ADAGES, ADVICE, GOLF, THE MEANING OF LIFE, AND BAGPIPES

Top picture: Jimmy Demaret, Byron Nelson, Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan
Bottom picture: Bobby Jones, Dick Meyer

It is said English is a hard language to learn but I’ve never had any problems with it.  I’ve been wittering along in it for all the years of my life.  I can’t remember a time without words.  It’s not that I can’t be silent.  I can.  I can be notoriously silent externally but, even when a host of my colleagues and friends are commenting to their hearts’ content about my dearth of noise and words – a rarely-visited place for me - I still have a live stream going on in my head.  Me-on-me conversations: I love those convos because I can say what I like.

The days of my youth were filled with adages and proverbs.  Round every corner was a new one to behold.  And I learnt them diligently in the vain and certain hope that they would show me the path to enlightenment or, at the very least, to signpost me in the right direction.  A sort of life insurance against making mistakes and falling down pits, I gleaned their wisdom. 

After sixty years of courting this wisdom, I can safely report it hasn’t worked.  When I most need proverbial inspiration, my memory bank crashes and by the time I’ve re-loaded, it is all too late, or I recall a saying but it’s the wrong one in the wrong place and most certainly at the wrong time.  For my daily dose of verbiage and wordage, think ‘foot, mouth, open and insert’ as standard and you’ll have me clocked in a nano second.

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” the saying goes but I am always willing to fly in the face of convention and, given my late but great interest in learning this maddening game of golf, I decided to garner its lore in a last ditch effort to cushion the later years of my life from the effects of those pitfalls.

And golf and golfers are no exception.  Finding myself in this brave new world and within a genre of expression that states, “like golf, life is an intricate game so play it well”, I set about acquiring its ancient store.

Ask Joe Ordinary who’s the number one golfer (sorry Jason, Jordan and Rory) and the answer is Tiger – the young man who inspired and changed the face of golf forever and took out a few water hydrants along the way.

“The greatest thing about tomorrow is I will be better than I am today.  And that’s how I look at my life.  I will be a better golfer, I will be a better person, I will be a better father, I will be a better husband, I will be a better friend.  That’s the beauty of tomorrow”, said Tiger.  Well, I have news for you, Tiger.  You met the wrong Foley - it wasn’t swing coach Seán you needed, it was Kathleen.  That’ll be my mother, the late, great Kathleen Foley.  She had no truck with that “tomorrow” stuff.  If you’re going to do it, get your procrastinating socks off and get it done today.  Despite your Foley-fabby golf swing, you’ve taken a swing too many in the out of bounds and perhaps you’re not the best hook to hang my expectations on. Take a leaf out of her book, Tiger, and get yourself sorted today.

Next on my list was the trim shape of The Hawk’s five foot, eight inch, one hundred and thirty pound frame – nobody could accuse him of being a dadbod - when he said “As you walk down the fairway of life, you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round”.  Enlightenment at last, thanks to Mr Ben Hogan of the famous fundamental “Five Lessons” and star of “The Myths Everyone Knows, The Man No One Knew”.  I was whooping along with this statement, happy as a pig in muck, secure in the knowledge that your mate, Byron Nelson, said that you wanted the standards you left for the game to speak more eloquently than your words.  Just as well then, since you were a man of few words.  But here’s a thorny question: why did you spend so much time on the practice range if the fairway was the place to smell the roses?  You might counter this with a practice makes perfect riposte but we only ever get a ‘grab it by the short and curlies and run with it’ sort of chance in life.  And you really shot the wisdom of that fine statement in the foot when you declared that you preferred to be on the range.  That’s a statement I am now letting fade to insignificance.  Reader, I don’t mean to diss the great man of golf, who pioneered the modern swing in its transition from hickory to steel handled clubs, but actions speak louder than words in my books and smelling the roses on the perennial practice range is about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

Having found no relief in the Gallic silences of one, V Dubuisson, I was beginning to roll with the Raymond Floyd gem that "they call it golf because all the other four letter words were taken" and was in the process of swopping "golf" for "life" in that statement when I happened on a quote by an old favourite of mine, PG Wodehouse. I'm a lifelong fan of all the jolly japes and exaggerated realisms of his every book.

PG “Laughter The Best Medicine” Wodehouse epitomised the life message when he wrote, "Golf... is the infallible test.  The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play the ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well."

It's good, it's profound in the round, but I have to disagree.

PG, let me give you some tips here: the time of Honest John is over.  In the I-spy-Orwellian-Big-Brother-Watching age that we live in, nobody has to be honest.  We have the overhead cam, the street cam, the phone cam, the robot cam, the fly-on-the-wall cam and the Stay-at-Home-Joe armchair marshal.  Who needs honesty? Even the confessional and Father O'Field are no longer in demand for absolution.  Transparency is the new buzzword for honesty but, don't be confused, it is not the same thing.  You only need to be transparent once you've been found out in a lie.  So cheat away, get caught, bleat "Mae culpa", and then be transparent.  That is the way of the world.

And then there was Bobby Jones.  "No one will ever have golf under his thumb.  No round ever will be so good it could not have been better.  Perhaps this is why golf is the greatest of games.  You are not playing a human adversary; you are playing a game.  You are playing old man par.

