I wonder how Shane Lowry has been sleeping this past week after his hard-to-believe final three holes at last Sunday’s Cognizant Classic.  Despite playing in The Palm Beaches on the PGA National course, which has historically always been slow to show Lowry its kinder side, the genial Irishman admitted, “I thought I had it.  I thought I was going to win.”

For those of you who don’t slavishly follow the goings-on of the PGA Tour or the weekly scores of certain players, allow me to put you in the picture.  Shane Lowry had played virtually flawless golf all week and found himself standing on the 70th tee three shots ahead of the field and with the finishing line firmly in sight.  It would have been a first individual victory in three and a half long years for a player who openly admits he doesn’t win nearly as much as he ought to win.

He felt confident, his game was in tip-top shape, and all that remained were a par 4, followed by a par 3 and a closing par 5.  Then it happened.  A phony Shane, an imposter, appeared from nowhere and inhabited his body, somehow taking control and forcing the real Shane to lose all the skill and belief in his game, painstakingly built up over the years.

A three-iron for safety, which had worked well all week off the 16th tee, squirted way right on him and found a watery grave.  Then came a drop, a recovery wedge back to the fairway, an approach shot into a greenside bunker and a gutsy up-and-down.  Six.  Double bogey.

Traditionally, a player will regroup on the next tee, take a few deep breaths and clear his mind.  Shane stood on the 17th tee and saw where the ball of Nico Echavarria, his nearest challenger, had managed to cling to the putting surface, oh-so-close to rolling into the water.  He then watched helplessly as the Colombian rolled in the birdie putt to wipe away the three- shot deficit completely.

At that point the real Shane left the course altogether and the imposter had a free run of things.  Another tee shot into the water, another double bogey and a forlorn final par left the Irishman shell-shocked and at a loss to explain what had happened.  A three-shot lead with three to play and he’d lost by two.

I suspect that’ll be what is keeping him awake at night.

Is he flaky under pressure?  Well, a resounding no must surely be the answer to that, mustn’t it?  After all, this is a player who won his national Open as an amateur way back in 2009.  He won an Open Championship in his home country with the weight of expectation of an entire nation on his shoulders.  And only last year he withstood the stresses and pressures of a Bethpage Black Ryder Cup to deliver victory for Europe.  Lowry is no stranger to pressure and he has come through time and time again.

Is he arrogant?  Did he think victory was in the bag?  Did he get ahead of himself?

No.  Probably.  And yes.  No – arrogance isn’t in his nature.  Probably – he admitted he thought he was going to win.  And yes, the most revealing comment in his post-round interview was when speaking of his four year old daughter, Ivy.

The golfing week started off in a very entertaining fashion.

I was looking forward to the opening tournament of the season on the Ladies’ European tour and with the PIF Saudi Ladies’ International being hosted at Riyadh Golf Club that meant a Wednesday start and a Saturday finish.

One of the pre-tournament press conferences featured Solheim Cup teammates Charley Hull and newly married Carlota Ciganda of Spain.  There’s not much seems to phase Charley, on or off the course but Carlota’s admission that she had just gone 42 days without touching a club or playing golf was enough to leave the Englishwoman open-mouthed in disbelief.  Admittedly the Spaniard’s wedding fell in the middle of that time frame.

“Did you miss it?” Charley demanded, hijacking the press conference.  “Not one bit,” came the response.  Charley then revealed she once hadn’t played for two days and her family shooed her back to the course because she was so miserable and difficult to live with.  She didn’t need telling twice.

There’s no doubt the golf course is Charley’s happy place and, despite not yet having reached her 30th birthday, last week saw her begin her fourteenth season on tour.  She just loves competing and her swashbuckling style is very well suited to chasing down the leaders, which is exactly what was required of her last weekend.  She put the afterburners on late in the round, covering the last eight holes in six under par to come home in 31 blows and finish on 19 under.  One by one her rivals failed to match her and the title and rather large trophy were Charley’s without the need for a play-off.

Never dull, or one to miss an opportunity, Hull whipped out her phone and sent a picture of her most recent prize to the carpenter charged with building her trophy cabinet for her newly renovated home.  She explained that she’d seen a picture on social media of Justin Rose’s trophy cabinet and had decided to copy it – but that this latest prize would definitely need a little more elbow room.  She had already relayed all the measurements she thought necessary but realised before the trophy presentation that amendments had to be sent back to England.

With the large trophy came a very large cheque ($750,000) – the largest outside a major in the women’s game.  Pretty timely after an expensive building project.

