It’s 20 years since Tiger Woods wowed the world by winning the Masters by miles and turned things upside down:  a black man winning a golf tournament in Georgia with a white man on the bag.  Hallelujah.  It’s hard to exaggerate how important that was to an awful lot of people.  And yet it’s still hard to persuade people that golf is a mixed game in every respect, a game for everyone whatever their race, religion or athleticism (or lack of it).  Of course, the most fraught mix of all – women and men – is still not entirely resolved everywhere, so golf remains a work in progress.  Wouldn’t it be boring if everything were perfect?!

The young Tiger was far from perfect on his opening nine holes at Augusta in 1997 and went out in 40.  Maureen, who’d been walking with him, decided that he’d been over-hyped and piddled off to watch someone else.  It was not one of her better decisions.  Tiger creamed a 2-iron (remember those?) off the 10th tee to set up his first birdie of the tournament and he was off and running, running away from everyone, for the next ten years and more.  In the Guardian last Saturday, Richard Williams, himself a master of his craft, recalled that shot as the crucial moment and Tiger agreed in his new book Unprecedented, The Masters and Me, written with Lorne Rubinstein.

I think that was the year there was no floral colour at Augusta – nature is still a law unto itself – and the place stank because of the stuff that had been put down to give the appearance of a little bit of green.  Fortunately, TV doesn’t bother with scent but conditions were not easy and one of my all-time favourite Tiger shots was his third into the 15th, not sure which round.  I think he’d driven into the trees and had to poke the ball out, so he had a very tricky pitch from a severe downhill lie, off a less than perfect surface, over the water to that hideously tilted green.  He caught the ball just right and because of the slope he ended on one leg and you knew from the way he held the pose that he loved the shot.

When asked about it afterwards, he couldn’t disguise his delight, dropped his dead bat responses and enthused with the passion of a man who just loves what he does (facing the press excepted!)  The one sure way to get Tiger to take off  his mask was to ask about a particular shot and then he couldn’t help himself:  he’d forget the sarcasm and the suspicion and reveal a bit of the person.

Tiger may or may not be at Augusta this year.  Let’s hope he goes to the champions’ dinner and enjoys the chat and the camaraderie, promotes the book and celebrates his past triumphs, despite yearning to be out there competing.  The sneaking suspicion is that his body has had it, that he can no longer compete at the top level, no matter how strong his will but who knows?  We’ll find out in the fullness of time.

My favourite Masters memories include watching Seve intimidate a rookie rules official at the 10th into giving him a free drop, only for his playing partner Ken Green to wander over and object.  Michael Bonallack, then secretary of the R&A and a rules man of some authority, was summoned, ambled across the fairway, barely paused in his stride, took one look, said, “Play it Seve,” and carried on.  Seve played it.

Then there was the clandestine little ceremony, further into the trees a little nearer the 10th green, as we scattered a friend’s ashes in a lovely spot framed by dogwood, with a good view of the green and some glorious azaleas (the weather had been kind that year and the place was blooming).  Officially, we were not allowed to do such a thing but who knows how many people are dotted about a very special place, enjoying the peace and quiet, interrupted only for a few, heady days every April?

I’ve played Augusta National only once and made two pars, at the 3rd and the 16th, which was better than I expected and probably more than I deserved.  The greens, even at pre-tournament speeds and with advice from a local caddy, were not for the technically challenged!  We also played the par 3 course, which was delightful and had lunch in the clubhouse.  Eternal thanks to Billy Morris, who was our host.

John Redmond, who worked for the Irish Press, now defunct, was less fortunate.  On his only trip to the Masters, he did have the luck to be drawn out of the hat to play the course on the Monday after the event but it had been manky weather all week and I remember waking up in the middle of the night on Sunday/Monday, hearing the rain hammering down and thinking “Oops”.  Sure enough, the course had had enough and Monday’s golf was off.  Bummer. Not sure that John ever has had a chance to play.

If you get the chance, do go.  It’s not as perfect as it’s painted – how could it be? – but it’s worth the detour.

 

 

 

I always loved going to Mission Hills for the Dinah Shore.  The very best golfers in the world were there and everything about it was glamorous, a bit exotic even, if you came from Portstewart.  California, Palm Springs (well, Rancho Mirage technically but even so), roads named after film stars even I’d heard of, hospitals named after POTUSes and their spouses, wow, wow, wow.

Then there was Dinah, a proper star, who’d had her own TV show, was a mate of Frank Sinatra and was truly mega.  The pro-ams (in the plural) were testament to her pulling power, choc-a-bloc with top, top names (the double top is obligatory these days isn’t it?) of stage, screen, sport and business.  The tournament oozed class and from the start offered money that the women of the LPGA could barely believe.  The first purse, in 1972, was $110,000, with the winner earning $20,050.  To put that in perspective, the average tournament purse in those days was $32,000.  The Dinah lifted the women golfers into the sporting stratosphere.

