Golf, like life, moves on apace but the blog makes no apologies for giving top billing (twice) to Europe’s stunning, stupendous, scintillating Solheim victory.  Maureen and I are still exhausted (and I’m ashamed to say I’ve yet to see a shot hit in anger by teen tennis sensation Emma Raducanu, who is taking the US Open by storm with an insouciance and joie de vivre that would impress Leona Maguire).

Maguire, the pride of Ballyconnell and Slieve Russell in county Cavan, was the undoubted star of a European team that shone so brightly that they eclipsed the much vaunted Americans, world No 1 Nellie Korda, her sister Jessica, Lexi Thompson, Lizette Salas and all – and kept the ever enthusiastic, would be noisy Toledo fans pretty quiet.  The chants of “USA, USA” sounded few and far between and were never sustained, smacking more and more of desperation as the Europeans refused to crumble.

It was tight and tense the longer the singles went on but Matilda Castren, a rookie from Finland (like Maguire the first from her country to make the team) saw off Salas with a seemingly nerveless putt to win on the last and in the anchor match Emily Pedersen, a Dane whose Solheim (and golfing) journey of redemption deserves a book of its own, beat Danielle Kang by one hole (having clinched Europe’s win when she went three up with three to play).

This is as good – or bad – a place as any to have my habitual rant about the inequity of the defending champions being given a half point start.  To retain the trophy they’d won at Gleneagles, Europe needed to reach 14 points; to win the USA needed 14 1/2.  And so, in reality, for their own satisfaction, did the Europeans.  It’ll be happening again at Whistling Straits later this month when Europe defend the Ryder Cup they won in such style in Paris in 2018.  That’s three years ago, for goodness sake.  And even if it were the usual two, why? oh why? does a side deserve a start?  It doesn’t make sense.  Historical?  It’s a tradition that should be history.  Ditched.  Done away with once and for all.  It deserves a bad rap.  Cue Bubba!

The great thing about the Solheim Cup and the Ryder Cup nowadays is that you have to win it, you don’t get given it.  There’s no just turning up and walking away with the trophy.  It’s a proper contest, a match between equals, always liable to be close.  Every now and again a team runs away with it but mostly it’s nip and tuck – as it turned out to be at the Inverness Club, with 16 of the 28 matches (by my count) going to the last hole.  Nerves are going to be shredded, players (and fans) emotionally exhausted by the end.

The bottom line is that losing stinks.  Winning is so much more fun.

Let’s hope that Padraig Harrington, who’ll be finalising his Ryder Cup team after this week’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, has players who putt as well in Wisconsin as Maguire and her teammates did in Toledo.  They were led impeccably by Catriona Matthew, the lowkey, legendary Scot from North Berwick who inspires with a quiet authority and has the utmost respect of every single player.  Also, in a humorous nod to the venue’s roots, the Europeans had a cheeky Loch Ness monster on the bottom of their golf bags….One up from the start, surely.

Matthew paired the rookie Maguire (in reality a mature 26-year old with a stellar college career at Duke behind her) with the sometimes tempestuous Englishwoman Mel Reid, a lover of the free-flowing fist pump.  They didn’t know each other at all beforehand but what looked initially like an odd couple proved a marriage made in heaven and they gelled beautifully, winning three of their four matches together and  halving the other.  Reid restrained her celebrations, leaving most of the fierce fist pumps to her more naturally stoic partner, who hardly missed a putt over the three days.

So impressive was Maguire that musician Sam Harrop (@sam_golf on Twitter), described by The Times as “golf’s premier parodist”, has written an ode about her already.  It’s quite brilliant and includes lines like “A debut from the Hall of Fame…Golf’s an oyster and we’ve found a pearl” but the rhyme de resistance has to be:  “She’s from county Ca-van (American pronunciation), she’s not gonna tan…”  Classic.

It cracked me up because I remember seeing Leona and her twin sister Lisa at the Junior Solheim in America and knew immediately who they were because they had little milk bottle legs, white as white in amongst the tanned pins of their teammates.  The DWD (dog-walking dermatologist) tells me that most of us Irish have such pale skin to help us absorb as much vitamin D as possible from our (normally) watery sunshine.  Forgive me if I haven’t quite grasped the science, we were playing bridge at the time and I was losing tricks hands over fist.

The Solheim Cup shopping list.  It’s not likely to change for the Ryder Cup.

Finally, congratulations to Co. Cavan on winning the AIG Men’s Jimmy Bruen Shield for the first time, defeating Gowran Park at Shandon Park in Belfast.  Conor O’Reilly, a member of the winning team, said, “It means so much to our club.  We’re 128 years old and it was our first All-Ireland final.

