Where to start this week?  Ah yes, with a boast, a bit of smug self-congratulation.  The other day I took myself off into Birmingham – on the train of course (last time I went in the car I got a big fine for driving in a bus lane) – to give blood.  It was donation No 72, so I was matching my age, hooray.  With a bit of luck and a fair wind (perhaps not the best choice of words given that we’re in the area of bodily functions), I’ll get to 75 and another wee badge, a green one apparently.

Admittedly, it’s more tiring than it used to be and I took it very gently after donating, sipping my squash slowly (no tea or coffee available because of the heat) and munching a Club orange biscuit, a blood-doning tradition.  I was just about to get up and leave when the woman who’d left a few minutes before, reappeared.  “I don’t feel very well,” she said.  She was helped to a bed and lay down to recover.

She was much younger than I was, so I stayed put for a bit longer, then went round the corner for something to eat, a substantial lunch, eaten slowly, before heading home.  Must be learning sense.  Isn’t there a book called “The Body Keeps The Score”?

The doning centre was busy and it was great to see a load of first-timers in the house, all young men who looked Middle Eastern, being marshalled by one of their own who’d donated before and had persuaded his mates to join him.  The blood and transplant service relies on all of us, from every group, to keep it going and new blood is vital.  We’ve all had friends and family who’ve needed donations, so how can we take it for granted?  If you can donate – or can persuade the younger element to brave the needle – please do.

There was no golf for me this past week but I did have a lesson, shock, horror.  Desperate times call for desperate measures and it was the awful realisation that there was no way I could venture on to the local par-3 course without endangering life and limb that forced me to cry for help.  It was, admittedly, a brief session, with a club – a 7-iron – but no ball and no shoes in Mo’s wee scorched orchard.

I can’t hit an iron to save my life and spend my time fiddling and finagling my way round the course with my rescue.  Fortunately, we have no water at Whittington and no greens protected by ghastly lakes that require a carry of an elevation beyond my capabilities.  (Re-reading that sentence makes me sympathise with those non-golfers who find the game completely baffling…You are not alone!)  The 18th at Wentworth (West Course) comes to mind and closer to home, one or two of the closing holes at Aston Wood.

Anyway, Mo, as ever, came up with a solution but it does require me to woman up and go to the practice ground to try it out, knowing full well that it won’t be pretty – at least not to begin with.  How on earth can a grown person be so afraid of a little white (or yellow) ball just sitting there innocently on the grass?  It’s insane.  But I suppose that’s golf for you.

This is just the place for a wonderful picture of some women who could manoeuvre that ball better than most.  They were at Royal Lytham and St Annes last week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Great Britain and Ireland’s famous victory in the Curtis Cup at Prairie Dunes.  From left to right:  Vicki Thomas, Trish Johnson, Belle Robertson, Bridget Jackson, Diane Bailey, Claire Hourihane and Jill Thornhill.  Diane was the non-playing captain and Bridget, who played in the team that halved the match at Brae Burn in 1958, was in Kansas as a selector and spectator.  The missing team members were Lillian Behan, Karen Davies and Mary McKenna.

In between blood doning, trying to remember my swing thoughts, going to tai chi and researching kettles (mine fell off the bonnet of the car and is now leaking), I was making jam with the tons of damsons harvested from Mo’s orchard.  In the past my damson jam has been little short of a triumph but this latest batch…well, let’s just say it’s a little short of perfection.  It tastes ok but is a bit runny, a result, frankly, of a lack of planning and organisation – I kept having to turn it off and leave it, having misjudged my timings.  Quelle surprise!

The jam will work on toast, just about hanging on but I think I’ll have to sell it as a sort of sauce, delicious smothered over ice cream, say.  The remaining damsons – there are plenty more and there are juice stains on the floor to expose the inadequacies of my storage facilities – are destined for ketchup, all being well.

 

Guess what I’ll be doing this weekend!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other day, playing a few holes with a friend, I gave them ten questions to guess who presented the trophy at the Senior Open at Gleneagles last Sunday.*  It was a bit mean I admit but I didn’t want them working their way to the right answer, unlikely though that was and I thought the traditional Twenty Q too generous.

Today, I’d be tempted to give you all a lot more goes at guessing  the opening topic of this week’s blog.  Admittedly, there’s a substantial visual clue at the top of the piece (providing there’ve been no technical glitches) but tortoises are not really an area of  interest in these parts, let alone an area of expertise.  The expertise is still lacking but thanks to a visit by Ducky (pictured), there’s a lot more interest.

