Marta Figueras Dotti, trailblazer player and teacher and now coach to the Spanish women’s golf team at the Rio Olympics, chats with Mo Madill.

The Madills have always been fond of Peter Alliss.  As a commentator you’re either loved or loathed, people are rarely indifferent.  We, a household of wordy smart aleck golf tragics, loved Alliss, who had a wonderful eye and way with words and a wicked sense of the ridiculous.  He was also helpful, replying in his own handwriting to viewers who felt they knew him.

In 1972, just before I headed off to university in Edinburgh, Mum wrote to Alliss asking him if he could recommend a decent coach in the area.  He wrote back suggesting John Shade at Duddingston, father of the famous Ronnie, who had a rugby international’s clutch of initials – RDBM – and was known as Right Down the Bloody Middle.  John had less success with me but we laughed a lot and Maureen came over and learned a lot and won the Ladies’ British Open Amateur Championship at Nairn in 1979.  So, thank you Peter.

When I worked at Golf World magazine in London in the early 1980s in a streamlined editorial department consisting of Peter Haslam, the editor, engaging, enterprising and globe-trotting; Neil Elsey, the skilled deputy editor, who died far too young; Dave Oswald, the art editor, a talented but irascible Scot who is now besotted with his allotment; and me, the dogsbody with licence to learn.  One of my tasks was to write Alliss’s column and that was an education in itself.  He’d send in his thoughts on cassette and the transcript would meander hither and yon, covering life, the universe, everything, with a bit of golf thrown in.  It was never dull but often led to swearing (the Oswald curse haunts my language to this day) and it was only a few years later that I realised what wonderful training it had been.  Knocking Alliss’s musings into readable shape and making it sound like him was a skill that was hard won.  Thank you Peter.

Mo and the Master at the mike

A lot of years later, when Maureen started working with him and the rest of the incomparable BBC team, he couldn’t have been more supportive of a raw, broadcasting rookie.  He’d always loved the Irish – the late, great Christy O’Connor, Himself, was a close friend – and Maureen, who was keen to learn, was astute enough to know that she was in the presence of a master.  Alliss, observant and improvisational, was astute enough to realise that she always did her homework and they became allies.  Thank you Peter.

Alliss is quick-witted, with an eye and an ear for the bon mot but he is also master of the pause, a skill learned from his years as apprentice to Henry Longhurst.  Radio abhors a silence – my God, has the line gone down, has the presenter died? – but telly has the pictures and each one is worth a thousand words, isn’t it?  People coming from radio have to learn that you don’t have to witter on when the pictures can do your talking for you.  “It was a privilege to be next to him,” Maureen said.  “I particularly remember the Women’s Open at Sunningdale in 2008; it was Annika’s last appearance and she was coming up the 18th, with everyone applauding and all the emotion and Peter just held up his hand to me and stopped me trampling all over a very special moment.  He knew it didn’t need any words.”  Thank you Peter.

As well as listening to the Alliss Q and A with Maureen, search out the speech he made when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012.  He was a very good golfer, who played in eight Ryder Cup teams and once won three national Open titles in a row (not the big one, admittedly) and he became a giant of a broadcaster.  He left school early and has never forgotten his last report from the formidable headmistress Mrs Violet Weymouth, a short, stout Welshwoman who was a chain smoker with a nicotine-stained chin.  “Peter does have a brain,” she wrote, “but he’s rather loath to use it…..I fear for his future.”

Ah, the wonderful Mrs Weymouth…

His Hall of Fame riposte ends with the gesture doing the talking.  Classic Alliss.  Revenge is sweet.  Thank you Mrs W.

Last week’s Ricoh Women’s British Open at Woburn gave the lie to the notion that there’s no interest in women’s golf in this country, with roughly 52,000 spectators tramping the fairways during the championship and many more watching on television on the BBC, where golf is about to become a distant memory.

The best women golfers in the world gave a demonstration of ball-striking at its best and the new champion Ariya Jutanugarn was little short of awesome, giving the ball a mighty Thai tonk and holding nothing back.  She played with Catriona Matthew in the third round and it was a wonderful contrast in styles, with the Scot, who will be 47 later this month, having to plot her way round the Marquess course in a more canny fashion altogether.  Matthew was the leading Briton, sharing 5th place on 279, 9 under par, seven shots behind the winner.

Ariya with caddy Peter and mentors Pia and Lynn

Charley Hull, the local heroine, lagged behind her Olympic teammate on 283 but showed glimpses of her best form in a final round of 69.  The week before the RWBO Hull was playing for England in the UL International Crown team event in Illinois and had to sit out one of the days because of illness.  She was then in great demand at Woburn, for tea party photo shoots, interviews, chats with the GB Olympic golf captain Jamie Spence, selfies, what have you and she even experienced first-tee nerves, a rarity for the insouciant 20-year old, as she prepared to perform in front of her family and friends.

Rio will provide another challenge and will be nothing like a normal tournament, despite the familiarity of the 72-hole stroke play format.  Hull, who suffers from asthma, will have to make sure that her inhaler is properly vetted and all the competitors will have to be extra careful about what they take for any sniffles and snuffles, aches and pains, to ensure they don’t fall foul of the drug testers.  There’ll be a lot to take in and the golf will be intense because most of the best women in the world will be there, anxious to secure a medal and make a unique mark in the game.

China’s Olympic medal hope Shanshan Feng

Apologies to Spence, a lovely man despite being an Arsenal supporter, who was kind enough to do a Q & A with madillgolf.com.  He even agreed to start again after the klutz operating the iPad realised that she had it in photo mode instead of video.  Then halfway through, said klutz noticed that the seconds were no longer ticking up……the machine had had enough, it had run out of capacity and Jamie’s words of wisdom ended up as so much air instead of on air.  Sorry captain and the best of luck to team GB (Danny Willett, Justin Rose, Matthew and Hull).  May you all be spared from media klutzes and hitches and glitches, technical or otherwise.

Good luck also, of course, to team Ireland, captained by Paul McGinley (whose Q & A was conducted by Maureen without a hitch).  Padraig Harrington is the leading player, with Seamus Power, Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow also in the line-up making golfing history.  This will be one of the highlights of their life, let alone their career.

On a less elevated, more prosaic golfing note, the ladies’ captain of Whittington Heath took more than a score of swingers to Southport, England’s Golf Coast, where we played Hesketh – and saw the Hitler Trophy displayed in all its glory (see a previous post for more details) – and Formby Ladies, where they can boast 250 (female) playing members. Wow. Let’s get recruiting girls.

A name to conjure with

Sue Gartland of Whittington Heath with Anne Bromley, secretary/manager Formby Ladies