The man behind this influx of cash and charisma was David Foster, CEO of Colgate-Palmolive, a keen and competent golfer, a member at Sunningdale and a shrewd promoter of his products.  He persuaded Dinah, a tennis player, to turn to golf and she threw herself into her new role with such enthusiasm that she eventually became an honorary member of the LPGA Hall of Fame.  Her name is no longer in the title but the course is named after her, there’s a walk of champions and a statue, so, with luck, the tour will never forget her contribution to its growth and the women’s game as a whole.  If you get the chance, speak to Judy Rankin, Jan Stephenson, Jane Blalock, Helen Alfredsson, Amy Alcott, Kathy Whitworth, Laura Davies, Nancy Lopez, Juli Inkster, any number of players now of a certain age or beyond, about Dinah.

The Dinah in many ways was the women’s Masters, the first major of the season, played at the same course every year, with a limited, mostly elite field.  From the very beginning it was a big event and it was designated a major in 1983 (although the champions prior to that were not similarly elevated, women perhaps being more pernickety than men in such matters.   See The Open, US Open, USPGA and Masters.)  Over the years, however, an event that set the standard in every way lost some of its lustre and started trading on past glories.  For this observer at least, penny-pinching was the phrase that came to mind.  The purse started lagging behind that of the other majors and, I’m sorry to say, it still is, according to the figures I’ve seen.

The ANA Inspiration, as the Dinah is now, has lots of initiatives that are designed to inspire, including the very important one of providing more varied, sometimes healthier, certainly more interesting food for the fans.

I’d mark that down as inspirational and I’m all in favour of innovation but important as the peripherals are, the core is the golf and if you’re a major, you have to behave like one and pay out accordingly.  The argument that golfers are paid too much and purses are ridiculous is for another day.  If you’re a major, your purse has to reflect that status and, frankly, in that regard, the ANA is neglecting its duty.

The current offering, according to the LPGA website, is a less than inspirational $2,700,000.  The KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, the Ricoh Women’s British Open and the Evian are all well over $3,000,000 and the US Women’s Open (which swings to a different beat) is a whopping $5,000,000.  If the ANA, which starts next week, is to live up to its name and be true to the tournament’s traditions, it has to do what the players always do when there’s a major about and up its game.

Upping the purse from $2.6 million last year to $2.7 this is not just a joke, it’s an insult.  It’s saying that women are second-class golfing citizens who should be grateful for what they’re given.  No doubt they are and the best women golfers in the world are not going to stay away but if you’re a tournament with delusions of grandeur, with aspirations to be a proper major and a penchant for promoting yourself as inspirational, you have to show that you mean it.

And in this day and age, as in any other, that means putting your money where your mouth is.

Thursday night is draw night at Whittington Heath Golf Club and as I left the club a few hours ago, on a dark and stormy night, without any winnings (although my dancing partner was £150 richer!), I started thinking about Australia.  Not only is it likely to be warmer there but there’s some high-quality women’s golf going on, with more to come in the next couple of weeks.

Trouble is, looking at the schedules, down under is all asunder.  The words that spring to mind, to an observer who is much more distant than she once was, are the usual ones:  money (or the lack thereof), politics, turf wars, egos undoubtedly.  It’s all too bitty and split when the women would surely benefit from everything being better organised and connected, with at least a suggestion of being thought through and joined up.  Ah well, cloud cuckoo land is as good a place as any to go walkabout.

The current tournament, the RACV Gold Coast Challenge at Royal Pines, is under the auspices of the ALPG (Australian Ladies Professional Golf), so it’s fairly small beer but it does at least have Aditi Ashok, the young Indian who is showing signs of being a proper player, leading the way.  She led after a hot and humid first round, alongside local amateur Karis Davidson, who has the example of fellow Queenslanders like Karrie Webb, Greg Norman, Wayne Grady, Corinne Dibnah and Ian Baker-Finch, to mention just a few of a long, distinguished line, to inspire her.  Michele Thomson, a Scot from Aberdeen, where conditions tend to be different, completed the leading trio.

Royal Pines used to be a fixture on the LET (Ladies European Tour) schedule, with sizeable, enthusiastic crowds following the likes of Webb, Laura Davies and Japan’s Ai Miyazato but it’s no longer an LET event, for whatever reason.

The LET season starts next week, in Australia, at 13th Beach Golf Links at Barwon Heads on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, not too far from Melbourne.  The event is the Oates Vic Open and is also sanctioned by the ALPG and the PGA Tour of Australasia, with the women and men playing in alternate groups on the same courses for equal prize money.  Well done Golf Victoria!  Let’s hope there’s some good, entertaining golf and the event becomes a fixture.

