Well that was a relief, then, wasn’t it?

“What?” I hear you cry.

“That Olympic golf went so well, of course,” is the answer.

Let me nail my colours to the mast here – I would not have had golf in the Olympics.  There’s something that doesn’t quite sit with me when there is a sport in the Olympics whose inclusion isn’t the absolute pinnacle of that sport.  I think I’d have had the amateurs playing, not the pros.

In 2008 Andy Murray travelled directly from the US Open tennis to Beijing with no preparation and scant interest.  How things have changed in the intervening dozen years.  Perhaps the same will happen with golf – or to be more precise with men’s golf.  Women’s golf is in a much more parlous state than the men’s game and the female players were astute enough to realise that the Olympic platform was ideal for them to showcase their skills.  So they embraced the whole experience with virtually all the eligible top players in the world adding Rio to their schedules.

And our podium winners were heaven sent. The women’s gold medal was won by former world No 1 Inbee Park of South Korea, that powerhouse of women’s golf; the silver by current world No 1, New Zealand’s Lydia Ko; and the bronze by trailblazer Shanshan Feng of China, a country arguably poised to embrace the sport like no other nation.  The men had their own thrilling finale with England’s Justin Rose edging Sweden’s Open Champion Henrik Stenson and America’s Matt Kuchar scooping bronze and proclaiming, “I’ve never been congratulated so much on a third place finish.”

Passionate as I am about golf, even I found the selected format of 72-hole strokeplay unutterably boring, providing interest only in the last nine holes of the final day. Forget cries of this format providing the best winner – that’s not necessarily true and it is hardly likely to capture the public’s imagination in the way other much more gladiatorial sports do.  So, for what it’s worth here’s my humble offering on the format for Tokyo in 2020:-

•   32 countries each with six members, three men, three women
•   8 groups with 4 countries in each
•   each country plays the other three in their group
•   each match consists of 1 male singles game, 1 female singles, 1 mixed foursomes and 1 mixed fourball
•   the winners of each group become the quarter finalists, seeding determining who plays whom
•   straight knockout to determine the medallists

Of course there are lots of details to work out, not least the method of qualification for the countries and the difficulty of having a fourball format in amongst singles and foursomes matches. But surely it’s not beyond the brainpower of the powers-that-be to work that out?  And we’d get to see our own nations competing against at least three other countries – much more compelling viewing than the turgid 72-hole format.

Also, who knows, perhaps the PGA Tour will decide not to schedule a regular tour event at the same time and instead show true commitment to the Olympic cause?

 

Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson and Matt Kuchar ensured that golf returned to the Olympics with more of a bang than a whimper and they’re now bona fide Olympic medallists.  The great thing is that they were watched by a lot of people, who created an atmosphere and the players served up a ding-dong battle worthy of the occasion on a course that was a credit to architect Gil Hanse, Amy Alcott and the team that created it.  Let’s hope that the International Golf Federation and the Brazilians keep their promises and run it as a public facility, open and accessible to all, awash with girls and boys keen to get in the swing and grow the game.  When the Games are over, the teaching pros should be parachuted in and the clinics and games should begin the serious, long-term business of growing the game.

Donald Trump, who knows a bit about golf, trumpets about the importance of exclusivity in the game, some guff to do with encouraging people to be aspirational I think – and perhaps to justify prohibitive green fees – but the real beauty of the game is its inclusivity.  Lots of lucky kids are introduced to golf by their grandparents and they can keep playing together as long as the oldies can totter round a few holes.  At last, golf seems to be wising up to promoting itself as the game of a lifetime, a healthy pursuit that’ll help you clock up thousands of steps without a problem.  Local munis should be multiplying not dying.

The one thing that will kill the game is slow play.  Cycling is thriving, despite the dangers of pedalling on British roads, not just because of the success of stars like Wiggins, Hoy, Pendleton, Trott and numerous others but because it’s quick and simple.  Golf, which within living memory took about three hours for 18 holes, is miring itself in a slough of measuring devices, multiple practice swishes and in the pro ranks summit meetings with caddies or partners, the results of which often lead to the whole process being repeated before a shot is committed to.  Heaven only knows what Pat Ward-Thomas, a sometimes irascible golf correspondent of The Guardian (which once did a good line in irascible golf correspondents), would make of today’s slouches.  He was so exasperated by a pedetentous putter of his own day that he cried out, “Doesn’t he realise my life is ebbing away?”

The men took about five hours a round in Rio; the women, who may still be under way after the closing ceremony, upped that by about 35 minutes.  Marta Figueras-Dotti, like most of our Q&A participants, has trenchant views on the subject and is worth listening to.  As I type, I have on the desk a ball marker that reads 3:57.  It was given out by the LGU or the R&A to encourage people to “hurtle” round in under four hours and is now an antique, hopelessly outdated.   The truth is that the players, for all their complaints, don’t care enough to change.  They’re out there for the day, it’s their job, they’re taking it seriously, being meticulous and professional and anyway, it’s the others who are the slowcoaches…..Trouble is, they’re infecting the rest of us.

In the meantime, let’s speed up and enjoy the cosmopolitan nature of a game that stars Ariya Jutanurgarn of Thailand; Inbee Park of South Korea; Lydia Ko of New Zealand; Brooke Henderson of Canada; Charley Hull and Catriona Matthew, Olympian Brits at opposite ends of the age spectrum; Shanshan Feng of China; Aditi Ashok of India; Stacy Lewis, newly married, of the United States; the amateurs Leona Maguire of Ireland and Albane Valenzuela of Switzerland; not forgetting the Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Spaniards, Russians, Australians, French, Japanese, South Africans, Italians, Colombians, Brazilians and numerous other nationalities who demonstrate that golf, for all its faults, is a genuinely global game.

 

 

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.

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.”

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