I’m getting the hang of this, Bobby J.  If I supplant “golf” with “life” in the above statement, there’s a fair way chance I might survive this greatest game of all - life - with a smile on my face.  To summarise, never expect to nail life down, know with hindsight you could have done better and all you're asking is to equal the expectations for the course when it’s your time to sign off.  Yup, I can live with that one! But then I have also got to live with the mysteries of the Voynich manuscript - and no-one has found a suitable vehicle of translation for that one either.

Mind you, I am mindful of this astounding fact: The people who gave us golf and called it a game are the same people who gave us bagpipes and called it music.  I would have been quite content to laugh it off as pertinent to the quirky type of DNA prevailing north of Hadrian’s Wall, and nothing to do with me, except that my Ireland days delving in archaeology highlighted the 7th century Irish ‘Senchus fir n-Alban’ (‘Tradition of the Men of Scotland’) and tells the story of Fergus Mór MacEirc, King of the Scots from Antrim in North-East Ireland who moved his kit and kin in settlement to Argyll and Kintyre, thereby giving his tribe’s name to the whole of Scotland. 

It would seem I’m related.  The mind boggles.  And I am no wiser.

Hair today, gone tomorrow – a devilishly sparse look at the state of pro golfers hairstyles

Stewart Cink Has an Unreal Tan Line on His Head

There are two professions the world and I should be grateful I didn’t pursue – that of diplomat or hairdresser.  No prizes for working out the first – can you imagine me buttoning my lip to play the minefield game of diplomacy?  Silence may be golden but I was never destined for the long pauses or second-guessing of that career.  Say it like it is and deal with the consequences.  That’ll be me in a nutshell then.  The second is not so easy to figure.

It all began when I had my firstborn.  Ciaran was born with what looked like an inverted classic floor mop on top of his head.  It was called hair and it kept growing.  By nine months, his hairstyle looked like a mutant cross between that of Animal and Beaker’s from The Muppets.  That’s when I decided to give him his first haircut.  It wasn’t my best move and I’m just glad social media wasn’t around because the debacle would have gone viral and I would have been locked up.  The final result looked like a giraffe with blunt teeth had chewed his thatch.  Not a good look at any age.  When I took him to a barber the very next day, the ashen-faced stylist made me promise never to cut hair again.  Not just my son’s but also anybody else’s.  I might be an in-your-face-type of girl but I’ve kept out of everyone’s hair ever since.  By the time the barber had untangled the mess I’d made, my beautiful baby boy made Yul Brynner look hirsute.

But what has this preamble got to do with golf, you might well ask?

Stick with me – there’s neat logic hidden in my mayhem, a pearl of wisdom well guarded and yet to be revealed, but only if you travel the biblical road to revelation with me to find the Damascus moment and a whole new game of golf.

GK Chesterton’s great thought of  “I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles” is not wasted on the likes of me and I found myself - on a salvo of sunless days and a protracted busy period that left me without time to practise, play or think golf - eyeballing my way through golfing videos, trying to sate the need to hit it on the fairways. Thank to Messers. Hurley, Chen and Karim, founding fathers of YouTube, I was able to indulge my needs but, far from learning anything concrete to further my swing, I got distracted – nothing new there – and learnt instead that “Experience is a comb nature gives to bald men”.

The largely unwritten rules of golf etiquette demands that hats should be removed for the traditional handshake at the end of a round.  So be it, but golfers I had assumed had heads replete of hair suddenly were looking somewhat topknot challenged and almost beyond recognition!  And so began my thatchplay sequence…

Although Jordan and Tiger have been seen out and about on a recent NFL date, this is not your average hair-pairing couple.  Tiger and Rory go more hand in hand.  Tiger’s hairline is receding faster than his game and, while Rory - with his fanfare of tight curls erupting cornucopia-like from under his cap and faster than molten lava from Mount Vesuvius - may not be able to lend him much by way of resurrection golf, he can certainly offer him a handful of excess curls.  Tiger, I know a good follicular unit transplant operator should you need a bit of strip harvesting done.  R McIlroy, T Woods, 3&1.

Next stop, Zach Johnson and I’m thinking his hairstyle mirrors that sported by Sam The Eagle of Muppets fame.  Brushing aside the Donald Trump comb-over as an obvious solution to Zach’s golfing version of a monk’s tonsure, I think he would be well paired with The Walrus.  Hairy donations by way of Craig Stadler’s moustache and chin-fuzz facial furniture would fill the balding void on Zach’s head.  A word of warning here, Zach: The Walrus’ follicles have aged to a whiter shade of pale and since Stadler was released into the world a few years earlier than that classic Procol Harum song, all I can say is “Get yourself a good colourist”.  C Stadler, Z Johnson, Halved (18).

Now, young Jordan, I know you’ve been having a happy pop at the lovely Lefty and his veteran years of life since he made the captain’s pick for Team Presidents Cup in October.  At least, I hope it was a Jordan jest – but I would like you to have a serious word with your team buddy about what I term ‘Phil flick’.  It’s not doing it for me.  Every time he takes that cap off, bang goes the image of a gentleman pro golfer and all I can see is an Afghan Hound  - you know, sleeked down hat-hair that rebels into a major flick-out from below the ears.  There’s a lot of shaggy bits surplus to requirement there, but nothing that a short-back-and-sides wouldn’t sort, a quick No.2, and Bob’s your uncle.  Or in this case, Phil.  You could take Phil’s surplus to a bone fide trichologist and see if there’s room to use his unwanted curls for a little light grafting on your own front-of-house hairline. P Mickelson, J Speith, 2up.

