Still Unique Forty Years On

The other day, playing a few holes with a friend, I gave them ten questions to guess who presented the trophy at the Senior Open at Gleneagles last Sunday.*  It was a bit mean I admit but I didn’t want them working their way to the right answer, unlikely though that was and I thought the traditional Twenty Q too generous.

Today, I’d be tempted to give you all a lot more goes at guessing  the opening topic of this week’s blog.  Admittedly, there’s a substantial visual clue at the top of the piece (providing there’ve been no technical glitches) but tortoises are not really an area of  interest in these parts, let alone an area of expertise.  The expertise is still lacking but thanks to a visit by Ducky (pictured), there’s a lot more interest.

She’s an Eastern Hermann’s tortoise, about four years old, “a medium-sized herbivorous reptile native to the Balkans and southeastern Europe” according to Google’s AI overview.  It also revealed that they can be great pets because “they stay small, have a gentle personality and eat a simple plant-based diet”.  Leafy greens are the food of choice – they’re good for us humans as well – so nothing too exotic is needed on that front.  However, they need fresh food and water daily, heat lamps and sundry other accoutrements and can’t just be left to their own devices.  They’re not an easy pet option.

I read somewhere that they were slow moving but Ducky showed quite a turn of foot (claw?) when given a roam in the garden; a moment of inattention and she would have been in the bushes.  Inquisitive outings and accidents permitting, she’ll outlive her owners, so a tortoise really is for life – and beyond.

This week, at Royal Lytham and St Annes, one of the world’s great golf courses, a couple of golfing anniversaries are being celebrated at the AIG Women’s Open.  It’s the 50th anniversary of the championship, which was won by Jennie Lee Smith, now Lucas, at Fulford in 1976.  She was also a member of the Curtis Cup team that played at Lytham that year.  The Americans, who included future legends Beth Daniel and Nancy Lopez, won, as they usually did but ten years later it was a different, unexpected story, the stuff of legend.

At Prairie Dunes, in the blistering heat of Kansas (100 degrees F in old money, almost too hot even for tortoises), Diane Bailey (née Frearson, then Robb) led her team to a comprehensive victory (13-5) that beggared belief.  At Muirfield, two years earlier, under Bailey, GB and I had come agonisingly close, losing by a single point – 9 1/2 – 8 1/2 and the captain, having proved that the mighty Americans were beatable, made it her mission to do the impossible:  win on US soil.

It was something that no visiting team had done – there’d been a draw at Brae Burn in 1958 (following home wins in 1952 and 1956) – and the Curtis Cuppers weren’t expected to break a run of THIRTEEN consecutive defeats.  “We always win this thing, don’t we?” one of the Americans, Danielle Ammaccapane, said to her captain, the incomparable Judy Bell, a future president of the USGA (the first woman pres), and who could blame her?  They always did win the thing.

Amazingly, I was there, along with Dai, Michael Williams of the Daily Telegraph, Elaine Scott from Golf World (later of the LPGA) and photographer Keith Hailey.  We’d travelled more in hope than expectation and Prairie Dunes, a wonderful golf course in the middle of nowhere, was a big draw.  Anyway, I seem to remember that Dottie Pepper (who’d just become Mrs Mochrie and had been on honeymoon) duffed her opening drive…Blimey…Americans never did that, did they?  (I believe, a few years previously, one American, overcome with nerves on the 1st tee, had to hiss at her foursomes partner:  “Get up here; I can’t do this….” but I digress, as usual.)

It went from bad to worse for the home side:  Ammaccapane was penalised for building a stance in a bunker under the eyes of the USGA’s P.J. Boatrwright,  a formidable figure and undoubtedly the world’s chief rules guru and it wasn’t until the second day that the USA managed to win the first hole.  By then it was too late and I think GB and I only needed half a point from the six singles to win.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody amazing and paved the way for the Ryder Cup team to win at Muirfield Village the following year and the Walker Cup team to win at Peachtree in 1989.  They really were trailblazers.

All hail to Lillian Behan, Karen Davies, Claire Hourihane, Trish Johnson, Mary McKenna, Belle Robertson, Vicki Thomas and Jill Thornhill.  And, of course, Diane Bailey and her strong right arm and support Elsie Brown.

Two years later, at Royal St George’s, I suggested in my preview for The Times that it might have been the most outrageous fluke and, apparently, Jill Thornhill, incandescent, threw the paper to the floor, leapt out of bed and set off to prove me wrong.

Now, I used to think that that was probably my best, most effective intro in that it certainly caught the attention of the reader but, on reflection, it was a bit pants because that reader never read any further!  She completely missed the bit at the end where I suggested that it wasn’t a fluke and GB and I could win again.

And they did.

 

* The answer:  David, now Lord Cameron, the plonker I hold mainly responsible for the Brexit debacle.  The reason:  he’s an ambassador for ISPS HANDA, the sponsors of  the championship and staunch supporters of all things golf.