There’s really only one place I’d like to be this sporting weekend of multiple choice and it’s not Wimbledon, Kazan, Samara or Nizhny Novgorod, Silverstone, Headingley or Noirmoutier-en-l’Ile (there should be a circumflex in there somewhere as befits the start of the Tour de France but my keyboard and I aren’t up to that particular task).  Tennis, cricket, cycling, formula one and World Cup football – including England still despite it being the quarter-finals but Sweden loom dangerously large – are just some of the world-class sports on offer and they all have their attractions.

No, given the choice, I’d be heading for county Donegal, one of the most beautiful places on earth, where the European Tour are pitching their tents this week at Ballyliffin Golf Club, site of the (deep breath) Dubai Duty Free Irish Open hosted by the Rory Foundation.  It’s one of the tour’s lucrative Rolex Series events, with US$7 million on offer – if you wish to work in pounds sterling or Euros, feel free to make the conversion.

Maureen and I had a ball last year when the Irish Open was at Portstewart (or Royal Portstewart as it appeared in one email communication), revelling in having some of the world’s best players at our home club and I can only imagine the excitement at Ballyliffin.  The Glashedy Links, designed by the redoubtable Irish duo of Pat Ruddy and the late Tom Craddock, earned high praise from Padraig Harrington when he said, “It looks like this golf course just came into being rather than being designed.  If ever there’s a golf course that sums up the Wild Atlantic Way, this is it.”

As the seagull flies, Ballyliffin isn’t far from Malin Head, the most northerly point on the island of Ireland, which is in the Republic of Ireland, or the South as it’s sometimes known colloquially.  Really, there’s no point complaining that the English, say, don’t understand us because, really, we’re a mass of complications and contradictions.  It’s wonderful.  And so, incontrovertibly, are our golf courses.

I once suggested to Dai that we should tootle round the coast of Ireland playing all the courses, whether 18 holes or 9 holes.  “Let’s start at Portstewart,” I said, “and head left (west) and see how long it takes us to work our way back to Portstewart.”  We never got started and I suspect it might have taken us years to get out of Donegal.  Have a look at the coastline for a start, the nooks and crannies and the inlets (and the roads, which are probably a bit better than they were 30 years ago).  The deal would be to play every course properly, not just to pitch up and play a designated hole as some guy did at Portrush once.  The 14th, Calamity, was on his wish list, his world’s top 18 or something, so he flew in, played that one hole and buggered off, happy.  What a waste of a golf course.  What a waste of a visit.  Talk about missing the point.

Still, each to his (it’s nearly always his, isn’t it?) own.

How on earth could you stick rigidly to your schedule and ignore the invitations to “stay for a bite to eat; just have another jar; another few holes; a walk on the beach; relax in a seaweed bath; my mother would love to meet you; the fish and chips are to die for……”  Estimates please, for how long it might take to play every course around the coast of Ireland.  We’ll venture inland in the next lifetime or two!

Anyway, Maureen’s not in Donegal this weekend, she’s keeping an eye on Brian, who was out cycling when he hit a pothole and ended up with a split helmet, a broken collarbone and a broken elbow and is awaiting surgery; less dramatically, I’m playing in ladies’ captain’s day at Whittington Heath tomorrow, hoping to get in in time to watch the second half of the England match against Sweden.

Whittington is at its summer best now, fast and hard-running, with the only green on the greens.  A few of us went on a course walk the other day and Trevor, the head greenkeeper, who’s been here for more than 50 years, man and boy, was explaining that the grasses we want on the fairways, the fine bents and fescues, were loving the weather, saved by their long roots and the meadow grass was breathing its last.  That’s my understanding of what he was saying, anyway.

Here, as promised last week is the triumphant Sue Spencer, heading for the England seniors team and as an added bonus Eileen Beresford, heading for retirement after 15 years of looking after us all at WHGC.  Well done and good luck to both.

 

 

 

 

Well, it’s been a tough ole week.  Another crashing fall from his bicycle for my husband with several broken bones and surgery imminent.  And as you’ll see this video doesn’t go quite to plan – it’s still a good tip, though!  Enjoy!