All this carping about these aforementioned American bald eagle scorers pales to insignificance when one considers leucocephalus Stewart Cink.  Uh oh, Mr Cink, your performance is hair-raising and a cut above the rest.  That pate is pure barefaced cheek and the combined forces of Dubuisson, Villegas, Langer, Els, Pepperell and a young Tom Watson on their most feral bad hair days could not sprout enough reserves to keep you out of a YouTube viral adventure.  Oh my! Even if I threw in Jiminez and Fleetwood, there would still be inches of baldheadedness on show.  On the other hand, if Rickie Fowler (sorry, Rickie) were to pluck his eyebrows and give you those parings, your follicular challenge would be resolved in one fell swoop.  Well done you for standing head and shoulders above the rest - even if you looked like a pint of Bass.  You might not be the leading star in making the cut on Moving Days but there’s no topping your score.  S Cink, Rest of the World, no contest.  Cink wins by a head.

While Sean O’Hair lives up to his name, and Al Balding never did, the next hair apparent I would like to headline is Jens Fahrbring.  Jens, take a look at Thomas.  You are both bordering on the Baltic and a little of that love-thy-neighbour and doing good stuff wouldn’t go amiss with Thomas - who would be Bjørn again - should you wish to donate a little from your crop.  Think about it…but not for so long that age may leave you without anything to tithe to Thomas.  J Fahrbring, T Bjørn, 8&7.

While we’re at it, let’s remember Remésy – that’s bald as a coot Remésy, little known, and oft forgotten, return to Q school Remésy.  That’s Remésy who has missed more cuts than his hair has ever demanded and who is now playing on the Senior Tour.  I have a young man in my sights that would make an ideal thatchplay partner for you – fellow countryman and cheveux-rich player Victor Dubuisson.  Victor: you are never going to miss a smattering of hair either from your visage or tête and Jean-François could do with a dollop of help.  V Dubuisson, JF Remésy, 3 en haut.

Now, there are some head-to-head pairings I do draw the line at.  Take, for example, this headline partnership: “Nice hairy Fanny back on Nick Faldo’s bag for one last ride”.  As both of them have heads of hair to die for, I have no idea where this line of reasoning is heading, nor how to mark it - at least, not anything I could safely score in public.

Moving on swiftly and with alacrity to my new harebrained idea for those who do not sprout the requisite shoots from their follicles as nature planned – you can lead the field by sporting your very own dome of interest in the shape of head tattoos.   So I can now end this hair-piece in the same place as I began: back with the talented Messers. Hurley, Chen and Karim, founding fathers of YouTube.  With one click of a button, there’s a tribe of brainstorming tattoos to be found there.  Believe me, I’ve looked.  Go see.

Meanwhile, Ciaran and his hair have grown a fulsome thirty-one years unscathed to maturity in spite of my earliest attempts to sabotage the latter.  Well done, son.  And I'm off to Tattoo School. I feel a whole new business heading my way...

THE RYDER CUP – a win-win formula for America and Europe

It’s always a risky business mentioning The Ryder Cup if you are within twenty-five million miles of an American.  It is not that your average American is quick of temper or subject to a sudden fit of the vapours but he is much more likely to plummet into the doldrums of despair and the eternal abyss of hopelessness at the mention of The “Shhh! Let me say it quietly” Ryder Cup.  You see, the US-at-large is not really much good at winning it.

I love facts, figures and a large smattering of research-based evidence.  I live my professional life by them and they kinda overspill into all things personal too.  I mop them up like a dry sponge in liquid.  It comes naturally.  With The Open ringing in my ears and a big question mark left in my thoughts as to the circumference size of Zach Johnson monk’s tonsure, I set about the task of discovering how many TRCs America had actually lost.  It’s not looking good for the Big Country with nine wins for Europe against their four, and one recorded draw, since 1985.

You might wonder why I should suddenly raise the question of TRC and I offer, by way of rationale, the story that’s been circulating on t’internet.  That’ll be the one about John Daly’s wish to be a future captain.  It appears this statement came straight from the horse’s mouth and was not merely a piece of journalistic frippery invented by a sports writer on a bored off-day.  Well done, John.  And while I have no wish to call you a horse, you are a giant of a man in every sense of the word and I think you deserve a shot, gastric band and all– even if it’s a very long shot.  But then, Long John, you have pulled off that sort of bombing shot long before The Dustinator came on the scene and usurped your crown.  At 49, you can still crush a 300 yard drive with ease and a little birdie in the shape of Wikipedia tells me that you were the first, and still the only player, to reach the green in two on the famous 630 yard 17^th hole at Baltusrol.  You don’t need me to say “Well done”!

Long John’s personal life may have steeper dips and troughs than the Scream Roller Coaster and his golf may have gone the same way on several occasions but his five PGA Tour wins, a smattering of business acumen with that in-your-face-golfing-gear, his singing career, and his charitable work all show that this is a man who knows how to dig deep and fight back.  Sainted he is not but, in JD’s own words, “Never underestimate the fat man”.  And we don’t.