“It’s been a great week for golf in Cavan.  Leona doesn’t have a Jimmy Bruen though!”

 

Why is this an historical year in golf?  Answers please on a postcard…….

It should be an easy question to answer for those of you who have clocked that there appears to be a great deal of team matchplay in the scheduling at the moment.  The sister and I are fresh from watching the Curtis Cup at Conwy Golf Club and as you read this we will be readying ourselves for the three day fest that is the Solheim Cup.  And, no sooner will we have finished biting our nails to the quick over the Solheim than we will be limbering up for the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.  And, one final clue – we also enjoyed watching the Walker Cup, played at Seminole in early May, even though it was largely a closed door event because of the pandemic.

And there you have it.  The answer to my opening question is that this is the first time ever that the four major team events in golf have been played in the same year.  The Walker Cup and the Ryder Cup always used to be in odd-numbered years but following the atrocities of 9/11 the Ryder Cup was postponed for a year and then assumed an even-numbered-year slot, usually in September.  This was awkward for the Solheim Cup already occupying that date in the calendar and, realising they couldn’t compete with the men for media attention (at that time), the women swiftly altered to the odd-numbered years.  And then last year the Ryder Cup had to be postponed twelve months because of  COVID-19, hence the logjam of top-class team matchplay that we are now enjoying.

So far this year the Americans have been dominant, edging the win in Seminole by two points and then last week in Wales their women came storming back from a poor opening day to stamp their authority on the Conwy links.  The Curtis Cup was a beautifully run event by the R&A and the small contingent of Americans who were able to make the trip were recipients of a very warm, Welsh welcome, as were we.

The course was stunning and only the merest of zephyrs teased the players during the three days of competition.  It was a particular treat to watch Rose Zhang and Rachel Heck at close quarters, the players ranked respectively No 1 and No 2 in the world.  Zhang was the class act of the week, winning four and a half points out of five but the home side’s Caley McGinty was very impressive in putting three and a half points on the board for GB and I, which included the only singles victory for her team.  At college at Oklahoma State, Caley has won three times stateside and she was certainly the best wedge player I saw throughout the week.  It’ll be fun to follow her progress.

Elaine Ratcliffe and Sarah Ingram, the two captains. were delighted to renew their friendly rivalry, having played in the 1996 match at Killarney, won by GB and I.  In fact, they played head to head in the singles with Ratcliffe coming out on top.  This time it was Sarah hoisting the trophy with her team and celebrating the fact that North Carolina’s Rachel Kuehn had scored the winning point – just as her mother, Brenda Corrie Kuehn had done in 1998 at Minikahda in Minnesota.  That’ll surely provide another special photo for the family album.

Many of the 16 players at Conwy will eventually try their hand on the professional scene and they will be adding the goal of making their respective Solheim Cup teams to their to-do lists.  This year there are four players from the home nations on Catriona Matthew’s European team and all of them played in the Curtis Cup in their amateur days.

Leona Maguire is the most recent player to bridge this gap having participated in the 2016 Curtis Cup match in Ireland, a gap of five years before graduating to the Solheim Cup.  Mel Reid played in the 2006 Curtis Cup encounter and then the 2011 Solheim Cup team, an identical five-year span between teams.  Georgia Hall was a little quicker off the mark taking only three years, 2014 to 2017 but none can better the rapid progress of Charley Hull who was part of the GB and I victory in the Curtis Cup at Nairn in 2012 and then on the winning European Solheim Cup team at Colorado in 2013.

Half of the US team are Curtis Cup graduates with Mina Harigae, one of this year’s rookies, having played the Curtis Cup back in 2008.  Compared to Hull she has had more of a slow burn of a career but nevertheless after thirteen years she gets to pull on the red, white and blue of America again.  In my experience it’s a rare player who would trade the opportunity to represent their country and their continent in these high profile, transatlantic clashes for individual successes, which is very refreshing in what is essentially a very self-centred sport.

So, two down and two more trophies to play for.  The featured picture at the top of the post is just to remind all of us on this side of the Atlantic what one of our own winning teams looks like.  We all know away victories are notoriously hard to come by but hope springs eternal that we can win the Solheim and the Ryder Cups, squaring the series, so to speak.  In any case, I’m looking forward to the next three days and the prospect of watching tremendous golf, gracious sportsmanship and a glorious, nail-biting finish.

Whatever the result, 2021 will go down as an historic year.

