Well done Viktor Hovland – a winner for the eighth time on the PGA tour.

Mind you, it took a Monday morning play-off against Scottie Scheffler before he could claim the Travelers Championship title and judging by the number of folk who turned up at TPC River Highlands for the 9am start there weren’t too many at work in Cromwell, Connecticut that morning.  Unfortunately for the crowds all they witnessed was a mere half dozen shots – two perfect drives, side by side, and then a stellar iron by world No 1 Scheffler in to five feet, followed by Viktor in to around twelve feet.  The Norwegian’s putt somehow fell in from the low right-hand side and then, rather unexpectedly, Homer nodded and we witnessed a Scheffler miss.  And that was their lot – six, no, well, five of the best.

The home crowd was naturally supporting Scottie whose fourth runner-up spot this was this season, but Viktor had his own Viking cheerleading group fresh from World Cup duty in Boston and more importantly, his Mum was present to see him win for the first time.  He’s obviously making a decent fist of being kinder to himself on the course and hopefully this result will encourage him to continue with that strategy.

As for Scottie, I don’t see anyone taking his Open title from him at Birkdale in a couple of weeks.  He’s been threatening to move up from his “B” game for a while and his timing looks good for another major.  We shall see.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s Haeran Ryu opened her major account by winning the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship by two shots from fellow countrywoman, Ina Yoon, who notoriously served a two-year suspension from the game a couple of years back for playing the wrong ball in a tournament and not declaring it at the time.

Ryu, however, has had no such glitches in her career, stepping up with ease from being the 2023 Rookie of the Year on the LPGA to now a major champ.  Her coach’s advice, after her first round of 73 left her ten behind Yoon, was to trust herself, her swing and her caddy.  She took that to heart and it worked wonders freeing her up to play her best.

There were a number of very happy players at the conclusion of this major and, aside from the winner, none more so than Dewi Weber of the Netherlands who finished in joint third spot.  Weber joined the LPGA tour in 2022 and last week’s cheque of north of $750,000 just about doubled her career earnings.  It’s probably much too little and too late for her to catch the eye of European Solheim Cup captain, Anna Nordqvist……but the match IS in the Netherlands, so with a couple more good performances……You never know.

Canadian Brooke Henderson, who finished joint third with Weber, was equally happy – but for entirely different reasons.  Her sister, Brittany, who caddied for her on tour for more than a decade, gave birth on Thursday morning to her first child, a daughter, named Sahalee after the venue where Brooke won the  PGA title ten years ago.  That’ll be a very joyful reunion.

While we were sweltering away here in Cheshire with soaring temperatures, it was strange to switch on to the Women’s Amateur at Muirfield and see that occasionally the competitors had to don fleeces and jackets – but that’s Scotland for you.  The final, however, was played in warm but breezy conditions and what a wonderful test of golf these players faced in the changing winds.

France had their first winner of this great title since Celine Boutier in 2015 when Valentine Delon beat Spain’s Andrea Revuelta by 3 and 1 in the 36-hole final.  She is the ninth French player to have her name inscribed on the old trophy.  It is, however, France’s eleventh victory because the redoubtable Brigitte Varangot dominated in the 1960s, with three titles tucked under her belt.

Delon is no stranger to adversity, suffering from scoliosis and undergoing back surgery in 2019.  Her long-term inspiration, however, has always been former US Solheim Cup captain and major winner Stacy Lewis, who faced similar challenges yet carved out a stellar professional career.

Over the years further inspiration for Valentine has come from one of her neighbours in Chantilly, namely the legendary Catherine Lacoste who has her name etched on many trophies worldwide including this one in 1969.  How fitting that France’s newest champion should win on Lacoste’s 81st birthday.

“It’s amazing,” said Delon. “I don’t think it feels real right now but it’s just the best thing ever. I practised every day to be in this situation. It was really hard today. The conditions were really hard, but being the champion and putting my name on this trophy is amazing.”

Exciting times lie ahead for Valentine as she now receives invitations into the final two professional majors of the year, plus the Standard Portland Classic on the LPGA tour and then two further majors in 2027.  If still amateur next April, she can add the Augusta National Women’s Amateur to her list..

Heavy duty appointments for anyone’s diary but I somehow feel she’ll be equal to them.  What a difference a week makes.