This is a man who has never lost the common touch: in 1991, when we didn’t know he was ‘Wild Thing’ or could make our hearts sing with his ‘Grip it and rip it’ philosophy, this last minute ninth alternate entered the field at Crooked Stick Golf Club and played his way to victory in that PGA Championship.  But during the first round, a spectator was fatally struck by lightening in a violent storm.  Though not a rich man and on the receipt of his first fat pay cheque as winner, he donated $30,000 towards the education of the dead man’s infant daughters.  Sterling effort there, John, with your dollars investment: those girls are all grown up and graduated successfully.  For sure he has been thrown out of Hooters and alcohol and addiction have played havoc in his life but mention Lori Laird and Make-a-Wish Foundation and there you have a more balanced view of the man.  The only one Wild Thing has really hurt is himself.

Golf has a reputation for being a toff’s game with this odd sense that dressing a man in a collared shirt and mock Simon Cowell high-waisted belted trousers somehow morphs them into sporting gentlemen.  “You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear”, my mother used to say and while I never imagined in my wildest dreams that she would feature alongside John Daly, for once, I agree with her.  There’s more than a grain of truth in that timeworn statement about manners making a man.  So give me a bit of levity here, cut me some slack, dump the stuffy image and let’s see golf ramp it up in the fashion stakes at a showcase event. I am always up for a bit of a clothes statement and I cannot wait to see the American team buzzing in Loudmouth apparel.  I am quite convinced that they will smash the fashion stakes with John in charge.  Sorry, Tom Watson, delightfully mannered and ‘haute-coutured’ as you are in every sense of the word – and I’m a fan - old school won’t win diddley-squat here and it is so last week.  It’s way past time to change if golf is to get a toehold in the brave new world of youth.  Time to pull out all the stops and make the fun happen.

But a Ryder Cup with John in charge of Team America can only mean one thing for us: as a hybrid Irish-Anglophile, I think I am a percentage qualified to say there is only one suitable candidate to lead Team Europe.  Dubbed “The most interesting man in golf” and hailed by Rory as his hero, he has pulled an albatross out of the bag in 2009 by holing a 206-yard six-iron on his second shot on the par five fourth at the BMW PGA Championship title.  Oh yes! Let’s hear it for the one and only Miguel Ángel Jiminez, our Spanish-born, Austrian-residing candidate to captain our team. 

And who will worry about the golf?  It threatens to be a riot, a blast, and a non-stop fly-on-the-wall docudrama of soap land proportions with a plethora of chilled golfing moves thrown in for good measure - JD versus MÁJ, Wild Thing versus Hip Swing, Crooner versus Moonwalker, The Gambler versus The Mechanic.  Imagine the scene: Hooters cater every meal, beer carts on every bunker, and the victory dinner washed down with a vintage Rioja and some fine Cuban cigars.  It’s a no brainer.

Okay, so Miguel The Mechanic, I know you have a fantabulous taste in cars but you don’t have quite the same wardrobe panache as Grip-It-and-Rip-It and I am really trying to be tactful here despite my given nature.  Thankfully, my mother advised me against a diplomatic career and, again, I agree with her.  It would have been a non-starter; I’d have lasted three months and got the sack.  That aside, you need to get the gear on board.  I am not talking urban slang dictionary here - lest The Sunday Times comes chasing after me for inciting the world of golf to transgress – I just want you to snazzy it up in the dressing-up stakes.  Three words will see Team Europe kitted and fitted and ready to compete on Loudmouth level - Royal & Awesome will do it nicely.  Forget the ampersand.  The rest is a Picasso paradise of riotous colour and design.

Now, John, if I could have a quiet word: the shirtless video interview. I’ve seen it. Oh my!  It brings a tear to my eye and it is not one of laughter.  I’m on my knees for the first time in years.  My mother will be eternally grateful: you succeeded where she failed.  I’m praying that fun-loving golfer John will never become an advocate of naked golf.  The rest, as they say, would be mass hysteria.  I tremble.

Rory moves like Miguel – http://www.balls.ie/golf/rory-mcilroy-miguel-angel-jimemez/294484

And the video we've all been waiting for in Large-as-Life-and-Twice-as-Natural Technicolor

WHAT’S IN A NAME? On golf, The Open, America, a Greek tragedy, A Greek solution, a whole heap of nonsense and no mention of Victor Dubuisson.

I have been very quiet lately on the blogging front.  Been engrossed in keeping my head down in true golfer’s fashion and getting to grips with course management – whatever that is.  I have also been very busy – but not on the golf course.  It seems I don’t actually need to have a golf course at my disposal to cause mayhem and madness.  Take my recent trip to Waitrose, my favourite food hall, café, and watering hole.  I shop there daily.  I’m in the checkout queue, lunchtime food needs paying for.  Tummy rumbling.  Great new leather in-your-face-cerise-pink tote bag in hand.  Purse is hiding in the unyielding deepest recesses of this bag and I tip out its contents in my haste not to delay the hungry midday queue.  Make-up bag, notebooks, newspaper, dental care bag (I am known to Guy’s and St Thomas’ – go look it up), more notebooks (I am a consummate maker of lists), cardiology mags (serious read), nano i-pod, and…  And an item of underwear very dear to one, Bridget Jones, which I would rather not have to mention.  I am now more cerise than my giant pink handbag while the queue falls about laughing at my underwear foray in fifty shades of embarrassment.

