Many Happy Returns

It’s hard to believe that the force of nature that is Liz Kahn, a pioneering suffragette if ever there was one, will be 90 on Monday.  Happy birthday Mrs K, have a great day and thank you for all those battles you fought and won on our behalf.  We youngsters owe you more than we can ever repay.  However hard we have had to fight our corner and justify our existence, we have you to thank for slashing a route through the jungle and making our working lives in golf much easier.

The indomitable Liz (her late husband David always called her Elizabeth – in my hearing anyway) was one of the first woman golf writers to concentrate mainly on the men’s professional game but she also aided and abetted Vivien Saunders, a fellow femme formidable and others in the setting up of the women’s professional tour on this side of the Atlantic.  The WPGA (Women’s Professional Golf Association), founded in 1979, is now the LET (Ladies European Tour), thriving beyond most expectations.

Liz on her 89th birthday last year, at the first get-together of some of the founders of the LET, at Thorpeness Golf Club & Hotel.

If you’d like to know more about all this, take a look at the LET website (ladieseuropeantour.com) or YouTube and have a look at the interviews with Liz and some of the founders and early members.  Find “Celebrating The Founders” and enjoy; there’s a lot of fantastic stuff in there.

One of my favourite photos of Liz, on one of her many expeditions to far-flung parts of the globe. There is much more to her than golf.  Not sure which of her fellow travellers took the photo.

And she found time to write books too.

In her interview, Liz recalls the days when you could wander up to a player, any player and ask for a chat/interview, what is now called a one-to-0ne and is held up as some sort of holy grail, a pearl beyond price.  Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson, Tony Jacklin, properly big names, some of the greats of the game, were more often than not happy to chat to golf writers, most of whom they knew pretty well.  Liz once asked Watson for an interview and was pleasantly surprised when he sought her out instead of waiting for the appointed time.  Happy days.

All that reminiscing reminded me of the time that I was at The Tradition in Arizona on the occasion of Nicklaus’s senior debut and Dai had primed Jack, a sucker for a practical joke, to wind me up.  The press conference, which included Trevino, who’d been cleaning up on the tour, was packed and when Jack singled me out – I think I was the lone woman – everybody thought he’d lost the plot.

By some miracle I’d won the Barbados Ladies’ Open Championship a few months before and was called out on that.  One of the seniors, I can’t remember which one, had questioned that Trevino was dominating the tour because he was only winning by one or two, so Lee said,  “I didn’t realise you had to win by more than one.  You don’t get paid any more.”   Then he asked me,  “How many did you win by?”

“I won by ten.”

Collapse of all parties.  “There,” Lee said, above the laughter.  “That’s dominating right there.”

I have the tape of the exchange, given to me by the Westers, who did the radio stuff.  It’s entitled “Trish, Jack and Lee at the Tradition 3/28/90” (bear in mind they were Americans) and just looking at it cracks me up.  What’s more, I now have something to play it on, having bought an old-fashioned tape machine from Richer Sounds in their recent sale.

Lee Trevino, seated and Jack Nicklaus, third right, with the US Ryder Cup team of….not sure what year and not sure of the photographer.

The snapper apparently gave Dai a copy of this photograph on condition that he never published it because it was a bit risqué, all those years ago.  I came across it (and the tape) during my never-ending sorting and thought they worked well together and enough years had passed for the pic to be less than embarrassing.  We should be able to work out the year because of who’s in the picture and because Trevino didn’t win his singles – and had promised his team he’d do something to them all if he didn’t….Who said American Ryder Cup teams never bonded.?!!

I managed 13 holes on the golf course on Tuesday without too many ill effects but was glad to take my wonky left knee to the osteopath yesterday for a bit of a going over.  It is behaving much better and I was quite perky after my treatment and promised to be more diligent with the exercises prescribed by the sainted K, who keeps a lot of the golf club in working order.  She can’t do it all on her own.  It’s up to me to do my bit.

There are quite a lot of exercises but I know they make sense.

On my way home the traffic ground to a halt unexpectedly.  Blimey, not another set of temporary traffic lights; there are so many in Lichfield and environs at the moment that getting anywhere requires precise planning – or very early starts!  If it’s not HS2, it’s gas works or putting in pedestrian crossings so that punters can reach the Bowling Green (a big pub in the middle of an even bigger roundabout) without risking life and limb – and that’s before having a drink.  Friends once walked there but had to get a taxi home because they didn’t dare attempt to cross the road.  True story.  No exaggeration.

Where was I?  Oh yes, in a queue, police car on hand, for no apparent reason.  What was going on?  Then I had to laugh – and take a snap (I wasn’t moving).  A lone sheep had stopped play.  See if you can spot it.

Feeling sheepish.