Grand Designs

My main worry this week was that my numbers would be plucked out of the bag on draw night yesterday (the pot was up to its maximum £500) and I’d be left ruing my absence for days on end.  Fortunately, that didn’t happen but there was a lucky winner, all present and correct.  Many congrats Wendy and well done too on being one of the Whittington team who won their friendly at Kedleston earlier in the day.  Bostin’.

Hard to believe that Matt Fitzpatrick, the new US Open champion, hitherto unknown to most of the non golfers of my acquaintance, has yet to win a point in two Ryder Cups.  Imagine having him as your foursomes partner – you’d never have to putt, just watch the ball disappear into the hole or check with your opponents that, yes, that’s fine, a gimme, pick it up.  In the unlikely event that you were ever called upon to putt, you’d be gobsmacked, having taken to leaving your putter in the bag as surplus to requirements.  It’s a seismic shock if he misses anything these days.

The Sheffielder is a forensic note keeper, analysing every last detail of every round, so he can make whatever adjustments he deems necessary.  He’d be more than capable of writing a lengthy guide to putting but why not keep it simple?  “Assess.  Hit.  Follow in.  Pick out.”

One of Fitzpatrick’s captains from his amateur days, said, “Matt always had great application and got results.  When he was in my teams I always had him down for a point but was concerned about his power.  That is now resolved so he has everything.  He will win more.”

The man himself has his sights set on six majors at least, so presumably he won’t be taking the Saudi shilling any time soon, unlike Brooks Koepka (four majors in a short-lived rush), who has boarded the LIV gravy train wherever it’s going.

Sam Harrop’s been at his composing best again – tapping into Oasis this time – and his take on the Koepka news is brilliant:  wickedly funny and a must listen.  Seek him out.

He kicks off with the lines: –

“Maybe I just really wanna show

How the game can grow

Because I’m just that kinda guy…..”

There’s the classic:  “Lately, Greg thinks I’m underpaid…”

And, of course, the pay-off, so to speak:  “You and I we’re goin’ to LIV forever….”

This just doesn’t do him justice, you have to listen to it to appreciate its true genius!

 

This week, the world’s best women are competing in their third major of the season, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, on the Blue Course at Congressional Country Club in Maryland.  The purse is a healthy $9 million, which is twice last year’s but is being perceived as small beer in some quarters as golf adds noughts madly in pursuit of its own version of rampant inflation.

Some of the older players attempted to maintain a certain amount of perspective as the competitors enjoyed courtesy Cadillacs and the delights of what Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols called “a gargantuan clubhouse”.  She wasn’t exaggerating as you’ll gather from the picture above – even a small photo gives you some idea of the scale.  Watching what turned out to be a brief amount of coverage on the telly, I couldn’t work out just how the players got from the 18th to the clubhouse – it was so far away, on the far side of a large lake, that Mo and I decided they’d need a boat rather than a buggy.

I’d forgotten that the original 18th was a par 3, the subject of some controversy when the US Open was there in 1997, when Ernie Els beat Colin Montgomerie.  Things had been rearranged by the time a tousle-haired Rory McIlroy ran away with his US Open in 2011.

Back to perspective.  Stacy Lewis, the US Solheim Cup captain, who was in the middle of it all when the LPGA was struggling to survive, told Nichols, “This current group of players, I don’t think they quite realise how lucky we are with the opportunities that we have….they have come to expect them over the last four or five years, that this set-up this week is normal.”

Cristie Kerr, who goes even further back than Lewis, speculated that, given the chance, most of the women would follow Koepka and co; a lot of them would argue that they couldn’t afford not to – and the LET’s Aramco Team Series is backed by the Saudis.  They played at Centurion the week after the men and Britain’s Bronte Law, an ambassador for Golf Saudi, holed a monstrous 55-foot putt on the last green for an eagle three to win the individual event by a shot from compatriot Georgia Hall.  Law won $71,587.50 and Hall earned $42,952.50.

A historical footnote to finish:  Congressional was founded in 1924 as a haven for politicians and assorted bigwigs and was opened by President Calvin Coolidge, a man of notoriously few words.  Dorothy Parker, known for her wit and repartee, sat beside him at a dinner once and was challenged to persuade him to say more than two words.  There was a lot of money wagered one way or another but Parker got nowhere until in desperation she told Coolidge of the bet.  He looked at her, considered the matter and said, “You lose.”

She got a measure of revenge when she was told that Coolidge had died.  “How could they tell?’