I visit there daily still but I’m the customer wearing a brown paper bag on my head.

But now I am back and I have something to say about golf.  In fact, it’s a bit of a gripe.  The Open: it is almost upon us.  That’ll be THE Open.  It does not need an appendage adjective to describe or prefix it.  It is not The British Open or The UK Open or The Great Britain Open. 

Like Wimbledon and The Masters, it stands alone. 

Naked. 

No qualifier needed.

The Open is the first; it is iconic; it is the prototype and stereotype; it is sacrosanct.  Since the 17 October, 1860 at Prestwick, Scotland, it has been just that.  All else is follow-on, copy, or replica.  Most importantly, it is this side of the pond and we love it.  And we love its name, undiluted and unadulterated. 

Say after me: The Open. Well done.  Now go to the top of the class.  You can add prefixes and suffixes ad infinitum to anything you like under the sun but leave those two words alone when you refer to what happens with a certain Claret Jug in this part of my back yard but once a year.

Now I take the Fifth Amendment before me and my paper bag head make the next statement.  A straw poll vote tells me that Uncle Sam might just be the greatest offender.  You stole our football and gave it back to us as soccer.  You stole our Open and gave it back to us as The British Open.  Lehman Brothers stole our money but, come to think about it, they still haven’t given it back.  Will they ever?  Will they heck as like!

But we have not complained.  The British stiff upper lip has taken the slight on the chin in bulldog style but as I’m neither stiff, upper, British, or gifted with a chiselled chin – but most certainly lippy - I thought I would put it out there for comment.  Hit me with it.  Am I the new Luddite in golf or do I have a creditable point?  

Well, now that I have burnt my boats and bridges, cooked my goose, gone the whole hog and nailed my colours to the mast with a swathe of America, I might as well finish it off with the proverbial and entire nine yards and get the rest off my chest.  Dare I mention The Ryder Cup?  That’s The Samuel Ryder Cup we have won for a bit of a time and a season over here.  I have had the great and good pleasure of watching live coverage of this event with an American audience in Scotland.  That’s when I first learnt that Americans are known as Americans but Europeans are Euros.  Really!!?

Not on my watch.  For the uninitiated, the I-don't-know brigade and the plain I-don't give-a-fig band, the euro is the official currency of the Euro-zone.  That’s it. It equals approximately seventy pence of the pound sterling.  That’s all.  Certain Europeans don’t even subscribe to that currency and none of us are any too enamoured with that monetary gem at this moment in time, given that Greece is on the slippery slope to perdition and leaking euros quicker than water through a sieve, the IMF is clamouring for fiscal union - with the UK in full-on resistance mode to an emergency bail-out contribution of some £850 million – and Angela and Wolfgang are diktat-ing the sale of the Greek Islands.  There we have it: proof that money is the root of all evil and it comes most predominantly in the shape of a euro.  Meanwhile, we natives of this corner of the world stay in the shape of – say it after me - Europeans.  Well done again. 

Now, David Cameron, Alexis Tsipras, Angela Merkel, and Wolfgang Shauble, gather round in a “Grexit” huddle if you please.  I know you’ve been in meltdown melodramatic negotiations of late but, sometimes, you have to stand back and look at the bigger picture, the panoramic view.  You have all been leaning in (someone wrote a book about that lately; Angela, please note).  I need you to lean out - as far as the Duveen Gallery in the British Museum and a certain set of Classical Greek marble sculptures.  Stick with me here.  I haven’t lost my marbles but Greece has – in the form of the Elgin Marbles.  Let’s put aside Thomas Bruce, his controversial permit from the Sublime Porte, and give the people of Greece back their Acropolis sculptures.  It’s time to part with those Parthenon pieces for pity’s sake, and the sake of a bankrupt country that has given us the birthplace of Western civilisation, the square on the hypotenuse, half the roots of our English language, a screw to make water flow uphill, a shipping magnate with a penchant for familial Greek tragedy and espoused to a former First Lady, the all singing Nana Mouskouri and kaftan-touting Demis Roussos.  What more do you need?  Hand them back enterprising Earl Elgin’s loot and let them use those priceless sculptures as debt collateral or sell them to the highest bidder.

That’s my bit done for world peace and entente cordiale but I suspect my American family and friends will be divorcing me.  

Aw-shucks!

.

THE STORY OF RICHARD DU PANTALON L’ESPOIR

It must be something to do with Vintage Golfer for it is beginning to look like anyone who knows him ends up in “the wrong trousers”.  I wasn’t the only one (see my pants of an adventure with VG at foleysmith555.blogspot.co.uk).  There’s his good mate - named after an English king who managed to get himself buried under a council car park and caused no end of expense getting himself dug up again only to be reinterred (I’m a taxpayer: what was that about?) - who shall forever more and amen be known by us for his style in trousers. 

This Richard is very much alive and wears cargo pants - or at least that’s the nearest description I could pin to those trousers if I were blind or had my sight dimmed by the bedevilment of cataracts.  As I’m neither and I pride myself on having a good eye for fashion, I have to confess I’m hard pressed to find a synonym that comes close to capturing the essence that constitutes Richard’s trousers.  To be more accurate, it looks like he’s wearing two golf bags, one on each leg, and, like any self-respecting golf bag, they have oodles of pockets.  Trillions, in fact, and as Richard doesn’t push a trolley round, I have to assume he stuffs his clubs in his trouser pockets. 