 

It’s hard to miss a castle if you’re in north Wales, which is more or less the fault of Edward I (1239-1307), completing a scheme he inherited from his father Henry III and adding his own amendments and improvements, in an attempt to keep the Welsh in order.  I’m indebted to the website castlewales.com (which is indebted to any number of learned historians) for anything approaching a fact on this matter and I did a lot of looking up at the castle when we were playing Harlech the other day.

The golf club, several centuries younger than the castle, was established in 1894, in the reign of Queen Victoria and the first name on the honours board is James Braid, one of the great triumvirate (along with Vardon and Taylor), golfing royalty indeed.  He won a “Professional Tournament” in 1903, no names, no pack drill but undoubtedly there would have been money handed out at the end.  It was scary how many of the winners we knew between us – I even saw Cecil Leitch, winner of the Ladies’ British Amateur Championship in 1926, in the flesh when she presented the trophy to Cathy Panton at Silloth in 1976….

A round at Royal St David’s Golf Club, to give it its official title, is always a treat and it was a lot less windy and the rough was a lot less penal, in a relative sort of a way, than the last time I played there.  Steve, the pro, is from Newcastle, Co. Down; we were playing with Pam Valentine, a good friend who’s a member (such a good friend that we forgive her for supporting Liverpool); the weather was benign; the castle peacefully hosting visitors from England and elsewhere; and we could scarcely have had a more enjoyable day, slow pace of play notwithstanding.

It gave us time to chat and enjoy the views (though Snowdon itself was hidden by cloud) and Mo admitted that during her years on tour she’d been guilty of paying little or no attention to her surroundings.  That’s the trouble with professionals, they have to be obsessively single-minded (or feel they have to be) to be successful.  Still, I challenge anybody to fail to notice the beauty around them when they’re playing up in the mountains at Crans-sur-Sierre, in Switzerland.

Dai and I used to love going to Crans, where the golf course is right in the middle of everything, a bit like an Alpine St Andrews and there was always a special buzz when Seve Ballesteros and co were in town.  The course, a skier’s playground in the winter, has its quirks but it has been a fixture on the schedule since 1923 (starting as the Swiss Open) and the list of champions reads like a veritable who’s who of world and European golf:  Bobby Locke, Kel Nagle, Bob Charles, Dai Rees, Seve (several times), Nick Faldo, Ian Woosnam, Jose Maria Olazabal, Colin Montgomerie, Lee Westwood, Ernie Els and Sergio Garcia, to mention just a few.

Now Rasmus Hojgaard, a 20-year old Dane with talent to burn, has added his name to the list, winning this year’s Omega European Masters with a final round of 63, seven under par.  It was his third win on tour and only Matteo Manassero and Seve managed to win that many at a younger age.  “I’m very proud,” Hojgaard said.  “With some of the players who have won it, it’s very special.  It’s an amazing place and I can’t wait to come back again.”

We’re now gearing up for a splurge of Solheim, defined as “any boisterous or extravagant display”, which should just about cover our behaviour as we spectate at home, showing appalling bias and a distinct lack of decorum as we cheer on Europe. The neighbours have been warned.

Let’s hope it’s a good omen that Europe’s Junior Solheim Cup team, captained by Annika Sorenstam, stunned the Americans with an amazing comeback, winning the singles 9-3 to snaffle the trophy for the first time since 2007 and for the first time ever on US soil.  Brilliant effort everybody.  Inspirational.

It’s a good thing that there’s no premier league football this weekend, so I won’t be torn between savouring the Solheim in comfort or schlepping down to north London to watch Spurs.  Last Sunday I headed off again, for the game against Watford, clutching my season ticket (it’s on the phone somewhere, along with proof of my COVID vaccinations and I live in fear and dread of losing them altogether, of them vanishing in to the ether or some sort of black hole of lost connections).

There was more method than madness in the planning this time:  drive to Milton Keynes station and get a coach to the ground, letting someone else take the strain.  Only problem was that no one at MK Central knew anything about my coach or the bus stop it was supposed to go from…Still, I’d given myself plenty of time for once, didn’t panic, bought a coffee and a croissant and after a reconnoitre or three settled on the only possible pick-up place.

By this time, two other pedestrians had turned up, one with some sort of massive kitbag that ruled him out of a supporter’s role, the other, oh happy day, with a clear plastic duffle bag with a cockerel on it….He turned out to be John from Derby and he was indeed waiting for the Spurs coach.  An old hand at this trekking-to-Tottenham lark, he was kindness itself, took me under his wing and made sure I didn’t get lost.

It turns out he has three season tickets:  one for Spurs, one for Derby and one for Burton!!!  Not altogether surprisingly his partner plays golf.

