It’s still bone-growing season for me.  I have now reached the window of six to eight weeks since I severed the bone at the neck of the humerus, the predicted timescale as to when one can realistically expect the ole body to have grown a replacement.  It appears to be going quite well and I can certainly say I feel so much better than a mere three weeks or so ago.

In fact, I can pinpoint my feeling of returning to civilisation to exactly two weeks ago when I ventured out to fulfill a speaking engagement at Chester golf club.  Husband and wife Brian and Patricia Antlett, the men’s and ladies’ captains of the club, had contacted me in the summer to invite me to speak at their winter charity lunch.  They had me reaching for my diary when they declared their charity (for the second consecutive year) was to be the Shropshire Staffordshire Cheshire Blood Bikes.

Unknown to the captains I had became involved with that very same Blood Bike (BB) group a couple of years back through my husband, Brian, who has been a BB rider for several years.  I was coming out of a bit of a rough patch, health-wise, because of Covid, and knew a return to golf, which has been my life for almost sixty years, was not a given.  I was not quite well enough to be out and about much but was well enough to be getting a little bored, so followed up on his suggestion to train as a controller.

As many of you will be aware this group covers Staffordshire and Shropshire as well as Cheshire, an area of 3500 square miles, and in November the charity completed job number 50,000 since it began life back in 2004.  The service is staffed completely by volunteers – 24 hours a day, seven days a week and, for this year anyway, 366 days a year.  It’s quite an operation.

It was a pleasure to be back in a golf club setting and meeting the feisty, dynamic membership of Chester golf club.  The zest for life, living, golf and socialising on display was an absolute joy and a veritable breath of fresh air to someone who has been housebound (aka imprisoned!) for large lumps of time over the last three years, for one reason or another.  Many are past their golfing days but remain faithful members of the club, attending the numerous social events and keeping in touch with their pals.

Charities like ours rely totally on fundraising and the magnificent support we have had from Chester golf club is not something we ever take for granted.  It never ceases to amaze me how deeply people reach into their pockets even though seemingly assaulted with requests for help from all sorts of good causes.  Thank you one and all.

All through this year I have harboured hopes and intentions of getting back out playing golf but, alas and alack, the realisation that my playing days are now behind me can no longer be ignored.  I can’t say I haven’t given it a decent shot with every ounce of me over the last three years having been poured into regaining my health and my fitness to play.  Unfortunately, the body says “No!” so I’ve decided to give in (not so) gracefully.

The sister, of course, refuses to accord me a jot of sympathy, delivering utterances such as, “No more worrying about the yips, then – so that’s a relief” and “Well, you can’t play as well as you used to!”  It’s impossible to argue with either of those statements and, to be honest, this outcome has been on the cards for a long time.  My last round of golf was October 2021 and I doubt I’ve totalled 18 holes since.

It was Patricia who told me of Henry Longhurst’s relief at finally ceasing to grapple with the game – he was a fellow sufferer of the yips or “twitches” as he called it and one day a small voice in his head said, “You don’t HAVE to do this.”

He wrote about this revelation in his marvellous book “My Life and Soft Times”:  “A great wave of relief came over me and on D-Day, 1968, I put the clubs up in the loft with the water tanks, closed the hatch, removed the steps and walked away.  Nor have I for one second regretted it.”

Unlike Henry, I leave the game wanting to have played more, but strangely at peace now for not being able to do so.

A healthy lack of sympathy from my nearest and dearest allows for no self-indulgent pitying, so my thoughts are turning to a replacement activity.  Seeing as it was power-walking which resulted in the most recent tumble I’ve decided to give Nordic walking a go when completely recovered.  The poles might help me remain upright, I’m hoping.  I have several friends who have enjoyed this pastime and assure me, if done properly, it’s a full all-over body workout.

I’m fortunate to have expert advice close at hand, too.  Former England golf coach and long-time friend Pat Smillie  ran a Nordic walking company with her partner after she retired from professional golf and she’s looking into a few things for me.  I’m looking forward to it – it’ll be a new chapter.

Just think – I’ve hit my last bad golf shot!

 

 

You really couldn’t make it up.  The draw for the third round of the FA Cup was live on the telly and as team after team was picked out, the Spurs ball remained steadfastly in the bowl.  Then, lo, Mark Hughes, looking in fine fettle, drew out No 53.  Tamworth.  The mighty Lambs.  And, yes, out next, produced with a flourish by Dion Dublin, was No 40.  Tottenham Hotspur.

Cue screeching and leaping about in Lichfield, which was a bit embarrassing because I was on a Zoom call at the time – don’t ask me what the Zoomers, in Australia and America, were saying, I confess I wasn’t concentrating.