It’s all a far cry from my first season on tour in 1986 when our twenty tournament schedule yielded a total prize fund of £665,000.  In today’s money that’s roughly equivalent to £2.5 million.  The tour’s 2026 schedule features 30 tournaments and a projected total prize fund of (gulp) more than 39 million euros – that’s roughly £34 million.  For those of us of a certain age, most of whom can be found on a certain “founders plus others” WhatsApp group, that’s an extraordinary sum to get your head round.

Of course, expenses and costs rise exponentially but even so.  It’s amazing to think that nowadays two young women like Charley and Carlota, at ages 29 and 35 respectively, can have amassed, worldwide, roughly £12 million and £10 million apiece, not taking anything other than prize money into consideration.  You can certainly afford a decent house renovation with that.

Even in our heyday very few of us would have held a candle to Charley – except in one respect.  Most of us had that same deep, deep love for the game running through our core.  You certainly can’t say we were seduced by the vast riches on offer.  That love was nurtured, of course, in our amateur days and recently one member of the aforementioned WhatsApp group (and a founder member of the LET) posted a newspaper cutting for us all to see.

It detailed the 1974 Scottish Girls’ Open Strokeplay Championship at Stranraer and it was very special to the teenage Madill girls as it was the first time we travelled alone together to an event.  No parents!

We caught the ferry from Ireland to Scotland and dragged our clubs and suitcases from the ferry port down into Stranraer town in order to locate our accommodation.  We had no car or transport to make life easy but, even then, I was unwilling to make things more difficult than they needed to be.  We needed somewhere to dump our stuff while we found exactly where we were going so we hit on the notion of going to the police station and asking them to look after our bags and clubs.

In hindsight I think they were rather bemused but I seem to recall that a few of them were members of the golf club and they duly looked after everything for us.  Those were the days….!  We did find our digs in the end and the club sorted transport to and from the course for us each day.  The hospitality was unforgettable and I don’t suppose we realised that many of us were just beginning a wonderful, magical journey through the world of golf.

That love of the game, which we share with Charley Hull, has given us all so much – perhaps not the riches she enjoys but for many, a very good living and what price those fabulous, precious, enduring friendships?

…………………………….and breathe………………………….!

This laptop is in mortal danger of being chucked out of the window and/or smashed with a sledgehammer.

I am in the middle of a very busy time with lots of jobs in the house to finish, entertaining and hosting to do and packing and preparing for a holiday.  There’s also a six-hour Blood Biking shift to be inserted at least once a week.  So, I thought I’d sit down and bash out a few hundred words of the blog and get things started – and it’s the start that’s the worst bit.

Anyway, rather unusually, the words were flowing quite nicely earlier today and then the heel of my left hand grazed a button low down somewhere on the keyboard and all but one letter of my scintillating prose disappeared into the ether.  The one bold letter still looking at me was an “L”.

I knew there was no need to panic.  After all, I’d been here before and knew that the drafts were automatically saved and all I had to do was restore the back up on the blog.  No sweat.

That was precisely 90 minutes ago and my blood pressure has been rising with every passing second.  I have been unable to locate any saved drafts that contain more than that hateful “L”.  I really do not, absolutely not, have time for this.  So, I’ve aborted and started again, smarting at the loss of 300 plus words.  What the “L?”

I’m slowly getting back into the rhythm of watching golf again having had a wee break from it recently.  I keep an eye on things on a Thursday and Friday, seeing who’s made and missed the cut.  Then, if my interest is still piqued by Sunday, I’ll try and catch the final round.  In the last month or so, two names have been very much to the fore – Patrick Reed on this side of the Atlantic and Chris Gotterup on the other.

Since the turn of the year each American has won twice already and, in fact, Reed lost in a play-off in between his two victories – otherwise he’d be celebrating a hattrick.  Gotterup, on the other hand, at 26 years of age, is just at the start of his third season on the world’s best tour and he’s just doubled his haul of titles to four, winning the WM Phoenix Open last Sunday.  That’s a pretty fast start in anyone’s language but even he wasn’t really entertaining any notions of victory last Sunday until a scintillating finish of five birdies in his final six holes gave him a total of 16 under.

At that moment he was unaware that the overnight leader Hideki Matsuyama was staunchly fighting a rearguard action against arguably the most errant driving of anyone in contention to win a tournament.  His incredible firefighting meant he arrived at the 18th tee with four birdies on his card, no bogeys and a slender one-shot lead.  That’s when Hideki ran out of steam, hitting yet another awful tee shot, and this time even he couldn’t fashion a par for the win.