 

 

I’ve always been interested in sport, particularly golf, obviously, but generally all sport.  And what has really grabbed my attention since I became a coach some 25 years ago is how to teach all the stuff you cannot see.  Technique is important, of course, but the practice grounds of this world are full of players with great swings who can’t make a score.  They haven’t learned how to PLAY the game; they’ve learned the art of swinging the club and hitting the ball, not necessarily the art of managing themselves and their emotions.  Adaptability is key to cope with the ever-changing and ever-shifting conditions present internally and externally during any peak performance.  As Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott put it so succinctly in their wonderful book, Be A Player, you must learn to become a Master of Variability.

For a wee while I have been laying some grounding in this respect with one young player I mentor, Rory McDonald-O’Brien, from the delightfully welcoming Lilleshall Golf Club in Shropshire.  Rory is training hard in the gym and on the range but my goal with Rory now is to have as much of our learning as possible taking place ON the golf course, not in a bay or on the practice ground.  We can borrow skills and learn from all sorts of sports and quite honestly the information often comes under the heading of “blindingly obvious” when pointed out to you – but that doesn’t necessarily make it easy to do.

Rory was facing a big task last Monday at the Open Regional Qualifying.  He was one of more than a thousand players at 13 different venues trying to secure one of the precious 140 spots available at Final Open Qualifying.  He teed it up at Kedleston Park with 89 other hopefuls, most of them professionals, chasing 11 available spots.  Four players broke par and seven more got through after having shot one over.  Rory shot three over.  Not bad for a 14-year old trying out his developing management skills at that level for the first time.

One of my favourite mantras is, “Go inside yourself to play well.”  By that I mean hone in on all of your senses and feel what is going on when you swing and play well.  Awareness is the key word here.  What is actually happening when you have a great day out on the course?  How do you feel inside (calm, excited, alert, passive)?  How do you see things (sharp detail or soft focus)?  Do you hear everything your partners say or have you tuned them out?  Are you chatty or silent?  There are no right or wrong answers here.  You must explore and learn what works for you.

I suggest you write down all the things that you feel are present when you play well.  Then you will come up with your own template for success and it is up to you to recreate these conditions when you go out on the course.  It doesn’t mean you’ll play well every time, of course, but you must learn to build the platform from which peak performance is possible.  I’m fairly confident technical thoughts won’t figure much on your list, if at all.  You may have a sense of something at a particular point of the swing but you certainly won’t be giving yourself a list of do this/don’t do that instructions.

A final note for all coaches and teachers out there.  Try something new, something you know nothing about and have no experience of.  That’s what Patricia and I did last weekend when we went on a motorbiking taster course.

It was great fun but also a great lesson for me who supposedly has some expertise in imparting golfing knowledge and skill.  It’s so important to understand what a total beginner feels like and we can only do that by putting ourselves in that arena now and again.  We enjoyed it so much we’re going to do more of it.  What completely new thing would you have a go at, given the chance?

I was speaking to a friend yesterday, a golfer and that rare being, a daily reader of a newspaper, the journal that used to be known as the thunderer.  “Did you see that Ernie Els’s nephew won the Amateur Championship?” sez I.  “No,” sez he.  “Oh,” sez I.  “It was up at Royal Aberdeen and Murcar.”

So, if there had been a mention of Jovan Rebula’s victory, it must have been in the small print because my mate doesn’t miss much golf, even though he’s more hooked on the cricket.  I saw a bit of the 123rd Amateur on Sky early in the week when it was blowing a hooley and the commentator described winds that were gusting up to 40 mph as “a strong breeze”.  He obviously came from Dad’s school of Beaufort assessment, refusing to categorise a hurricane as anything other than “a bit of a zephyr; hardly blowing at all”.

In the final, over 36 holes, Rebula, aged 20, defeated Tramore’s Robin Dawson by 3 and 2, to become the first South African to win the title since Bobby Cole way back in 1966, at Carnoustie.  In that final (over 18 holes) Cole defeated Scotland and Duddingston’s  RDBM (Ronnie) Shade, the man whose multiple initials and accuracy off the tee meant he was universally known as Right Down the Bloody Middle.  Cole, who later married Laura Baugh, the glamour girl of American golf, with whom he had seven children, came within touching distance of completing a magical double when he finished third in the Open Championship at Carnoustie in 1975.