Many, many years ago, probably decades, when the Dinah Shore was still at Mission Hills and a very big deal indeed, an American journalist did that oh-so-dangerous thing:  she made an assumption.  She took it for granted that a Scottish friend and I were professional golfers manquées, that we’d have given our eye teeth to be out there playing against Laura Davies and co instead of writing about them.

My mate was a much better golfer than I ever was but we looked at each other in horror, said, as one, “Absolutely not,”  and burst out laughing.  Our American was nonplussed, unable to understand that we had never harboured dreams of playing golf for a living; in fact, could think of few things worse.

Diversion alert:  every time I use a semi-colon – or a colon come to that – I think of the incomparable Lynne Truss, who would, I’m sure, despair at/of the randomness of my punctuation.  Panic has now set in – and overthinking – and my defence of any abuse of usage is that it’s an Irish construction, dating back to Swift and beyond.

Lynne, who is not to be confused with Liz, prime minister for a few days in 2022, is a stickler for correct grammar and one of her best known books is Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which sold millions.  She’s also written many other books, plays, reviews, articles, you name it, she’s penned it.  I was lucky enough to meet her when one of her jobs was writing about sport for The Times.    Those years inspired her book “Get Her Off the Pitch:  How Sport Took Over My Life”.  She’s a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and her website lynnetruss.com is well worth a visit.

Now, where was I?  Ah, yes, feeling mightily relieved that every time I missed a tiddler, my life and my livelihood were not ebbing away.  Growing up I was surrounded by people who were better at golf than I was, much better.  What’s more, most of them, even the most talented, worked harder.  They knew where the practice ground was and spent a lot of time there.

The other day Maureen was remembering my trips to Newcastle, Royal County Down, to have lessons with their legendary pro Ernie Jones.  Newcastle is not next door to Portstewart but Mum would drive me there and I’d spend the time trying as hard as I could to make Ernie laugh and avoid hitting balls.  What a plonker (me, not Ernie, you couldn’t have found a nicer, better-natured man).  Quite shameful now I look back on it.

At events like the Dinah, I’d look at the pros working on the putting green for hours on end – my back twinges just thinking about it – and wonder, “Should I be inside battering away on my typewriter (it was a very long time ago) practising my intros?”  In fairness, I did spend quite a lot of time thinking about how to start my pieces and if nothing suitably smart and arty-farty came to mind, I learned to keep it simple and straightforward.  The office did not want to know that at the last minute they had a space, however titchy, to fill because I couldn’t start a piece off with a Shakespearean flourish.

I can be fussy, fretting away at a phrase but forensic I’m not and the attention to detail of the top golfers – most of the successful sports people – is unreal.  Their devotion to their craft borders on the bonkers but that’s not the way they see it.  I don’t begrudge them their success but I don’t envy them either.  Some of them nowadays make an obscene amount of money, not just a very good living and that’s the luck of the draw.

If you’re good at darts or snooker, you can now do very well financially, if not as well as footballers and golfers.  If you’re tops at tennis, athletics, cycling, boxing, cricket, rugby, no doubt you can make a fortune with a good agent, a central contract, an honest accountant and a resilient body.  Rowers, kayakers, badminton and table tennis players, to name just a few, they have their circuits and their championships and put in the hard yards but how many of them make a decent living?  And roar in to their forties without creaking?

Golfers are luckier than most in that they can still be competing well beyond most of their sporting contemporaries.  Padraig Harrington, for example, is now 54 and this week he’s trying to win his third US Senior Open title, at Scioto, in Ohio, the course where Jack Nicklaus learned to play the game.  By his own admission the Dubliner has always  been a bit crackers and laughed when he was reminded that he’d once pronounced:  “You chase improvement and not perfection.”

“I think I should write that down,” he said.  “Look, obviously, I can’t say that I live up to that aspiration, unfortunately.  If I hit the very best shot on the range, say the purest 5-iron you could hit, I’d try and hit the next shot better.  That is the stupidity of me.

“In a game that’s all about consistency, I wouldn’t try and hit the next shot the same, I’d try and hit it better, which is kind of mad.”

And that’s why he’s had the success he has and most important of all, is still in love with the game, besotted really.

No football so far you’ll have noticed but I can’t resist this, the Norwegian row (as in rowing with oars), although you need a video to do it  justice.  It’s a joy.