I think he borrowed the idea from journalist Vincent Graff (I’m a fan, Vincent), who beat Ryanair at their own baggage game with the aid of a Royal Robbins Field Guide Vest aimed at huntsmen.  Seventeen pockets, myriad zips, strips of Velcro, the kitchen sink later, and he is on board a flight without the hassle of the shape-shifting baggage allowance getting in the way.  Don’t quote me because I haven’t had this confirmed straight from the horse’s mouth but this pony of an idea seems to be the germ for Richard’s baggy trousers.  It’s a prototype.  Well done, Richard.  Patent it and I’ll head up the sales team.  I am already working on a snazzy pitch: “The Legend of Golf Bag Leggings: what every golfer needs to take in his stride”. 

We have had close encounters with those cargo pants on several occasions.  In the distance and with that entire diatribe about keeping your head down while taking shots, it is difficult to identify who is out there.  Not so with Richard.  He’s a man outstanding on the golf course in more ways than one.

“Is that Richard” Gill or I will enquire.

“Not sure but those are Richard’s trousers” comes the evergreen reply.

“It must be Richard then” we opine in opulent harmony.

Woe betides if the man should ever change his garb.  We could be barking up the wrong tree there.  Gill and I like to do a good character assassination from time to time when we are bored or just being plain silly and it is always good manners to identify the right character before you make a start.  Richard could never duck under our radar with those trews.

And so it came to pass, in biblical parlance and on the occasion of some sort of a club “man medal”, that we found ourselves on the tenth hole of our home golf course.  The peerless pants, Richard and his practice session are behind us on the ninth.  He and VG have an important match coming up so he’s alone and focused.  He is busy reading the green while I am busy hitting a pretty naff drive.  It hadn’t gone any distance and is sitting in a dreadful lie, and my swearing genie was having a party in my head.  Gill, meanwhile, has hit a crackin’ shot and is heading off into the great blue beyond.

There is only one thing to do when you shoot a duff shot: follow it with the most brilliant shot you can muster.  And I did.  Rescue club was the rescue remedy and I hit an excellent shot out of the rough on a left-to-right trajectory that saw the ball coast up nicely onto the skirts of the seventeenth tee.  Not any old tee this one – it was the medal tee.  For those of you who read this piffle for the superlative standard of English and don’t have a clue how sacred the medal tee is to men, let me explain: think football aficionado wallowing on Wembley turf, the Pope having a lip-smacking tarmac snack at the airport, the Queen romping with her corgis (I said corgis, not Philip…) or for me, an audience with the late great Mahatma Ghandi.  Too sacrosanct to mess with on even the most innocent level.  I am so stunned that I missed my first opportunity to shout “fore right”.  Yup, it was a corker!

Yes, yes, I know there are tech terms for this sort of golf ball trajectory.  And for you golfers who are grinding your way through this diatribe with gritted teeth, I know you know your slices from your hooks, your fades from your draws but knowing all these terms doesn’t make you a great golfer.  How would you feel if you visited me in my world and I insisted you speak only of your plicae circulares or haustra? In fact, don’t mention those words to me in clinic.  I’m cardiac and those words are much lower down in the grand scale of your anatomy and physiology.  Draw, fade, plicae circulares or haustra: they are all flatulence and wind to me.

There is only one proper thing to do in times like these: die of embarrassment and since I’m very au fait with this sentiment, that’s exactly what I do.  I would like to recount that I walked confidently down the fairway to proffer my apologies to those magnificent men set for tee-off on the seventeenth’s medal spot.  I didn’t.  It was a sort of over arm crawl along the ground, and possibly the only time I’ve kept my head down in true golfing fashion.  I looked like a belly-rubbing-along-the-ground dog returning submissively to his master’s voice after sojourning away in an indulgent spree of disobedience.  In short, I was mortified.

Meanwhile, Gill - still busy laughing at my debacle - took her shot.  Laughing, swings and shots do not hang well together in the game of golf.  This is about the only thing I can tell you with real assurance from my experience with this gargantuan game.  Oh yes, she hit her ball with a dollop of backspin straight on to the green – except it wasn’t the tenth green. Now, if she had been really clever, she could have executed a shot like Rory McIlroy when he literally dropped a shot in a spectator’s pocket.  Heaven knows Richard of the Cargo Pants has enough spare pockets but, instead, she plopped the ball down, slap-bang, beside Richard who was busy minding his own business on the ninth green.  Give that man his due, he responded with stalwart dignity in the face of Gill’s unexpected right-to-left shot across the fairway.  Straight-laced, straight-faced and straightaway, Richard magiced-up a large white cotton handkerchief from the bowels of his pantalon – with a sort of Tommy Cooperesque “just like that” flourish - and held it aloft, flag-like, in the light breeze.  Shakespeare once said, “Brevity is the soul of wit” and I’m with Will all the way on this one, but I now suspect Richard is a Bard fan too for he uttered only two sterling words as Gill wended her way sheepishly forward to retrieve her errant ball.  “I surrender” was his tongue-in-cheek comment.