The play-off hole was a microcosm of the final round – a superb Gotterup tee shot and second leading to yet another birdie while a woeful drive, a penalty drop and a remarkable recovery still gave Matsuyama hope – until that final putt of Gotterup’s.  It was a compelling watch.

Further compelling watching has been following that player most likely to divide public opinion, namely Patrick Reed, aka Captain America.

As an honorary life member of the DP World Tour (awarded to him in 2019 after his Masters victory the previous year) Reed is plying his trade on that tour this season, his LIV contract having come to an end with no agreement to further it.  This season he’s odds on to win one of the ten PGA cards on offer which will create a pathway for him back to his home tour and, come August, he will have gone a year since he last teed it up on the LIV tour.  That further eases his path back to the certainty of playing full time once again, should he wish, in his homeland.

Not so certain, however, is the reception he’ll receive from his peers.  Granted, Brooks Koepka is already treading a path back from LIV to the PGA Tour so Reed isn’t the trailblazer in that respect.  Koepka, however, is a completely different kettle of fish.  He is, and always was, well liked by the other players.  He’s paid his fines.  He sought rapprochment with his home tour after curtailing his LIV contract.  Word is that he has softened his sometimes arrogant exterior – and, most telling of all, he never joined any lawsuit against the tour.

As for Reed – well, suspicions of dishonesty and cheating have eddied around him since his college days and he never has been one of the most popular boys in the class.  And then there was the curious backstory in 2018, when he won the Masters, of his not wanting his parents to attend the tournament, despite it literally being down the road from their home.  Nor were they included in any of the victory celebrations.

Domestic issues aside, however, it will be the $750 million lawsuit against, amongst others, the PGA Tour that will be a pill too bitter for some to swallow.  I don’t believe Reed will find a welcome mat awaiting him – not that for one minute I think he’ll care a jot.  He’ll carry on just doing his thing – as he always has.

And at the moment his “thing” is collecting titles and leaving the rest of the DP World tour players in his wake, shaking their heads at the extraordinary high level of the Texan’s play.  In his commitment to his game, with his forensic preparation and work ethic, there is much to be admired.  Day after day of nine-hour practice schedules are not uncommon for him.  That’s three hours on the long game, three on the short game and three on putting.  No wonder it’s hard to name a better short game player or putter in the world of golf.

Reed is currently the owner of a lone major but I’m pretty certain that that Masters title of his will soon have a few new major buddies.  And, of course, there’s also the delicious prospect of seeing him in the Ryder Cup colours of the US again.  That’s a spectacle I’d really like to see.

I decided I’d indulge myself this week and give myself a Christmas present.  In the hurly-burly of the festive season, running around buying presents for everyone else, and continuing to fight a war on three fronts against the still-settling dust from the kitchen renovation, I’ve hardly had a moment to myself.  So, when I received an email telling me the 2025 Masters Official Film was now available to view I thought, “That’s for me.  Feet up for an hour or so is on the horizon.”

Rory McIlroy has been on my mind this past couple of weeks.  We’re at that time of year when all sorts of awards are dished out and traditionally it used to be nail-biting stuff to find out who was crowned the BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY).  Alas, that once great programme is a shadow of its former self, largely because of the decimation of numerous great sporting events from the channel.  That means to show any footage of golf, for example, the Beeb has to buy said footage from the host broadcasters thus making the whole endeavour extremely pricey.  And so, golf, among other sports, tends to get short shrift from the Corporation.

I know I’m passionate about golf but, in my mind, I do try to choose the person for the top SPOTY award who has achieved something incredible.  Doing my best to be unbiased, and despite all the wonderful achievements of our athletes and teams this year, I still have Rory way out in front.

I was thrilled last weekend when Lando Norris was crowned Formula 1 world champion, the first British winner of the title since Lewis Hamilton several years ago.  That was stupendous, the achievement of a lifelong dream and nail-biting to the very end when he won by the slender margin of two points.  To see his Mum and Dad celebrate and realise that they had made it all possible was heartwarming indeed.  We have, however, had numerous other British drivers in the past [ten in all – ed] who have been world champion.

Back to the golf.  We have never had a Grand Slam winner in golf from Europe, let alone from these shores and Rory is only the SIXTH person in the whole history of the game to win all four majors.  Two of those remarkable men, Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan, are no longer with us.  This means there are only four people on this planet who are Grand Slam Champions – Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods……and Rory.  Whether you’re a fan of golf or not – surely that puts him way out ahead of any other contenders?

