A Toast – Or Two

Let’s get the rant – there should only be one but who knows – out of the way early.  It’s the Solheim Cup this week and Europe are in Gainesville, Virginia, crowing about going for an unprecedented fourth successive victory over the USA.  Well, nothing gets up an opponent’s nose more than an in-your-face boaster and the higher the level, the better the opposition, the more risky a tactic that is.

Many years ago, at a very lowly level, I won a long jump comp mainly because a cocky little sod had gone around all her fellow competitors asking for their best jump, to establish that she was the favourite by some distance.  I was so pissed off – perhaps not a phrase I’d have used at the time – that I jumped two feet further than I’d ever jumped before.  The organisers thought they’d found an athlete of promise instead of a very, very peeved teenager.  I didn’t train on.

Winding up the opposition is all very well but it’s often guaranteed to make a competitor knuckle down and produce their best.  The Americans are well aware that they didn’t lose last time out in Spain.  It was 14-all,  a draw, a tie, whatever you want to call it, it was not a win for either side.  Europe took the trophy simply because of the nonsensical convention that the holders retain.

I call it ridiculous, antiquated, unacceptable.  A few people are calling for some sort of extra holes in the event of a draw but I can’t see the problem with a draw being just that, a draw.  Share the trophy, hold it for a year each – or six months in this case.  It’s a rare result – last year was the first time it had happened since the Solheim Cup was inaugurated in 1990.

Be that as it may, Stacy Lewis and her players are calling this iteration “unfinished business”.  And that means that they mean business, at home, in front of their own, undoubtedly raucous fans.  Go Europe but good luck; you’ll need it; just as well captain Suzann Pettersen specialises in the dramatic.

Back here in Lichfield, at a golfing level (mine) that is below subterranean, I played a medal round (is it still called that in these complicated handicapping days?) for the first time in months; every stroke to count (technical nerds please desist from comment, that’s an explanation for the non golfers that are still reading).  It was windy, even by the standards of the daughter of a man who liked to describe a Force 8 as “a zephyr”.  Nothing was easy, even before the heavens opened and we had to play the last few holes in a downpour.

One of my playing partners was steadiness personified and won the comp with an outstanding score;  many congrats Sue J – and Sue S, who somehow managed a gross 76. I wasn’t last but my round included a bit, no, a lot of a mish-mash – or an eclectic mix as a kind soul suggested.  There were some good shots but too much dross – a lost ball in the heather; a shank (only one, which is something); a duffed putt; several three putts; an attempted extrication from the rough that went a few centimetres; later, at another hole, an even less successful extrication that was, in fact, an air shot; but at the same hole I canned a putt of at least 50 feet for an unlikely bogey 5.

And my feet were soaking because my shoes are no longer waterproof.  What a bloody game!

My erratic play had nothing to do with having attended The Wine Society’s 150th Anniversary Celebration Lunch in Birmingham.  I admit I staggered home gently pissed (which is very different from being pissed off), trying very hard not to weave too much.   Hope they don’t keep the Broad Street CCTV footage for too long.  That was on the Sunday, so I’d fully recovered by Tuesday morning – although there was no chance of a practice session (golf) on the Monday…

The good, nerveless competitive women of WHGC have reached the final of the Taskers competition and are due to play Copt Heath at Beeston Fields.  “Where’s that?” I asked.  Nottingham way apparently but one friend piped up:  “I’ve played there.”  Turns out she’d holed out with a full 5-iron at one hole – in a foursomes match!

Also turns out that her partner was quite a character, who wore exotic hats and owned a Great Dane – and a macaw.  The macaw was called Robinson and liked company.  He didn’t like to be left on his own, so his owner would take him to the golf club in the car.  It caused a bit of consternation once at Little Aston, where women weren’t allowed in the car park on certain days and no one quite knew what to make of a parrot with a Cannock accent.

By this stage I was helpless with laughter but my mate insisted it was all true.  Oh, how we miss Victoria Wood – she’d have had a field day.

Finally, the mystery of the third golfer has been solved – we think.  It’s Bobby Locke on the left, Gary Player in the middle and a very young Brian Huggett on the right.  I thought it might be another South African but many thanks to David Pepper for coming up with Huggett, who’d have been 19 or 20 at the time of the pic.

 

In 1962, Huggett won the Dutch Open at Hilversumsche, relegating the home favourite Gerard de Wit to second place.  The Welshman also finished in a share of third place at the Open at Troon that year, though Arnold Palmer was a long way ahead of everybody else.  The picture, from the European Tour (now DP World Tour) website is a bit grainy but it could be the same man, couldn’t it?