There is now chaos on the course.  I have arrested medal play on the seventeenth (cardinal sin), Gill has stopped play on the ninth (mortal sin), and there isn’t anything happening on our tenth (to-hell-and-beyond sin), as we are too busy apologising and swooning with embarrassment.  I think this sort of behaviour might cause a furrow or three with the “Frown on Slow Play” brigade but the only wrinkles on everyone’s foreheads that notable afternoon were those of laughter.  Respect to those medal men who made me feel my game was a million dollars and a high five to Baggy Trousers who gallantly dealt with Gill and her wrong-green gaffe.  Golf legends were they or, in Richard’s case, golf leg-ends.

And now, Richard, a few words in your shell-like.

Those cargoes are worth their freight in gold, flying as they are in the face of fashion.  A distinctive logo for your go-low rounds, you might say, but should you abandon those, erm, pants, I have it on good authority that HM Paras would be grateful for the yardage.  In these harsh days of economic cutbacks, they could literally be flying by the seat of your pants.  What a profound and patriotic thought!  Keep it in mind when you retire those pantalon.  There might yet be a knighthood in them.

But a word of warning.  White cotton handkerchiefs, sunny days, and a lack of protective headgear from those UV waves seem to bring out the worst in men of a certain age.  I’ve been on too many English beaches and seen that four-cornered, knotted-hanky look being aired.  It’s not elegant.  If I ever find you’ve substituted your golf cap for this odious look, there will be trouble.  Let me put it to you gently like this: I’m out of oestrogen, I’ve got a gun, and I’m not afraid to use it.

Do I hear you say “Why the French title?”  Indulge me here.  I keep the French flag flying in case Victor Dubuisson might swing by and follow my blog.  It hasn’t happened aujourd’hui, nor is it likely to happen au demain but je vis dans l’espoir.  Oh yes, Richard, I live in hope!

FROM PANTS GOLFER TO VINTAGE GOLFER: a tribute

I got the big invitation.  Suddenly and without warning.  From Vintage Golfer.  He wanted to know how his protégé was doing. Much like a loud and unexpected thunderclap on a fine summer’s day, it came like a bolt out of the blue.  I suspect it’s a bit like getting an invitation from The Queen to her gaff at the end of The Mall - except this came from VG and was a sight more impromptu than anything I’d seen Her Majesty trot out.  Not that I’m in the habit of getting invitations from Elizabeth II, you understand.  She’s a meticulous planner – so I’m led to believe – but, for my part, I am unable to lay claim to any first hand experience of this.  I can’t see it happening in the not-too-distant future either but, Elizabeth, if you’re reading this, I would be happy with a dame-hood to rack up alongside my collection of silly hats.  Just sayin’, Ma’am.

VG isn’t likely to get an invitation either but that’s a whole other story and, quite frankly, I lack the inclination here to enter into the combinations and permutations of why those born between the Turf Wall and Hadrian’s Wall might not qualify for a royal summons.  Just letting you know, Ma’am.

Suffice it to say the I spent a short time wondering how much of the contents of a salmanazar of fine Rioja he had drunk when he decided to beckon me into his presence.  Or maybe he had been hit on the head with a kettle of wet mackerel? Who knows?  It all amounted to the same thing: I was summonsed to play golf so that VG could give me and my wonderful game the once over. 

I could have told him in no uncertain terms how his protégé was doing.  If words were money, I’m not short of a bob or two and I was up for giving him a detailed account.  But he was having none of my wordsmith ploys and it was all down to demonstration.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man or, in this case, woman.  Preparation was high on my agenda and I planned my game with meticulous diligence.  Now, this is where any half decent golfer would have taken themselves off to the driving range in a fit of swings, chips, runs and flop shots.  Not so me!  I’m not halfway to half decent yet so I bent myself to careful research.  I am fully au fait with the effects of stress on the cardiovascular system.  Tacotsubo is my middle name  (No, it is not a type of Japanese wrestling.  Get with it!). The resultant shock-horror of exposure to my style of game could stop even the most stalwart heart and I, on a day off work, did not want the inconvenience of a resuscitation – even if it was on my mate VG.  A day off is a day off.  I was of the opinion that VG had probably never seen the likes of my game before so I needed to know if his cardiac status was sufficient unto the day.  I sent him a cardiac rehab manual and fitness programme, the full treatment regimen for acute coronary syndrome, and appointments for a Holter tape and echocardiogram.  I’m Irish; I needed to be sure, to be sure.  Ma’am, if you’re still following this blog, I am willing to move from honorary to substantive just so as I can wear my dame-hood in public.  You’ll know exactly what I mean by this remark, Madge (that’s short for Your Majesty and not you, Madonna).

The day arrived.  It was high summer.  Except today it wasn’t.  The only day in the entire summer when it rained, and rain it did.  Cats and dogs variety.  Drowned rat look.  Day for ducks.  “Where’s your rain gear?” says VG.  It was a good question and I didn’t have a good answer.  Grubbing round in the darker recesses of my golf bag, I found my beloved Galvin Green who keeps me warm and dry on every occasion.  (It’s a jacket, you grubby minded readers)  

But I was without trousers.  VG disappeared and returned with waterproof trousers. There was no earthly need to trot out that time worn phrase “Does my bum look big in this?”.  The pair of rainproof trousers VG had loaned me were so big that he and I could have practised ballroom dancing in them on the scale of BBC’s “Strictly” and still have had room left over for the remaining part of the trousers to house a wedding marquee.  They were grand trousers but not in the flattering sense.  Wallace and Gromit might have a good line on them as "the wrong trousers" but as they were the only trousers likely to keep me dry in what can only be described as a deluge, I had no intention of complaining about their lack of fashion appeal. And VG’s wet face didn’t look like you could lodge an appeal against their distinct lack of fashion value.  He’s a man of practical pants and there’s no arguing with that line of approach.