She’s an Eastern Hermann’s tortoise, about four years old, “a medium-sized herbivorous reptile native to the Balkans and southeastern Europe” according to Google’s AI overview.  It also revealed that they can be great pets because “they stay small, have a gentle personality and eat a simple plant-based diet”.  Leafy greens are the food of choice – they’re good for us humans as well – so nothing too exotic is needed on that front.  However, they need fresh food and water daily, heat lamps and sundry other accoutrements and can’t just be left to their own devices.  They’re not an easy pet option.

I read somewhere that they were slow moving but Ducky showed quite a turn of foot (claw?) when given a roam in the garden; a moment of inattention and she would have been in the bushes.  Inquisitive outings and accidents permitting, she’ll outlive her owners, so a tortoise really is for life – and beyond.

This week, at Royal Lytham and St Annes, one of the world’s great golf courses, a couple of golfing anniversaries are being celebrated at the AIG Women’s Open.  It’s the 50th anniversary of the championship, which was won by Jennie Lee Smith, now Lucas, at Fulford in 1976.  She was also a member of the Curtis Cup team that played at Lytham that year.  The Americans, who included future legends Beth Daniel and Nancy Lopez, won, as they usually did but ten years later it was a different, unexpected story, the stuff of legend.

At Prairie Dunes, in the blistering heat of Kansas (100 degrees F in old money, almost too hot even for tortoises), Diane Bailey (née Frearson, then Robb) led her team to a comprehensive victory (13-5) that beggared belief.  At Muirfield, two years earlier, under Bailey, GB and I had come agonisingly close, losing by a single point – 9 1/2 – 8 1/2 and the captain, having proved that the mighty Americans were beatable, made it her mission to do the impossible:  win on US soil.

It was something that no visiting team had done – there’d been a draw at Brae Burn in 1958 (following home wins in 1952 and 1956) – and the Curtis Cuppers weren’t expected to break a run of THIRTEEN consecutive defeats.  “We always win this thing, don’t we?” one of the Americans, Danielle Ammaccapane, said to her captain, the incomparable Judy Bell, a future president of the USGA (the first woman pres), and who could blame her?  They always did win the thing.

Amazingly, I was there, along with Dai, Michael Williams of the Daily Telegraph, Elaine Scott from Golf World (later of the LPGA) and photographer Keith Hailey.  We’d travelled more in hope than expectation and Prairie Dunes, a wonderful golf course in the middle of nowhere, was a big draw.  Anyway, I seem to remember that Dottie Pepper (who’d just become Mrs Mochrie and had been on honeymoon) duffed her opening drive…Blimey…Americans never did that, did they?  (I believe, a few years previously, one American, overcome with nerves on the 1st tee, had to hiss at her foursomes partner:  “Get up here; I can’t do this….” but I digress, as usual.)

It went from bad to worse for the home side:  Ammaccapane was penalised for building a stance in a bunker under the eyes of the USGA’s P.J. Boatrwright,  a formidable figure and undoubtedly the world’s chief rules guru and it wasn’t until the second day that the USA managed to win the first hole.  By then it was too late and I think GB and I only needed half a point from the six singles to win.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody amazing and paved the way for the Ryder Cup team to win at Muirfield Village the following year and the Walker Cup team to win at Peachtree in 1989.  They really were trailblazers.

All hail to Lillian Behan, Karen Davies, Claire Hourihane, Trish Johnson, Mary McKenna, Belle Robertson, Vicki Thomas and Jill Thornhill.  And, of course, Diane Bailey and her strong right arm and support Elsie Brown.

Two years later, at Royal St George’s, I suggested in my preview for The Times that it might have been the most outrageous fluke and, apparently, Jill Thornhill, incandescent, threw the paper to the floor, leapt out of bed and set off to prove me wrong.

Now, I used to think that that was probably my best, most effective intro in that it certainly caught the attention of the reader but, on reflection, it was a bit pants because that reader never read any further!  She completely missed the bit at the end where I suggested that it wasn’t a fluke and GB and I could win again.

And they did.

 

* The answer:  David, now Lord Cameron, the plonker I hold mainly responsible for the Brexit debacle.  The reason:  he’s an ambassador for ISPS HANDA, the sponsors of  the championship and staunch supporters of all things golf.

Maureen always was more diligent and much better at prep than I was/am, which made her a very good golfer, an excellent coach, an outstanding broadcaster and speaker and an ultra reliable and readable blogger:  she never shirked the homework.  I confess that when I was working, I did my best to keep up to date and tried hard to know what was going on, more or less.  Nowadays?  Random in the extreme.