In that championship, Cole had two successive rounds of 66 but in the final round, when the wind blew a little, he had a 76, to finish alongside Jack Nicklaus and Johnny Miller on 280, one stroke behind Tom Watson and Jack Newton.  In the play-off, Watson had a 71 to Newton’s 72, to win the first of his five Open titles.

So Rebula, who earned exemptions into the Open at Carnoustie next month, the Masters next year and the 2019 US Open at Pebble Beach (providing he remains an amateur), knows that his predecessors, whether related or not, have set the highest of standards.  At least uncle Ernie, who’s won the Open twice, never held the Amateur trophy aloft.

It’s the time of year when championships are coming thick and fast, everywhere you look.  This week, to mention just a few of the big ones, it’s the Ladies’ British Open Amateur at Hillside, the lovely links adjoining Royal Birkdale; there’s the third women’s major of the season, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Kemper Lakes, near Chicago; and the old codgers, sorry, the ever-competitive members of the flourishing pension fund that is the Champions Tour, are competing in the US Senior Open at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs.  That’s where Annika Sorenstam won her first US Women’s Open, way back in 1995, the start of a long and illustrious career.  It was her first win on the LPGA Tour, although she’d won the Australian Open, her first victory as a professional, at the end of 1994.

I was there at The Broadmoor and beautiful though the place is, I’m not sure I’ve been going to the gym long enough to cope with the heat they seem to be having this week.  I’m having enough trouble with our heat here at sea level, let alone in the thinner air of Colorado, about 6000 feet up if I remember rightly.  On Tuesday we had our Ladies Open Team Alliance at Whittington Heath, which was at its dry, fast-running, bouncy, unpredictable summer best.  Operating on the famous Pammy Principle (named after the inimitable golfing guru and motivator Pamela Saunders) that when there are two scores from four to count you need to average five points a hole to be in with a chance, we were doing ok with 44 points after nine holes.

Trouble was when we stopped for a cuppa at the halfway house, we realised we were ready to go in!  Phew what a scorcher!  Anyway, I doused my hat with water, my teammates topped up the water bottles, rooted out the bananas and on we went.  Five points at the 10th, same at the 11th, then the wheels came off and we limped home with 31 points, well off the pace, knackered.

The winners had 85 points and although one of their number was a young thing, two of them were in their 80s, totalling 164 years between them.  All hail to Margaret Hogarth, Ivy Smith, Jayne Fletcher and Helen Robson.  They’re obviously made of stern stuff and adhere to the Gary Player Dictum that age is only a number – though one of my recent birthday cards had a bit of a bitter take on that supposedly optimistic, life-embracing saying……

Congratulations are also in order to WHGC’s peripatetic Sue Spencer, who is doing that good wine thing of getting better as she gets older.  She finished 4th, six shots behind the champ Helen Lane of Scraptoft, in the English Senior Women’s Open Amateur Stroke Play at Belton Park GC in Lincolnshire.  I’d have a pic of Spenny here but I forgot to ask Tim, her husband, caddy and official photographer, for a decent snap, so it’s a great excuse to use what I think must be the pinnacle of a presentation pic, loud, proud, even, dare I say, a trifle garish.  There’s certainly nothing wishy-washy about it and it also gives us time to practise a name that we might be coming across a few times over the next few years:  Kanyalak Preedasuttijit.

She’s the young Thai who won the Ladies European Thailand Championship at Phoenix Gold Golf and Country Club in Pattaya last Sunday.  As well as the splendid trophy she earned 45,000 Euro and, even better, an exemption into the Ricoh Women’s British Open at Royal Lytham and St Annes and the Evian Championship at Evian-les-Bains on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Finally, a quick note to say that the featured picture at the top of the piece is just to introduce Alice, who is 10 weeks old and has come to live in Lichfield, where she’ll soon be joining the dogs and their walkers in Beacon Park.  I had the tricky job of looking after her on Wednesday as she settled in and got used to her new surroundings…..Tough gig, as you can see.