The next official LET tournament will be at Mission Hills in China in March, starting on St Patrick’s Day but the next event in Australia will be in two weeks’ time:  the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open at Royal Adelaide, billed as the second event of 2017 on the (US) LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) Tour.  It was also on the LPGA schedule last year but it was No 2 on the LET (after the ISPS Handa New Zealand Women’s Open, which has also disappeared from the European list but pops up on the LPGA list at the end of September, with a new sponsor.)  I hope you’re keeping up!  Even allowing for complications, contractual or otherwise, something, somewhere, is not quite right.

If Europe, which has been the proving ground for so many players from the southern hemisphere over many years, is unable to keep the Australian and New Zealand Opens on its schedule, shouldn’t the alarm bells start ringing?  Perhaps the bell tolls for the LET.  Or perhaps not.  It’s kept going against the odds since its inception, so who am I to worry about its future?!

There was good news from the Bahamas, where Mel Reid finished in a tie for 13th in the first event of her first full season on the LPGA Tour.  Keep an eye on her this season.  She’s been through a lot but is still standing, still swinging and still smiling.  Professional sport is a wonderful way of earning a living if you’re good enough and keep well but it is unrelenting and can be very cruel.  It’s also addictive and very seductive, constantly whispering saccharine nothings in your ear.

Brandie Burton, once the next big thing in American women’s golf, won a mere five titles, though two of those were majors, the du Maurier Classic (now defunct) in 1993 (when she won three times) and 1998.  The Californian played on five Solheim Cup teams but her career was blighted by injury and she retired in 2010 and essentially gave up golf until last year.  Wrist trouble, four back surgeries and a neck fusion will do that to you.

Burton is now 45 and eligible for the Legends Tour, so she’s venturing back onto the fairways and will be making her debut as a veteran in Arizona next month.  Welcome back and good luck.  Enjoy.

 

 

An awful lot of water has passed under the bridge since Evian appeared on the women’s golf scene in 1994 with the intention of promoting water and the town it came from via the medium of a golf tournament played by women.  Girl golfers, juniors in general, football, iconic, eccentric hats (presented to the champion) and charity were also part of the mix.  Evian, a key part of the Danone empire of Franck Riboud, even sponsored the women’s European Tour briefly but that proved uncontrollable, unsustainable and unsatisfactory and Riboud decided to concentrate on turning the Evian Masters into the best tournament in the world.

A determined man, he’s come close and The Evian Championship is now in its 4th year as a major championship, one of five in the women’s game.  Even in the days when the field was limited and there was no cut, it was a special event in a special, spectacular place.  The players, usually in the company of family and friends, were so spoiled and pampered that they found it hard to concentrate on the job in hand.  High above Lake Geneva, with views to gladden the heart of the most jaded traveller, the resort specialises in helping guests relax and recharge.  Karrie Webb, the Australian Hall of Famer who was renowned for her fierce competitiveness and concentration, once admitted that she found it hard to remember that she was at work and not on holiday.

Webb won the title in 2006 and most of the champions have been top-notch.  The few that have been goods rather than very goods or greats can bask in the glory of a title that is never less than hard won and includes names like Annika Sorenstam, Juli Inkster, Laura Davies, Ai Miyazato and Helen Alfredsson, the mercurial Swede who won the inaugural event in 1994.  Ever unpredictable, Alfie also won in 1998 and completed her hat-trick (please, no insistence that that has to be three in a row) in 2008.  France, and Evian, suited Alfie like nowhere else and no one else has won the event three times.

 

The one anomaly is that there has never been a French winner.  It’s ridiculous really because for years France’s women golfers were vastly better than their men, in that they were world-class rather than just all right, not bad, pretty good, promising.  On reflection, perhaps that was the amateur era of the likes of Catherine Lacoste, Brigitte Varangot and Claudine Cros.  France’s women professionals have been excellent without quite taking the world by storm.  Marie-Laure de Lorenzi, Patricia Meunier-Lebouc, Karine Icher, Gwladys Nocera, Karine Espinasse and many others have been stalwarts of the game but the country has yet to produce a Sorenstam or a Lydia Ko.

It’s easy to forget, in these days of FedEx, Ryder Cup and Evian Championship fever, that all golfers start out as amateurs.  The first Women’s World Amateur Team Championship for the Espirito Santo Trophy was held at St Germain in Paris in 1964 and was won for France by Cros, Lacoste and Varangot.  The competition is still going and is taking place in Mexico as you read (providing it’s not after September the 17th).  Did you realise that?  Have you read about that elsewhere?  The Republic of Korea was leading after the first round, Switzerland were second, Ireland third, with Denmark and Thailand tied for fourth.  Golf really is a global game.  Keep playing!