Faces: I love a good face-to-face.  I’ve had a lifetime of studying them.  It began with the Sisters of Perpetual Habits who instilled in me qualities that were never set out on education curricula anywhere.  You can always tell the façade from the visage when you study a face.  Vintage Golfer wasn’t looking his cheerful, pragmatic self this morning – more fearsome than fair-some.  In fact, he looked like he had spent the night studying the cardiac rehab manual, failed the fitness programme, recorded syncopal episodes on his Holter monitor, spontaneously passed out, and had a poor prognosis on his echocardiogram.  That or he was coping with the after effects of a salamander of Rioja but, as he always claims he never suffers with a hangover, how could that possibly be the cause?  My heart sank. 

I am by now half dressed like a fisherman on a deep-sea trawler and sporting a wet look I didn’t rate.  Suddenly, I get pounced on again and he’s looking irate.

“That glove,” he says, “You can’t possibly play decent golf with that.”

Inference is never wasted on me and my glove was certainly looking jaded.  My immediate and optimistic conclusion was: swap the glove and my golf will be decent.  Sigh, perhaps this is the time to give up on optimism or dial it down a bit.  I need to tell his nibs it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference but he has strong opinions and studying his wet face, I knew this was not the time to air my views.  I had a rare moment of silence and held my tongue.

By now, I am all of a dither but fate had one more trick to play.  Heading out to the first tee, his long-term golfing buddy whispers in my ear “Good luck.  You’ll need it.  He likes to win.  He takes no prisoners”.  That’s one of those hole-in-the-head remarks you never need but always get so, with the final nail in my coffin, I now knew that there really was no hope.  That’s a tough call when you are an optimist.  And so, with these conflicting thoughts, I find myself standing on the first tee in a downpour. 

Oh happy days!  “You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about”.  I salute the late great august master Bobby Jones for this wisdom.  Thank you, Bobby, but before I take leave of you, there is one burning question I need to ask.  Where did you get a middle name like that?  I mean come on, mate, “Tyre”: what’s this about?  I’d have no truck with nomenclature of this ply if I were rolling in your tracks.  Ma’am, if you’ve stuck with me this far, could you find a posthumous award for Bobby?  He deserves a medal.

I’m on the first tee and my brain is squishing squillions of thoughts about, so much so that I swung my worst swing ever and landed the ball all of two feet to the left of the box.  Yup, Sir Robert Tyre Jones, you holed-it-in-one on that prophetic pin if you were thinking of the likes of me when you made that erudite comment. The only positive outcome from this debacle is that VG suddenly finds his missing laugh.  And he used it heartily, wallowing in a protracted guffaw.  I would delete him from my Christmas card list forever but, alack, I don’t send any.  I’m currently working on a suitable punishment.  And so we set off.

There is a perennial list of strong-lettered words embedded in my brain.  They were hammered in there when I was the young side of little and they were words I was not allowed to use - ever.  Of course little me made a mistake and accidentally trotted out one of those words in adult company.  It was a first but, happily, not a last as I’ve practised some of those forbidden fruits a few times since - whenever there was a deserving cause.  It was also the first time I experienced time-travel.  After innocently quoting from the list, I was promptly knocked into the middle of next week. And now VG was doing the honours of floating a word for possible inclusion on that list but, now that I’m all grown up, I’m in charge and I decide when a word qualifies or not.  His did, emphatically. He used the “S” word when describing my swing.  You see, my swing comes with the cardinal sin of “sway” attached: read “anathema” to low handicappers.  In the great high church of golf, I’m not fit to add the coals to the thurible, much less swing it.

And so we wended our way round a wet and windy field.

Back at the clubhouse, Vintage Golfer consumed about five gallons of orange juice laced with lemonade.  It seems good golfers dehydrate as a result of their focus and concentration.  As I don’t suffer with that problem yet, I was replete on a mug of Rosy Lee.  

Now it’s time to play my Get-Out-Of-Jail card: Vintage Golfer, you taught me a few things about golf that day and I’m grateful – why, you even got me started in this crazy game - but here’s something I need to teach you.  Visualisation.  Even eejit golfer me knows visualisation has a bang-on hot role in golf.  In my head, I have a picture of my driver.  And you’re wearing it.  I am not making public which part of your anatomy it’s ensconced in but, if you ever wish to find out, just run that word “sway” past me and my swing one more time.  Apart from that, I give you free licence to say what you want about me.

Now, Ma’am, I need to have a word with you too: you can send Philip out with me for a round of golf.  He’s in safe hands.  I do a mean line in resuscitation and, if it doesn’t work, you can at least be assured he will die laughing.  I guarantee that.

And while you’re at it, Ma’am, could you please ask Princess Anne to rescind that silly remark about her preference to walking the dogs rather than playing golf?  It’s not looking good on her now that she’s in the newly formed female inner sanctum of St Andrews. 

Sigh, bang goes my dame-hood!