Golf: Memorable Moments

For all my scattergun accusations of all USA citizens being xenophobic megalomaniacs, I do sincerely believe that one or two are thoroughly decent folk, including members of the professional golf fraternity. Tom Watson always seemed genuinely humble and generous after devouring each Scottish links, and I’d have loved him to succeed at Turnberry in 2009 where he led after three rounds at the age of 59! A par on the final hole would have done it.

‘Gentle’ Ben Crenshaw was another American I supported for a while. In the Seventies he was always there or thereabouts in The Open and other majors and I recall being chuffed when he clinched the US Masters in 1984 and again eleven years later. I fostered similar proud thoughts in 2004, staying up late on a Sunday night to cheer perennial runner-up Phil Mickelson to his maiden Major triumph at Augusta. Although he sometimes wore his heart on his sleeve, the big left-hander endeared himself to me with his lop-sided smile and ursine lope, and thoroughly deserved his place in the history books.

On the subject of bear-like golfers, the maiden Major for John Daly also springs to mind. Dad and I didn’t often pay much attention to the US PGA tournament but for some reason we found ourselves viewing the Beeb’s live coverage one August Sunday evening. The big blonde Californian really stood out, in part because he bore a vague resemblance to my brother-in-law Phil. On the Crooked Stick course, however, he played like nobody else. His ‘grip it and rip it’ style won him many fans and his powerful drives were truly ‘ossome’. Such apparent recklessness off the tee ought to have landed him in constant trouble but somehow, while rivals such as Faldo, Stadler and Couples faded, ‘Long John’ played superbly to win by three strokes. The amazing thing is that he only played because several others dropped out before the start but through the Nineties he became a top draw and also won The Open in ’95. 

As Daly turned to his addictions, Americans soon found a new star to ‘whoop’ for: Tiger Woods. After turning pro in 1997, records tumbled at his feet, notably his astonishing 12-stroke margin of victory at that year’s Masters. At first, I was swept along in global admiration for the sport’s young superstar. His mixed-race heritage upset the applecart at the traditionally racist Augusta club, where black faces were only allowed as caddies or servants, for which golf should be forever grateful. Between August 1999 and September 2010, only Vijay Singh interrupted Tiger’s lengthy reign as world number one. However, by this time the golden glow had tarnished. Not because of his marital infidelities and other personal problems – they would emerge later – but simply because he was too good. His dominance on the PGA tour and in Majors had long since become boring. Am I an awful person for revelling in seeing Tiger’s scary scowl and final round signature red shirt shrouded in rain-sodden sand or chest-high Scottish grass rather than him lifting another piece of silverware? Golf had always been interesting because a high ranking was no guarantee of winning the biggest tournaments. Tiger's brilliance removed the thrilling uncertainty out of the sport, robbing the also-rans of the success their talent deserved. Just ask the perennial European Tour winner Colin Montgomerie who, like British former world leaders Luke Donald and Lee Westwood, enjoyed a very healthy bank balance but surely regretted missing out on a Major.

Before the Tiger first showed his teeth, there was The Shark, Greg Norman. Like Woods, the Aussie was extremely successful around the world but, unlike the American, that didn’t translate into an armful of Major titles. While he often had storming final rounds he is best remembered for his collapses, such as the 1996 Masters against Faldo. That simply endeared him to me even more and I took particular delight in his 1993 Open triumph.

Sunday evenings in late April glued to the stunning flora and evil greens of Georgia listening to birdsong and Peter Alliss are all very well, but most of my favourite moments are associated with our own Open Championship. Not all are triggered by golfing magic. I have little recollection of Ian Baker-Finch’s strokeplay in ’91 but will never forget his interview in which his young daughter, sensing a giant ice lolly being held before her face, attempted to lick the microphone.

Then of course there were the harrowing scenes at Carnoustie eight years later when the clear leader Jean Van der Velde self-destructed on the seventy-second hole. Having already sliced into railings, a wall and thick rough, his made the catastrophic decision to play his third into the Barry Burn. As the Frenchman rolled up his trousers and removed his shoes to play from the water, I yelled at the telly urging him to abandon such folly. Van der Velde must have heard me because he eventually settled for a drop. How must he have felt when, with the flag taunting him just yards ahead, his chance was blown by a triple-bogey. He entered a three-way playoff but his confidence was shot and the little-known Scot Paul Lawrie was victorious. Heartbreaking stuff.