My phone started pinging as the news spread and the enormity of the contest sank in.  First thought was how to make sure I get a ticket; it’ll have to be at the home end; so will I be cheering for the Lambs? Lots of people want to know who I’ll be supporting and that really is a bit of a tricky one.

There’s no escaping the fact that it’s a game Spurs have to win, to have a chance of a sniff of winning a trophy this season.  Of course they’ll be favourites but the moment a big team underestimates a minnow, look out.  That way upsets and disasters (sporting) lie.  A friend, a Villa supporter looking forward to taking on fellow claret and blues West Ham at home, said, “Can’t think you’ll send any first team players anyway!”

It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that that message made my blood run cold.  If we, as in Spurs, think all we have to do is turn up, we deserve to be stuffed – or beaten 1-nil, or on penalties;  do Spurs know that our (as in Tamworth) goalie Jaz Singh, a building surveyor, is ace at saving penalties?  That’s how we (as in Tamworth) won away at local rivals Burton Albion, just a few miles up the A38, on pens in the second round.

What’s more we (as in Tamworth), are so lowly that we have an artificial pitch, hated by the big boys; a tiny, tight ground that’ll be packed; crappy changing facilities (I have this on good authority from someone who’s been in there, so my advice is:  change on the coach); and, of course, a lot of decent players, including Tommy Tonks and his fearsome long throw; it has all the hallmarks of an FA Cup classic.  I can’t wait.

I have friends who hate football; friends who don’t get it at all, just don’t understand why anyone would be remotely interested; and friends who love it.  Don’t ask me why I love it – and sometimes hate it.  Who knows?  Probably the best explanation is that Mum, when she was pregnant with me, dreamt that they christened me “Wembley Stadium”.

Football, like all sports, is as we know, all about money.  Golf, which I think we all concede is a niche sport, has delusions of grandeur, at least at the top tournament professional level but I suppose we can’t blame professionals for lusting after money.  After all, that’s what being a professional is all about:  earning a living, making money.  Can we really criticise them for that?  The game isn’t just about glory.  Is it?

There’s been a lot of talk recently about Ryder Cup players (American) being paid to play in the biennial contest and I  think I saw that Tiger Woods, who’s been very quiet recently, concentrating on rehabbing from yet another back surgery, suggested upping the $400,oo0 to $5 million, with most of that being passed on to charity.  Now, that may be completely wrong because I confess I wasn’t paying too much attention but, really?  Why not cut out the middle men (the players) and give the money straight to the charities?  Is it a tax dodge?  What’s the point?  Am I missing it?

A lot is made of Ryder Cup players playing for nothing but that’s being disingenuous surely?  They get showered with gifts, their mouths stuffed with gold (that’s how Aneurin Bevan said he persuaded the doctors to sign up to the National Health Service:  “I stuffed their mouths with gold”) and more cashmere than one man could wear in a lifetime.  If a player doesn’t make money from the Ryder Cup, he should change his agent.

Anyway, Ryder Cup Europe and the PGA European Tour (DP World Tour officially on other occasions) have, “in collaboration with IMG and in partnership with Rolex”, produced a documentary about the build-up to the last Ryder Cup, in Rome.  It’s called Una Famiglia (A Family) and “gives unprecedented access to Ryder Cup preparations”.  I haven’t watched it yet but I’m sure it’ll be brilliant, emotional and tear-inducing – and I don’t think money will be mentioned much.  It’s available on Ryder Cup digital channels and will be broadcast in more than 100 countries.

It’s New York next, so let’s hope the contest emerges more or less unscathed, ready for Adare, in Ireland, in 2027….

Quite often the blog finishes with a photo by the incomparable Mary McKenna but this week I couldn’t resist passing on this beauty from my friend Bob Cantin’s latest Fishing For Fun newsletter.  I hope he and Tom Olivo, who took the picture, don’t mind.

Tom is Bob’s – and I quote here because it’s all-American and I don’t quite understand the college bit – “Sig Ep fraternity brother who lives in Bozeman, MT….

“The photo captures the stunning beauty of the Upper Madison River flowing through Yellowstone National Park.  Tom says that his AI paintings have reached a new level of quality as he is finally connecting his superior camera technique in the field with the AI computer work in his lab….”

Well, however Tom, who’s in the picture, managed it and whether he caught any fish or not, the only word is WOW.

 

 

 

Last week a young Thai professional golfer, Jeeno Thitikul, (above) won the CME Group Tour Championship, the final event on this year’s LPGA (Ladies’ Professional Golf Association) schedule.  The last two decades have introduced us to a conveyor belt of phenomenal talent from Asia, so this is surely not all that memorable?