 

 

 

 

 

Last week I had a dream…., not one quite as seismic as Martin Luther King’s but seismic enough that it was a relief to me to wake up and realise it WAS only a dream.  I dreamt that Catriona Matthew gave me one of her wild card picks for the European Solheim Cup team.  I was incredulous and asked one of my friends why on earth had Catriona selected me when she knew that I had the yips on the greens?  I decided I’d just have to do my best.

There was one other matter that concerned me more than my own selection and that was that Catriona had also given Patricia the nod!  How was Patricia going to cope with playing in front of thousands and thousands of people with what Enid Wilson, erstwhile women’s golf correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, had once described as a non-event of a backswing?  I put this question to Patricia who nonchalantly assured me that she would be absolutely fine and to concentrate on my own worries!

There were no such nightmares for Anna Nordqvist last week at Carnoustie as she tucked away the third major of her career, winning the AIG Women’s Open by a single shot from an intimidating trio of players waiting in the clubhouse:  2018 champion Georgia Hall, Sweden’s Madelene Sagstrom and America’s Lizette Salas.  The 34-year old winner has won each of her three majors in a different decade but this was, she says, “the most special” one of all.

Anna had failed to grace the winner’s circle since her 2017 win at the Evian Championship, due in no small measure to battling a protracted bout of glandular fever which left her feeling debilitated and lacking in physical and mental strength.  It was a long road back for the tall Swede and she admits she had doubts as to whether she would do it or not but with a newly acquired Scottish husband, not to mention a Scottish caddy on the bag, she felt buoyed by the support from the locals who were claiming her as one of their own.  With this triumph Nordqvist follows in Georgia Hall’s footsteps of having won the British Girls’ Championship, the Women’s Amateur, the Smyth Salver for the low amateur at the Women’s Open, and then, of course, the ultimate prize of the Women’s Open itself.  It’s a formidable list of accomplishments.

Scotland had even more to cheer with the refreshing sight of 21-year old Women’s Amateur champion, Louise Duncan, holding her own with the best in the world and claiming tenth spot in her major championship debut.  The Stirling University student was undoubtedly well served by the calming influence of her coach, Dean Robertson, former Italian Open champion, on the bag and she thrilled the home crowds from her opening tee shot to her final putt.

Louise has deflected any question of turning pro by saying she wants to complete her sports studies degree at uni and she definitely wants to play in next April’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship, so the paid ranks are not at the forefront of her mind.  I’m sure, however, that when the dust settles she may realise there are now a few more options open to her than the physiotherapy courses she was beginning to investigate.  Right now, however, the Curtis Cup at lovely Conwy is on her agenda as GB&I, under the captaincy of Elaine Ratcliffe, try to win the trophy back from the Americans.  Fingers crossed she doesn’t suffer a bit of a reaction to her tremendous efforts at Carnoustie.

Two other busy people last week were Catriona Matthew and Pat Hurst, the two Solheim Cup captains who were at last able to finalise their teams.  Europe’s rules allowed them six picks while the Americans had three.  Pat Hurst has put her trust in Brittany Altomare, who played in 2019, and two in-form Solheim rookies, Mina Harigae and Yealimi Noh.  They round out the US side and all together they will be a formidable unit to overcome.

Meanwhile, history is being made on the European team with both Ireland and Finland being represented for the first time in the match.  Leona Maguire from Co Cavan had been hotly tipped to make her debut this year and a solid tied 13th finish last week cemented her place.  She may be a rookie but she brings oodles of international experience going all the way back to Junior Ryder and Solheim Cup sides.  A two-time Olympian, she’s unlikely to be over-fazed by the occasion – she has the maturity to take it all in her stride.  She was also excited to be playing for Matthew.  She said, “Catriona is a legend in her own right – a winning Solheim Cup captain and a major winner.  For her to think I’m good enough to be on her team is quite humbling and an honour.”

She added,  “I’m really excited, it is something that I have looked forward to.  I have played the PING Junior Solheim Cup in 2009 and 2011.  It was an incredible thing to be part of the Junior side so to be on the ‘big’ team is something really special and no Irish person has ever done it before.”

Matilda Castren of Finland is blazing a similar trail in her own country and, until Nordqvist’s win last Sunday, was the only European to notch up a victory this season on the LPGA.  Her excitement was infectious,

“It has been one of my goals and dreams since I was a little girl. It is just so cool to see it happen. I can’t describe it, I’m super happy. It’s hard to contain my excitement. To be the first Finn is such a huge honour and I’m super proud to represent my country.”

It must be a relief to the two captains finally to have their teams – and an even bigger relief to Catriona knowing that she doesn’t have to play either of the Madill sisters.  There won’t be a non-event of a backswing nor a dodgy putting stroke in sight!