Carnoustie also introduced me to a young golfer who was to fill Tiger’s considerable shoes when the American took his tumble out of form and out of favour. In 2007, the curly-haired 18 year-old Rory McIlroy was hailed the leading amateur at The Open. Unlike so many others, this Silver Medal winner was to fulfil his teenage potential and more. His first few years as a pro featured steady progress in Europe, the Middle East and US, blazing a trail into the top 10. In 2011, he endured a horror round at Augusta but had the mental strength and natural talent to shrug it off and produce a phenomenal performance at the US Open, winning by eight strokes and breaking the tournament record score. He’d out-Tigered Tiger. However, while he was harvesting titles like some collect stamps, for me the one that mattered was The Open.  The stars aligned perfectly in 2014 when McIlroy duly delivered at Hoylake and I was chuffed for him.

Those early days of the decade were incredible for Northern Ireland. Graeme McDowell also claimed Majors across the pond but possibly the most popular winner of all was Darren Clarke. With a tragic back story that would make even X Factor producers green with envy, the 42 year-old former tour and Ryder Cup stalwart emerged from the depths of despair to lift the Claret Jug at Royal St George’s in 2011. Tears gushed all round, although personally I felt more emotion over McIlroy’s subsequent triumph.

But for all the holes in one, outrageous putts at Augusta, tear-jerking finales and head-in-hands disasters, the most memorable moment must be reserved for a man I’ve mentioned before: Severiano Ballesteros. I will simply never tire of seeing his celebrations following his winning birdie putt at the 1984 Open. The man himself may have passed away eight years ago aged just 54 but that triumphant smile at his peak is eternal.

Golf: Cheering for Europe

The roots of the European invasion were at Royal Birkdale in 1976. On those drought-browned links a 19 year-old Severiano Ballesteros announced himself with a second place in The Open. It wasn’t simply his youth or the element of surprise; he brought a Latin joie de vivre (or whatever it is en Espanol) to his game, and even his charming Spanish accent was endearing. Three years later, he became the first man from continental Europe to win a major since 1907, triumphing at Royal Lytham St Annes. While most top pros played ‘percentage golf’, Sevvy, like his contemporaries and my other sporting idols John McEnroe and Viv Richards, would produce shots nobody else would dare attempt. If they went astray he would simply seek a ruling and then pull off astounding recoveries. I vividly recall the agony of watching his drive at the sixteenth flying off into a car park, then the amazement as his next shot landed on the green. 

He proceeded to win the Masters in 1980 and 1983 but my abiding memory of Sevvy was his boyish delight after sinking the winning putt at St Andrews in ’84. The whole nation punched the air with him. By the time his 65 defeated Nick Price at Lytham again four years later Sevvy must have been one of the most popular sportsmen on the planet, as well as one of the most successful. The majors were important, of course, but he was also one of the most brilliant matchplay golfers of his or any other generation.

This came in particularly handy in the Ryder Cup. The GB & NI team had been serial losers in the venerable biennial contest with the USA so in ’79 other Europeans were allowed to compete in the hope of evening things up a bit and increasing interest over here. It sure did. It wasn’t all about Sevvy. The American stranglehold on world golf was also being loosened by German Bernhard Langer and Ballesteros’ fellow Spaniard Jose-Maria Olazabal, with whom he created the most successful partnership in Ryder Cup history. 

One of my favourite Open battles came in 2007 when Padraig Harrington went head-to-head with Sergio Garcia. Despite considerable success around the globe, neither had a major to their name, and I didn’t mind which came out on top. Sadly for him, Garcia blew his third round lead and the Irishman beat him in a play-off. It took Sergio another ten years to achieve that elusive first major, bless him!

