for the oldies!  What an amazing win of Phil Mickelson’s at Kiawah Island’s Ocean course!

If you’re at a loss as to what I’m talking about you need to get out more.  Phil Mickelson won his sixth major and his second US PGA Championship at the weekend, thus becoming the oldest man to hoist one of the major trophies.  He’s a handful of days away from his 51st birthday but he triumphed over a field of world-class players many of whom are half his age.

I have to confess I didn’t think he’d do it – I suspected he would falter and be run over by legions of players passing him as his normal, all-out-attack game started to explore the outer reaches of Pete Dye’s daunting creation.  Not a bit of it!  This was uber-cool Phil, hidden away behind the dark shades and dressed daily in mostly dark colours like a gunslinger in the wild west.

He hadn’t been in contention in a major since that phenomenal 2016 Open Championship shoot-out with Henrik Stenson which the latter won for his finest moment in the game.  Five years removed from that kind of pressure is a long time in sport and, familiar though it may be, it isn’t a given you can conjure up the resilience of your younger self and produce your best under the most exacting conditions.

But Phil had trained himself for this moment.  In the last few years he has worked harder physically so as to be able to practise longer.  He identified and dealt with the problem of a lack of focus by taking up meditation and playing more holes – often 36 and sometimes 45 – to help improve his ability to concentrate and think clearly over a longer period of time.  Being physically and mentally sharper helped him deal with everything a major throws at you and although he was always recognisable as the Mickelson we’ve known for years there was an added dimension to him last week as well.

Even a last-minute glitch on Sunday didn’t derail him.  With his last full shot on the practice range he cracked the face of his much-loved 1-iron and Tim had to scurry off to put a replacement in the bag, a 4-wood, a club he hadn’t used all week.  That would have unsettled most players but Phil never faltered.

He maintained his composure; he was never flustered; the rhythm of his golf swing was exceptional; his walk was measured and unhurried even when he was threatened with being overrun by a tsunami of adoring fans down the last fairway; he was fully in control of all the controllables – his emotions, his thinking, his choices, his decisions.  That is the epitome of being on top of your game.  Mastery of these skills allowed him to access his best physical and technical performance and in this instance that was good enough to see off the opposition.

Over the years I’ve had ample opportunity to walk with Mickelson, commentate on his golf and interview him afterwards.  When I first started working in the States some 15 years ago, he wasn’t a particular favourite of mine – too cheesy, I thought.  A little too superficial, perhaps.

It didn’t take long for my ill-judged and preconceived notions to be blown out of the water.  Phil was consistent in his behaviour time after time.  Whenever he came to do his media work, he would accord each question due consideration and answer to the best of his ability.  If he had messed up the final few holes of a round and lost his cool, he would send Jim “Bones” McKay, his caddy, out from the recorder’s office for a sandwich and he’d remain in there having his lunch and waiting till he’d regained his cool.  Only then would he come out to do interviews and answer the questions of the media.

It was a very professional approach and he managed it marvellously for the majority of his career.

Where he really excelled, however, was with his interaction with the fans and the hours he spent each week signing autographs, for youngsters in particular.  I witnessed it time after time, tucked away out of view of the television cameras – there would be Phil and a long line of kids and Phil stayed there till there was no longer a line.  He has no equal in this regard and for me it was all the more impressive that it was done quietly, far away from the public’s gaze.  He even learned to sign his name in Chinese to satisfy the demand for his signature when he plays out there.

For me, however, one of his trump cards this week was the dark glasses.  For years Phil has been the consummate entertainer, connecting and interacting with the fans and too often we have seen his emotional barometer react and sync itself to the up-and-down responses and emotional rollercoaster of his fans.  Not this time.  Sure, he reacted to them, acknowledging their applause with his slightly goofy grin and trademark thumbs-up gesture, but this time he kept them at arm’s length mentally, not identifying with them.  He wasn’t influenced by them nor deflected from his supreme focus on the task at hand.  On this occasion this cool remove and isolation from the emotion around him was hidden behind the shades, yet his fans still felt included in their man’s tilt at history.

It was clinical mastery of achieving top sporting performance and a joy to witness.

So, now, even before the dust has time to settle, the inevitable questions have started.  Can he win the US Open at Torrey Pines next month, the one major still to elude him?  That would make him only the sixth player to achieve the Career Grand Slam.  How many more majors can he add to his tally of six?

Well, I, for one, refuse to get caught up in what may or may not happen.  I prefer to sit back, ponder and enjoy having witnessed an historic, wonderful and inspiring golfing performance by a very special player.  It was reputed he was offered $100 million by the Saudis to join the alternative golf tour they are attempting to set up.  The price has just gone up.