I beg to differ.  Jeeno scooped $4 million for her efforts at Tiburon Golf Club, Naples, Florida last Sunday.  FOUR MILLION DOLLARS!  I never thought I would see rewards like that in my lifetime for a woman professional golfer.  This was the largest first-place prize in women’s golf and one of the largest single prizes in all of women’s sports.  It’s a mind-blowing amount of money and more than many players will make in their entire careers and she will forever go down in history as the player who first won a cheque of that size.

I’m very conflicted at the moment as to how I feel about the money sloshing around in golf.  I’m delighted for the women;  I think they have worked hard, – very, very hard – since the formation of the LPGA back in the 1950s and I know the LET (Ladies’ European Tour) have done the same since they were formed in 1979.  It’s been a struggle.  A long, hard, uphill battle sustained over decades and recognition of their skills by virtue of bigger prize funds is much deserved.

I feel if I were a sponsor I would certainly be putting my resources into women’s golf.  It’s hard to meet a more grounded, humble, hard-working set of athletes.  I’ve been involved as a player, a coach and a broadcaster in the game and signs of entitlement among the women are rarer than hens’ teeth.  You get a lot of bang for your buck with them.

And so, with a sigh, I turn to the men’s game.  It’s a different world, for sure.  Scottie Scheffler’s on-course earnings this season topped $29 million while Jeeno, the highest earner amongst the women, topped out at just over $6 million.  Of course, there will be off-course deals to add in to those totals but I was intrigued to see how these earnings compared with those at the top of other sports’ pyramids.  So, I did a little digging into the three biggest sports in the good, ole USA.

Dak Prescott, the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback’s 2024 salary was over $100 million.  His SALARY!  Not performance related, therefore.  Steph Curry, basketball’s superstar guard for the Golden State Warriors, banked a salary of $55.8 million for 2024 and Shohei Ohtani, baseball’s wonder boy, had a base salary of $70 million.

Now, consider this.  My theory is that the majority of top world-class golfers live or have bases in the States and it’s a world where successful sportspeople mix with each other often, not least because many stars from other sports just love their golf.  Perhaps this has created an arena where some golfers feel undervalued.  They compare their earnings to comparable players in other sports and they have become discontented.  This is only my theory, remember, but there must have been some malcontent for the LIV golf tour to splinter the tour and the game so successfully.

The golfers, however, are spectacularly missing the point.  Sponsors pour their money in to a sport, largely based on the numbers of “eyes on”.  How many folk are attending the events, but more importantly, how many are tuning in and streaming said spectacles?

Here are some ballpark figures to digest.  More than 20 million tuned into the NFL – PER GAME;  11.3 million watched the basketball finals;  15.8 million followed baseball’s 2024 World Series.  A whopping 123.7 million watched the 2024 Superbowl.  The average Sunday viewership on the PGA Tour, including the four majors, was 2.8 million.  Are the golfers perhaps overestimating their drawing power a teensy- weensy bit?

The cold hard facts are, whether we like it or not, that golf is a niche sport.  There is currently not enough interest to merit enormous prize funds to boost golfers’ earnings to a level comparable with those who participate in the really popular sports.  Golf fans are being turned off by what they perceive to be the greed and entitlement of the players.  The current solution of the PGA tour is to limit the number of all exempt players from 2026 onwards, to increase the purses, introduce more tournaments with no cut and to have smaller fields.

No, no and thrice no!  That cannot be the way to grow the game (ghastly expression!).  Stifling competition can never be a good thing, in my view.  The smaller fields with no cut will do that.  The argument in favour is twofold – the fans want to see the best players in the world play all four days.  Well, I don’t.  I don’t want to see an out-of-form player chopping around for a guaranteed amount of money at the bottom of the field.  I want to watch a journeyman who finds himself in with a chance of a win after ten years on tour.  I want to watch a young player who’s playing with his idol for, for him, potentially life-changing money.  THESE are the stories that capture the imagination – or, at least my imagination.

The second argument coming from the tour is that the smaller fields will ensure that the first two rounds will certainly be completed by Friday’s end thus setting up a riveting weekend.  My solution is to say to the players:  “Get a b….y move on!  Play faster.”  There never has been a collective will to speed the game up and that is, quite frankly, pathetic.  Don’t the players and the powers-that-be realise that slow play is the biggest turn off for the fans?  The TV companies have colluded with this by cutting all the faffing about out and playing everything on a slight delay.  Who can blame them?