In the past few decades many others from across the Channel and North Sea have starred in the top tournaments. Jesper Parnevik, Henrik Stenson and Thomas Bjorn have led a superb Scandinavian contingent, Martin Kaymer won two majors in the States, the cigar-chomping Miguel Angel Jimenez was one of the most familiar faces on the circuit and now Italian Francesco Molinari is amongst the best in the business. He is already a Ryder Cup legend having won all five of his matches, pairs and singles, in Europe’s stunning 2018 destruction of the Yanks in France. 

The competition has never really seared itself in my consciousness the way the Open Championship has done. Perhaps it’s because I wasn’t brought up on it, watching on television. In recent years I’ve been content with highlights coverage, whether from Europe or across the pond, especially since Sky secured exclusive rights, turning the event into a war-like confrontation. The broadcaster would have loved the 1991 ‘War on the Shore’ and 1999’s ‘Battle of Brookline’ when jingoism reached new heights, or rather depths. 

I’ve always detested the US gallery’s tendency to ‘Whoop!’ at every opportunity. I would gladly strangle the irritating sod who, after an American drives off the tee, shouts “It’s in the hole!” There’s always one. And it’s never in the hole, you moron! Thus my interest in the Ryder Cup has intensified whenever the Europeans are in the driving seat. I know that not all the Yanks are as obnoxious as Paul Azinger but my Euro-patriotism is whipped up to eleven whenever the USA have their asses whupped, especially on their own soil. The ‘Miracle of Medinah’, when Europe overturned a 4-10 deficit to succeed by a point, was particularly satisfying. Perhaps this makes me as bad as the zealously patriotic Americans. Almost. At least I reserve my histrionic demonstrations of bias for the privacy of my own living room.

All the on-course fist-pumping and wife-hugging leaves me somewhat uneasy, even the manic actions of our own Ian Poulter but the Ryder Cup does feed my dislike of almost anything American, and that was before golf-loving Trump became President. It seems a shame that, while Europe are as competitive as ever in world golf, Britain is reverting to prehistoric nationalism and fear of Europe over the whole Brexit fiasco. Well, I for one will counter the Stars and Stripes by continuing to fly the blue and gold stars when it comes to golf, cheering McIlroy to Molinari, Rose to Rahm. 

Golf: Seaside Putting and Links Legends

Golf and I enjoy a somewhat ambivalent relationship. The traditional misogynistic  Pringle sweater/nineteenth hole snifters/middle-class businessman image rests uneasily with me. However, place me within walking distance of a putting green or mini-golf course and even now I revert to being an eight year-old pestering Dad for a game.

From the day I was given a plastic set of two clubs and ball, I was smitten. No family holiday in England was complete without an eighteen-hole workout. They were competitive, too. Scorecards were meticulously and accurately maintained, and usually retained as souvenirs of the fortnight as lovingly as any postcard or shells collected from the beach.

There were favourites. In 1970 Newquay boasted two excellent adjacent mini-golf courses and I still recall the thrill of a hole-in-one at Minehead. A nine-hole pitch’n’putt greensward atop the Cornish cliffs at Porth showed I could wield a seven-iron without embarrassment but I never forgave the owners of a chalk-grass putting links on the Isle of Wight where one hole was as lethal as anything prepared at Augusta! Miss the cup on the up-slope and the ball would inevitably roll back to your feet. We stopped counting strokes at ten…

Some venues drew me back many a-time. When visiting Nanna and Grandad at Clacton, Dad and I, often with Catherine and others in tow, would enthusiastically walk to the nearby ‘Rec’ for a round before the man in the hut could close for the day. We were also fortunate to live near a park featuring a nine-hole pitch ‘n’ putt which offered enough variety, vegetation and even genuine sand-filled bunkers to challenge anyone. Dad and I enjoyed many tight contests there on a summer afternoon, and later there were some keen competitions involving Billericay Rotaract members. Such courses were great levellers. Friends who could swing an iron like a pro were often disadvantaged by their tendency to over-hit. With luck I could ‘top’ a ball to the green and still record a three.

Hacking around Lake Meadows is all very well but it’s not proper golf. I often wondered what it would be like to play on a full-size course, somewhere to encourage me away from my natural conservatism and have the confidence to give the ball a good whack with a driver of long iron. I’m still waiting! The closest I have come to the clubhouse experience is an overnight stay at the prestigious Chepstow St Pierre hotel and post-funeral wake at the palatial Buckinghamshire club amidst the primped parklands of Denham.

