A Magic Number

You realise – with a lot of a gunk – that you’re getting on a bit when twenty-five years, a whole quarter of a century, seem like no time at all ago; or, completely the opposite, a lifetime ago.  To digress, as so often, I’ve used a semi-colon there and am feeling haunted, hunted, panicked and incredibly guilty…was it the right thing to do?  Probably not.  And Jeremy Chapman, whose funeral I attended earlier this week, would have been down on me like a ton of bricks.

Jeremy, of the Sporting Life and Racing Post, among other publications, was once described as the Tiger Woods of golf betting tipsters and was a man of many talents.  Correct grammar was one of his things; punctuation was not to be messed with.  Of course, I’m now a complete mess, with commas, semi-colons and colons scattered to the four winds.  As for apostrophes, well, I’ve accepted that they’re a lost cause, with apologies to Jeremy and the equally great Lynne Truss.  Sometimes life really is too short.

Not being a gambler, I didn’t follow Jeremy’s tips avidly and would donate a few pounds to his coffers every year at the Open.  The only time I ever won anything – a substantial (in my terms) 30 quid, I had to leave early and Jeremy, ever trusting, gave my winnings to Dai…I never did get them in my hot little hand.  My ever-lovin’ put them in what he called “central funds”.  I’m still cross!

As is often the case with funerals you learn lots of things you didn’t know about the person who’s died and wish they were still around so you could learn more.  Racing, golf, boxing, musical theatre, cabaret, page lay-outs, writing, you name it, Jeremy was a master of it.  Condolences to his wife Christa, who drove him everywhere (he never mastered driving) and all the family.

Now where was I?  Oh yes, time and the passing thereof.  It was 25 years ago this week that Annika Sorenstam, like Jeremy an avid cruncher of numbers, became the first woman golfer to record a score of 59, 13 under par, in a proper professional event, on a proper golf course.  It was at Moon Valley in Phoenix, Arizona, in the Standard Register PING, an event that the incomparable Laura Davies, won four times in a row.  Annika, known from then on as Ms 59, had a putt for a round of 58 but breaking 60 was a magical feat in itself.

I was there.  Really.  I was.  And it was one of the triumphs of my journalistic career:  it took a lot of pleading but despite the eight-hour time difference I managed to persuade the subs at The Times to give me top billing, above the men’s European Tour event.  It meant I was given something like 450 words as opposed to 250.  Some career, eh!!  Mind you, you wouldn’t even get the results in the paper now, let alone words from somebody who’d been sent there to report on the event (and others).

I only realised it was a special anniversary when I got an email from the ANNIKA Foundation billing a “More Than Golf” virtual series session with Annika and Charlotta, her sister, called Achieving Your “59”.  Oh, lovely, I’ll sign up to that, I thought, that’ll be very interesting and great to revisit the day itself.  The glitch came when I was told that to sign up required parental consent…Ah, a bit tricky that.

Turned out the event wasn’t for old dolls like me wanting to reminisce about a great day.  A closer inspection of the small print revealed that the session was intended for “female junior, collegiate and young professional golfers”.  Not for the likes of me then.  Fair enough.  The chances of me improving my golf by 30-odd strokes – and the rest – per round are non-existent.  Odds of several million to one wouldn’t give even the most clueless bookmaker or tipster a single sleepless second.

The Standard Register, the Turquoise Classic I think in a previous incarnation, was a great event for us European watchers.  There were big crowds; Laura ruled the roost for several years in the mid 1990s; then in 2000 Charlotta beat big sister Annika and Karrie Webb in a play-off for her only LPGA victory; in 2001, Annika had her 59 in the second round and went on to win.

Looking up the LPGA media guide, 2001 was the year Annika had eight wins, six seconds and twenty top-ten finishes “en route to her fourth career Rolex Player of the Year Award, Vare Trophy [stroke average] and money title.”  She was quite a player.

Sadly, not all numbers always add up.  The day after Jeremy’s funeral, I went to watch Spurs play Atletico (Atletic nowadays I think) Madrid in the Champions’ League and although we won 3-2, we lost 7-5 on aggregate.  It was a good match and for a while we had a sniff of a mega upset but we had too much to do after a dire first leg and who knows when we’ll be in the top comp again.

I’m featuring Gandys at the top because at long last, on the day of the match, I got to their wee outlet shop in Covent Garden (I also managed to nip in to the Apple store where I discovered that the only thing you can do with the flood of mail in Junk is delete it!).  Just as well I decided to go because I discovered that a sustainable business isn’t always sustainable.  Gandys are, apparently, on the way out, unable to make the bottom line add up.

The company, starting with flip flops, was founded by two brothers whose parents were swept away by the tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2004 – the boys and two younger siblings survived – and they’ve done great things since, helping set up schools and orphanages in Sri Lanka and Nepal and elsewhere.  It’s worth looking them up and reading all about it.

In the meantime, there’s 60 per cent off sitewide on gandysinternational.com.