The final straw for me is the American Ryder Cup team seems set to receive $400,000 per man for the honour of representing their country on golf’s biggest platform.  Many folk ask, “How can you expect the players, upon whom the whole spectacle depends, to be the only ones who don’t receive any remuneration for their week’s work?”

“Quite easily,” is my response.  These guys earn tons and tons of money – why CAN’T they revel in the purest form of competition there is?  This money grab is grubby and tainting.  That word “entitlement” seems to be at the forefront of everything.

For my part, I know lots of people from all sorts of walks of life who have very little and they give so much time, effort and money to charities and to those less fortunate.  Is it really such a stretch for some of those driving this change to understand that this demand for payment is wrong on every level?

I do not like the way my beloved golf is going but it seems set on a path that will be difficult to arrest.

Turning the Titanic comes to mind.

This is a warning to all those of you who are blissfully unaware of the perils of an ostensibly harmless pastime:  JIGSAWS ARE DANGEROUS.  Yes, dangerous.  They encourage you to sit down and stay indoors, seizing up; they are time-consuming, bloody annoying and addictive.  And they take up a lot of room.

Still, there’s no denying it.  I’m hooked.  The other morning, in between doing some blog, making mushroom soup, watching Rip-Off Britain (older women working tirelessly) on scams and trying to explain the intricacies of my next-door neighbour’s set-up to a young woman from the council’s planning department, I put three pieces in the Isles of Scilly.  Yes, a whole three.  And I was ecstatic.

Mo’s back and she’s got plenty to say on the golf front, so I’ll just say congrats to Nelly Korda, world No 1 and LPGA Rolex Player Of The Year, on a wonderful season, ditto Lydia Ko, the latest Hall of Famer and, of course Jeeno Thitikul, who won the CME Group Tour Championship and a first prize of $4 million.  The young Thai, still only 21, snatched the season-ending title from America’s Angel Yin with an eagle, birdie finish.

I must admit I was pulling for Angel, who’s been one of my favourites ever since I saw her at the AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath.  It was the way she behaved with her pro-am partners and the crowd, engaging and entertaining, just what you’d hope for.  And not something every professional golfer understands, no names, no pack drill.

Thitikul, still in shock, was asked what she’d be doing with the money and said, “Spending it!  But don’t tell my parents.”  Brilliant.

Talking of spending, I went on a bit of a splurge earlier this week, albeit without the backing of a few million in the bank.  There was a trip to Costco, which may be good value but is never cheap and in the run up to Christmas, there was stocking up to do and that included presents as well as the basics.  The queues at the check-outs were long and winding but I made it through relatively unscathed – unlike the bank account.

As I was leaving, by sheer good luck the queues for the petrol station – 124.9 for ordinary unleaded – were no longer clogging up the dual carriageway, so I nipped in to fill up the tank and headed home:  Costco conquered, customer cream crackered.

Then, the next day, at my suggestion, three pals and I headed to Nottingham on a shopping trip.  It was my idea, for my benefit but luckily for me my friends are always up for a jaunt and miraculously we found a date that suited us all.  We took the train and wonder of wonders, it all ran smoothly.

Once in Nottingham, not somewhere any of us knows well, we worked out how to use the trams – with the help of locals, amused and bemused by the cluelessness of a quartet of oldies on a day out to the big city; checked out Lakeland; selected a  coffee shop out of the rain; and, eventually, found ourselves heading in the right direction for Megan Crook Textiles, the object of the exercise.

It’s a small workshop, specialising in bright, vibrant colours and zany patterns and we were pretty much left to our own devices as we browsed the rails.  My personal shoppers were patience personified as they critiqued colour choices and sizes and did a brilliant job of helping me spend what remained of my money.  I can’t thank them enough.  Their good humour and tolerance were above and beyond.

We celebrated at a Chinese restaurant nearby that had been recommended by a grandson who’d been at uni in Nottingham and the food more than lived up to expectations.  Delicious.

The train back to Tamworth pulled in on time, just as we arrived on the platform, we got seats together, there were no delays and the whole outing could hardly have gone better.  Amazing.

Back in Lichfield, we’ve had a new lake in the park thanks to sundry storms, so the swans and labradors are happy – and the photographers, if not all the parkies, who can’t get at a lot of their equipment because the compound is cut off.  I’m rooting out the walking pole for depth-testing purposes – even waders might not be protection enough and the mid-length wellies are definitely out of their element.   It’s too cold for the swimming cozzie, so lots of diversions are in order because so many paths are impassable – or invisible.

Perhaps we should just hunker down with our jigsaws until the waters recede….