For instance, yesterday, for the first time, I logged on to livgolf.com.  How many years has LIV been going now?  More than four.  How much longer will it last?  Who knows?   But surely the name will have to change now that their events have gone to 72 holes instead of 54 (hence the LIV).  How do you pronounce LXXII?  A bit like being the progeny of Elon Musk – hasn’t he given his many offspring weird, unpronounceable  names or labels, beyond the understanding of us mere mortals?

Anyhow, I looked it up because the boogie boys are just up the road from me, at the JCB Golf and Country Club, near Uttoxeter and I was wondering how they were getting on.  To quote the website:  “NOW, IT BECOMES TRADITION.  LIV Golf returns to JCB for a third straight season in 2026, and it’s going to be another party in the countryside!  DJs on the green, boogies beneath the trees and a champion field of golfers, led by hometown heroes Majesticks Golf Club.  The secret’s out:  this is the UK’s newest summer festival, and everyone’s invited.”

Well, I confess it really doesn’t sound like this old fogey’s sort of thing and if I want a festival, there’s one going on no more than 100 metres from my house this weekend.  I left the desk to have a listen, then realised it was so quiet because the music doesn’t start until today (Friday)!  Time for a lie down with a cold compress methinks.

No doubt there’ll be plenty of people going to have a look at the course itself because it’s not usually available to the hot polloi.  There are no public green fees, play being restricted to corporate members, invited guests, top clients and select employees, according to the AI Overview that came up on Google when I entered “jcb golf and country club green fees”.  Another source of info said that employees can play on a Sunday afternoon for a reasonable fee but there’s no just pitching up to play a layout that has been described as “a tour-ready contemporary masterpiece in course design”.  (Think that was its own website’s description.)

The golf?  Well, an Aussie Ripper called Lucas Herbert had a 61 on day one, followed by Bryson “De Brat” DeChambeau, one of the Crushers, with a 64.  You’ll remember them both from last week’s Open at Birkdale, Herbert for his low-scoring heroics in the second round and DeC for his brattish antics on the same day.  Tyrrell Hatton and Harold Varner III were next on 66.  We still see Tyrrell round and about but Harold took the LIV dollars – for perfectly valid, family-related reasons, no bullshitting – and disappeared into a golfing void.

Some people still pour scorn on golfers but there’s no doubting that today’s pros, male and female, are proper athletes and they need to be, to perform at the highest level, day in, day out in all sorts of conditions.  As an unfit 70-something, playing two days in a row, as I’ve done this week, is more than enough for me.  Writing that down, reading it back, makes me realise how pathetic that sounds!  But golf is not just a good walk spoiled, it’s a good walk, good exercise, full stop.  Must do more of it.

For the first time ever, I played 18 holes at Lichfield Golf and Country Club, a course that is barely a ten-minute drive from the house.  It was opened in 1991 as Seedy Mill (it’s on Seedy Mill Lane) and my only memory is being there when the clubhouse was a tiny cabin of some sort and there were nine very muddy holes, so muddy that I don’t think we even played.  It was opened by Bernard Gallacher and I think he’d be delighted to see it now, busy and thriving and very playable.  Still Seedy Mill to us oldies, though.

There’s a lot going on in Scotland at the moment:  the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open started at a bright and breezy Dundonald Links that tested the world’s best, often to distraction.   Jenny Shin and Lauren Coughlin lead on 66 but world No 1 Nelly Korda had to work her footsies off for a level par 72, as did Leona Maguire; Lottie Woad, the defending champion, had a 74;  and Charley Hull slumped to a 78, including a brutal nine at the par 5 5th, where she putted off the green, then took a while to get back onto the green – the dreaded ball-rolling-back-to-feet scenario…

We’ve all been there, however high or low we are on the golfing scale, those are the vagaries that keep us connected to the very best.

At impossibly picturesque Gleneagles, on the King’s Course, deemed too short and skittish for the big boys these days, it’s the ISPS Handa Senior Open, defending champion the inimitable Padraig Harrington.  He started with a level par 70, seven shots adrift of Cameron Percy, of Australia, whose senior career has been steady if unspectacular.  It’s an event (championship) worth watching for the views – and the peerless Ernie Els and ageless Miguel Angel Jimenez are right up there, which can’t be bad.

Finally, don’t forget to do the Big Butterfly Count if you can or that the Commonwealth Games are on in Glasgow.  It’s an event on the brink of disintegration, in danger of being squeezed out by the Olympics, World and European Championships, how expensive it is to stage and so on but there are 74 countries involved and it deserves its place.  It may be expensive to cover, perhaps the ratings won’t be stellar but it should be broadcast by the BBC, it’s a public service on a global scale, important for the smaller sports and nations.