For all the close encounters with the genuine golfing set and serried ranks of electric buggies, full ascent into the rarified atmosphere has passed me by. Instead I have focussed on watching the world’s best plying their trade on the telly, admiring their ability to power the little ball three hundred yards with fade from the tee, place an approach shot with back-spin inches from the flag or judge a forty-foot putt’s route across a minefield of undulations and gradients to perfection.

The earliest memory I have of a golf professional actually owes less to television and more to school. At the age of five I was in the same primary class as Bobby Platts, the son of the local Thorndon Park professional Lionel, who that same year led the Open after the 1^st round and played in the 1965 Ryder Cup. I don’t know whether Bobby followed his dad into the sport but he did follow him up to Yorkshire where Lionel became the pro at Pannal. For years I would comb the results pages of the Daily Express for a mention of L. Platts (Pannal), especially in the Open qualifying competition or the tournament proper.

Like Wimbledon and Test cricket, the four days of The Open in July formed part of the British summer’s holy trinity of sporting events. Interest in the US Masters and Ryder Cup would come later but, with a passing nod to the usually rain-sodden Wentworth Matchplay in autumn, my interest in golf was largely concentrated onto the historic annual festival of links golf. I would also often watch the BBC’s Pro-Celebrity hit-and-giggle Friday night programmes, in which Tarby, Brucie, ‘Enry and Wogan-y would swap putts and laughs with Tony Jacklin and Lee Trevino, but that doesn’t really count.

As for The Open, I would watch it live when I got home from school on the Thursday and Friday, with little homework to distract me given the impending summer break, but the highlight was the final round on the Saturday, later Sunday afternoon. The leader’s procession to the eighteenth green is still one of TV’s great moments of theatre: the adulation, exuberant crowds sprinting to the stewards’ rope for best view of the concluding putts, the competitors’ understated waves and humble smiles, gestures which communicated their thoughts: mustn’t get too excited, I could yet blow it with a three-putt! I always found this an emotional moment, whoever was playing.

In the early Seventies, Brits such as Brian Huggett, Neil Coles, Brian Barnes, Christy o’Connor (Junior and Senior) and even Peter Alliss, before he focussed on being the much-loved purring voice of golf, would always be in the mix. However, the big names tended to be Americans such as Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Billy Casper, supplemented by other exotic foreigners like Peter Thomson or Gary Player. I vaguely recall our own Tony Jacklin triumphant in 1969 but he wasn’t exactly a charismatic sporting icon to an eight year-old boy.

Super-Mex’ Lee Trevino, on the other hand was an entertainer on and off the course. His was a wise-cracking personality, heart worn precariously on his sleeve, but he was also a cracking player on the global circuit, winning the Open in ‘71 and ‘72. A year later I was smitten by the railway-fringed fairways of Troon (won by Tom Weiskopf) then in ’75 the admirably cool-headed Tom Watson first held the claret jug. Annoyingly, he did so only after an 18-hole play-off against Jack Newton on the Monday afternoon, thus depriving me of a chance to see the action as it happened.

The Yanks continued to hold sway for the next few years but I was enthralled by the brutal but brilliant two-man show in 1977 when Watson and Nicklaus went head to head on a rare sunny Sunday afternoon at Turnberry. The ‘Golden Bear’ shot a bogey-free 66, finished ten ahead of third-placed Hubert Green and still lost by a stroke! The following summer, a repeat looked on the cards after 54 holes but this time Watson faded and the perennial challenger Jack edged a handful of other Americans to win his fifteenth ’major’. The leaderboard also featured a couple of Brits: our then number one Peter Oosterhuis and a twenty year-old Nick Faldo.

But the tide it was a-changing. When an unknown nineteen year-old finished second behind Johnny Miller in ’76, I duly took note. However, what do Spaniards know about golf? By the time we reached 1979, the old monopoly of the Yanks, throwing a few crumbs the way of Britain and the Commonwealth, was starting to creak. In 1979, the cracks were ripped apart. The sport hailed a new star and the golfing world expanded its borders to include continental Europe for the first time.