The Toughest Test

Another week, another major, that’s just what it seems to be like at this time of year – and I love it!

This week it’s the US Women’s Open which is taking place at Lancaster Country Club in Pennsylvania.  At risk of alienating my friends on this side of the Atlantic, this is most definitely the big one, the blue riband event on the women’s global golf calendar.  This has the most history, the most impressive roll call of champions and marks the winner out as being very, very special.

It’s time we had another European winner – we haven’t had one since 2006 when Annika Sorenstam won for the third time, having already lifted the title in 1995 and 1996.  We had a good run there in the middle of the 1990s because the following year Englishwoman Alison Nicholas broke American hearts across the nation by holding off Nancy Lopez, a legend who never won her national title.   The diminutive Yorkshire lass was the second player from England to win this magical event, following in the footsteps of her pal, Laura Davies, who was victorious a decade earlier in 1987.  In 1988 Lotta Neumann was the first Swede to win and she was the second European to triumph after Frenchwoman Catherine Lacoste (top pic) rocked the golfing world with an epic victory in 1967 – as an amateur.  To date, that has never been repeated.

And that’s been our lot from a sum total of 78 iterations of this championship – five winners with seven titles between them.  Don’t think we’re lacking in quality players from this side of the world – we most certainly aren’t.  I think it just goes to show you how very, very hard it is to win one of these Opens.

One player standing in everyone’s way this week will, of course, be the No 1 player in the world, Nelly Korda.  Though I long for a European win I don’t want to see Nelly wake up any time soon.  She’s immersed at the moment in playing a brand of other-worldly golf that has resulted in six wins from her last seven starts.  She won the first major of the year and is odds-on favourite to scoop the second one this week.  She’s in the middle of achieving something very very special and it would be churlish to wish her anything but well.

Let it play out as it will.*

I’ve been working hard to release myself from the house in general and the sofa in particular since my return home from the Masters with a compressed disc in my neck.  Following orders very closely indeed, I am now, after multiple treatments, able to take a bit of exercise and, guess what?  I’m even going to be able to drive the car again after seven weeks!  Life is improving and hopes are high that I’ll be fully fit for my trip to Pinehurst and the men’s US Open in ten days’ time.

Since I’ve had to wrap myself up in cotton wool between deep tissue massage sessions, I have taken to whiling the time away by re-reading J K Rowling’s entire Harry Potter series.  Twenty-five years on from first reading them, they haven’t lost their appeal – her writing and storytelling prowess are exceptional and I have shamelessly been immersing myself in the world of Hogwarts school.  Nothing like a bit of escapism.

Someone else shortly to have a little time on her hands – but I doubt she’ll fill it reading and lolling about – is Lexi Thompson who, at 29 years of age, has announced that she will be retiring after this 2024 season.  She’s known nothing but golf her whole life and has had a very successful career – 15 victories to date, including one major – but feels it’s time to draw things to a close.  She’s grown up in the goldfish bowl that accompanies supreme sporting talent and has her fair share of scar tissue but insists that she is “excited to enjoy the remainder of the year as there are still goals I want to accomplish”.

Undoubtedly a third Olympics and a sixth Solheim Cup team feature in those ambitions as well as a successful outcome to her 18th attempt to win her country’s National Open this week.  Whatever lies ahead of Lexi for the remainder of this year, be prepared to see her leave with a bang, not a whimper.  The former is much more her style than the latter.

Let’s wish her well for her future.

*Oops.  Didn’t see that coming, even on a tough, tough course.  Nelly had a first round of 80, ten over par, mainly thanks to a septuple bogey 10 at the par 3 12th (her third hole), a scary prospect at the best of times, with a pin position to match.  Nelly was in the water three times, hence the horror show.  Even so, all is not lost.  The best of the early finishers could manage no lower than 69. [ed]