Now, where the heck do I watch it?

 

 

 

 

It’s wall-to-wall golf this week with the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, so the telly keeps switching itself off because it thinks we’ve fallen asleep or gone out or gone to bed and forgotten to press the red (as in stop) button.  In truth, it’s been doing that for a few weeks, what with the surfeit of Wimbledon, World Cup football, cricket of various formats, rugby union, the Tour de France, motor racing (suppose it’s Formula 1 officially)  and occasionally a bit of news.

England not reaching the World Cup final was disappointing but no surprise:  after all, they’ve only ever done it once.  In 1966 (in case you hadn’t heard) when they won, at home.  Argentina, the defending champions, have been in six finals and won three; Spain, the other finalists, are in their second final and have only won the title once, in 2010.  Out of the whole wide football-playing world, only eight countries – EIGHT – have ever won the World Cup.

If England can gather their thoughts and battered bodies, leave the recriminations – and more measured analysis – for another time and get the better of France to win the bronze medal, it’ll be a triumph.

Thomas Tuchel is getting it in the neck for being too defensive the moment England went ahead against Argentina in the semis – and perhaps he was; his team certainly retreated too far and gave a battle-hardened, talented team a chance to batter them into submission.  It was never going to be a beautiful classic but it was a great contest and, ultimately, for England a gut-wrenching, sickening BBU (brave but unavailing).  They were beaten by a canny, crafty team with more tournament nous and an inner drive England couldn’t quite match thanks to a combination of Messi, the Malvinas and being defending champions.  Of the four managers in the semis – Lionel Scaloni (Argentina), Luis de la Fuente (Spain) and Didier Deschamps (France) – Tuchel is by far the least experienced at this level and in the end it showed.

And, it you’re lucky, that’s probably it for football in the blog until my treks to Spurs start again in August.

This coming Sunday, all being well, the 154th Open champion will be lifting the venerable Claret Jug aloft at sun-scorched Birkdale after a long and tiring four days of competition.  Just before the final of the Women’s Amateur at Muirfield, at the end of last month, Andrea Revuelta, a Spaniard who is a student at Stanford in California, was asked  for her thoughts on links golf.

“You have to toss everything you know about golf in the trash,” she said succinctly, just about summing up the trials and tribulations of tackling any of the Open venues.

It was a bit chilly and very windy at Muirfield, with thunderstorms causing delays as Revuelta eventually went down to Valentine Delon, of France, by 3 and 1.  No chill is forecast this week for Southport and environs and even with a wee bit of breeze a fast, hard-running track poses a very different challenge from the day-to-day stuff of professional golf.  It can scramble the thought processes of the calmest, most level-headed individual – and there are few enough of those about at any golf event let alone a major.  They’re usually to be found at the top of the leaderboard at the end.

Maureen and I are no longer working at the Open so it’s sometimes hard not to feel like yesterday’s women whenever we travel to attend the AGW (Association of Golf Writers) dinner on the Tuesday evening and (in my case) the AGW AGM on the Wednesday morning.

The R&A’s state of the nation address is immediately after the AGM and I like to stay to hear what the chief exec, in this case Mark Darbon, has to say.  A super keen security man tried to throw me out – lack of the correct accreditation, the AGW badge (or insignia as our constitution has it), being deemed insufficient – and I was only saved by a kindly official old enough to know me from a past life…I began to feel like one of those tins you find at the back of the cupboard, well past my use-by date.

Still, I shook off the rust and that glitch aside, we did have a great time and met up with lots of friends from all over the world.  The dinner was fab – many thanks to the R&A for a proper champagne reception and our secretary Matt Cooper for keeping calm and carrying on.  There’s still nothing like an Open for bringing people together.

 

Before I forget, many congratulations to Haeran Ryu, the Korean who is on a major roll at the moment.  Last Sunday, she beat Canada’s Brooke Henderson at the first extra hole to win the Amundi Evian Championship, just two weeks after winning her first major title at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.  “This is just a dream right now,” she said, “because before for the three weeks I don’t have a major championship but now two in a row.  I’m so happy and I can’t believe it right now.”

To lower the tone a bit, I had a fair amount of ear wax removed from my left ear the other week and pretty squidgy it was too.  It was lovely not to feel that I was living in some sort of weird half-world bubble and to be able to hear properly again – or so I thought.  The sainted brother-in-law, who is in charge of food and beverage during Open week, said something and I responded, “You’ve got corns?”

Not quite.

“I forgot the prawns,” he said…