Watching the Masters film reminded me of the wringer McIlroy put us through.  I was cross with him as early as the 15th hole of Thursday’s round.  All was seemingly going well to that point with the Irishman four under but he then inexplicably took a fit of the head staggers, chipping the ball from the back of the green at fifteen straight into the water fronting the putting surface.  Two doubles in the space of three holes resulted in a ho-hum 72, a mere seven shots behind Justin Rose’s brilliant 65.  That’s another Masters out of sight, we all thought.

But then, Friday brought Rory doing Rory things and a scintillating 66 zoomed him up the leaderboard, now only two behind his Ryder Cup teammate Rose, who was still at the head of affairs but only one ahead of Bryson DeChambeau.

Saturday was nothing short of joyous for Rory supporters when he opened with six consecutive threes, something that had never been accomplished before.  The entire country of Ireland ground to a halt.  Those supposed to be doing something else were suddenly unavailable.  Golf clubs were packed to the hilt by those brave enough to be in a public arena to watch their favourite son close in on the impossible.  Those of an even more heightened disposition remained at home, unable to trust their emotions or language and needing space to pace, pace and pace.  With a second consecutive 66 in the books we all fell into bed exhausted with our man holding a two-shot lead over DeChambeau, the player who had cruelly swiped the US Open title from McIlroy’s grasp the previous year.

And so to Sunday April 13th 2025 and the burden of overwhelming hope that finally THIS would be the day of all days for Rory, for his family, for his friends, for Ireland, for Europe and for all his fans.  The flickering flame of that hope was all but doused in an enormous draught of cold air in the first half hour of play.  First hole:  Rory, a double;  Bryson, a par.  Both were now 10 under.  Second hole:  Rory, a par.  Bryson, a birdie.  Rory is no longer leading.

Resilience has been the Irishman’s watchword for the past couple of seasons and he works hard to be able to bounce back when things go wrong.  Summoning all his positivity after blowing his lead so quickly Rory birdies the 3rd, then the 4th and boom, just like that his lead is not only restored, but enhanced.  Three ahead.

Standing on the 10th tee he is four clear.  Oh-oh.  Memories of being in the exact same position in 2011 must have been in his mind.  They were certainly in mine………but 14 years on, surely Rory was a different player now from that long ago young gun?  He birdies 10, manages to stay out of the water on 11 with his second and finds the heart of the green at the 12th – all potential card-wrecking parts of the golf course.

Still three ahead of Justin Rose, who is having a storming round and is two holes ahead, and Bryson.  Dare we relax and breathe easier now?  Only six to go and three to the good.

And then…..Rory did more Rory stuff and pitched his third into the creek at the 13th.  In disbelief we watched a seven unfold, followed by a bogey on the 14th and as he picked the ball out of the hole we had a three-way tie at the top on ten under – Justin, Rory and Ludvig Aberg.

Perhaps the moment was too big for Rory?  The pressure of what he was trying to accomplish was immense.  It was certainly far too much for his supporters.

And then he responded with two of the finest iron shots I’ve seen him play, one into 15 (he made birdie) and one into 16 (he made par), both to seven feet or so.  Both putts slid by and at this point, with Justin birdieing the 16th to go to eleven under, the pair were tied.  If Justin had been up against anyone other than Rory I’d have been supporting him and his caddy Futch to the hilt – but this was no time for sentiment.

The 17th was key.  Rory snatched a birdie from the course to move to twelve under while Aberg and Rose both gave one back and Rose’s closing birdie on the last only restored him to the eleven under mark.  A boomer of a tee shot up the hill at the 18th and this was surely it.  McIlroy, in the centre of the fairway with a wedge in hand, had “only” to hit the green and take two putts and his date with destiny would be achieved.

With horror, disbelief, anger and disappointment we watched him hit an atrocious shot into the bunker, splash out to seven feet and then not even hit the hole with his putt.  I felt sick; everyone felt sick; the country was sick; Rory looked sick.

And now, that famous “R” word comes rushing back to me – resilience.  In the play-off another booming tee shot sets up another wedge and this time Rory summoned up the mental strength to execute beautifully, bringing the ball back down the slope behind the pin to three feet or so.  When Justin’s birdie attempt refused to drop, here we were again, teetering on the brink of watching one of our own achieve the seemingly impossible.

The ball dropped and Rory dropped, sobbing, to his knees and we dropped into our chairs from the utter drama and sheer exhaustion of it all.  Ireland partied for days.

Ah, Rory, what a Christmas present it was watching it all again.  Enjoy a well-earned seasonal break, as will we, from our little blog.

Happy festive season everyone.  We’ll see you all again sometime in February and hopefully share more amazing moments from this wonderful sport.