OH DANNY BOY! A TALE OF WILLETT WILFULNESS

I have to say something.  I can’t be silent or hold it in any longer.  It must out.

The Ryder Cup is upon us and the run-up to this contest of the giants of men’s professional golf always spawns controversy.  It goes with the territory – a territory that is interlaced with pride, nationalism, patriotism, competition and a heaped-to-the- oxters cartload of fun.  There is no prize money but there is a beautiful cup and a shedload of pride at stake.

And I’m not just talking about the golfers.  It invades the mentality and thinking of the fans on both side of the Atlantic divide and those, worldwide, who reside cosily in their armchairs as TV followers.  It’s the way it should be as we walk the course live or ogle the goggle box as twenty-four men play team tactics and individual games to earn the right to bring home the Ryder Cup.  It’s Europe versus America and should be done in the spirit of golf with dignity and bonhomie - an unwritten rule that applies whether you are playing, watching or commenting.

Then there’s the banter.  “The banta” is an integral part of the game.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s “platformed” on social media, scrunched about by leading sports commentators in the newspapers and on the telly, or dependent on exchanges between friends.  The banta is meant to excite and illuminate, never devour or intimidate or exorcise.  Those are the givens.  Bring it on, I say, and let two landmasses, divided by a common language, have the time of their golfing lives.

So, in this busy orchestra of Ryder Cup sounds and with everyone playing vigorously in their particular movement of the symphony, it was all going to plan.  As in any symphony orchestra, there is the expected sonata.  That’s the solo.  And it came, loud and proud and, unexpectedly, way out of context.  Not good.  But it also came from a surprising quarter.  Pete Willett, brother to our brilliant green jacket winner at The Masters this year, struck up the solo chords. This Sheffield steel boy was playing brass band when he should have been playing orchestra.  Yup, he was playing sonata without a string to his bow.  That’s okay when you’re in the colliery band league but not when the rest of the crowd has elected to play with the full orchestra. 

Peter went hardcore satire on Team America.  Satire is good in the right place and in the right time with its use of humour, irony and exaggeration but it is also used to ridicule, expose and criticize and needs a wise hand to temper it.  The article itself, published by National Club Golfer Magazine, was confrontational but honestly addressed some negative issues with golf’s American gallery of on-course followers.  It was published in the week leading up to the Ryder Cup when the media are hungry for stories and will pounce on the least of notions to produce a mountain of a story.  It found it in Peter Willett’s musings. 

And Peter rocketed it into the stratosphere when he tweeted it out with a tag line that read “ And I mean every word”.  However naïve or innocent his intent, he crossed the fine line between sarcastic and sardonic satire and the read became uncomfortable.  Fervent Team Europe supporter that I am, avid follower of Peter Willett and lover of a bit o’banter, I was far from impressed with an outpouring that was no longer a funny send-up. 

Meanwhile, Danny has done it all the right way and was busy assimilating himself to Team Europe style.  He’s prepared well, spent his time in team building, and knows that his greatest achievement to date has been on American soil when he whoop-assed his way along the fairways of Augusta to clinch the Masters.  American supporters cheered him home.  I am in awe of his dedication and style of play and, all the more so, because his brother Pete highlighted and illuminated his golfing brother’s life from the inside track.  You got the distinct impression of a solid family, full of humour and leg-pulling and sibling rivalry but bound together by the overarching “bromance” that exists within the bonds of love of a decent family.  Pete took Twitter down with his riffling commentary on his brother Danny while Danny was all the while taking Augusta down.  But this time and with his latest essay, it looks like Peter has pinned a bullseye target on Danny’s back: it screams “Hit me with Baba Booey and Mashed Potatoes” for sure and I would be horrified if this turned out to be true.

It smacks of distraction, poor judgement, lack of sportsmanlike behaviour, draws attention to an individual when it’s all about team behaviour and, most of all, kills the joy.  We may have won three Ryder Cup victories on the spin but neither team nor captain need the hassle of unwarranted media attention and hostile crowds.  There’s a lot at stake.  And Danny is a rookie who needs not to have the anticipated and unsolicited burden of dealing with the negative responses of a gallery who may see him as the available face of the Willett rant and thus use him to retaliate.

With this faux pas on my mind, I asked myself what lessons I had learnt from this Ryder Cup preamble.  The list became almost biblical.

Speak the truth but speak it in love

Reign in the satire; loose the laughter

Know the difference between banter and badmouthing

Focus on the positives of the task; add whatever you can to the collective whole in a positive manner; if you can’t, better to do nothing than be negative and disparaging

You don’t win the Ryder Cup – or anything else - with your mouth (Segio Garcia); or your pen, laptop or opinion (Anne Foley Smith)

Just because you’re right, it doesn’t mean you’re right

Be gracious, it’s not war

Be big enough to apologise

In life as in golf, these set the margins for a life well lived.  I suspect the late Mr Arnold Palmer knew these lessons well.  

And, finally, if I were a teacher, I’d mark Peter’s essay with a “Could have done better.  See me” tab.

Enough said. 

THE FUTURE OF 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 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.  If your maths and brain are holding up, that’s thirty-one years but, in any terms you care to measure it by, it has been a fair long time.

Earlier last year, John Daly’s expressed the 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 fifty, 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 seventeenth 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.  Perhaps he 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.

My Cup runneth over with the Sandbaggers Cup of Slow Play

There are few things in life that rattle my calm or shake my cage too much but the game of golf has managed to supply a couple of words that send me into a flat fried frenzy and make me see life through a red mist.  It’s a subject I lived in blissful unawareness of for all of my years until I took up with the beautiful game and, even when it first fell upon my hemisphere, I paid only a light but respectful cap-tipping nod to it.  However, I have come to hate it, more so because it is a matter that has never been resolved, quite possibly never will, has been flogged to death a million times, resuscitated, and resurrected like the proverbial phoenix to womble its way eternally through every platform of social media that has ever been conceived and is yet to come.  I can’t prove it but it probably exists in a parallel universe where it is designated as a weapon of torture and it seems to travel in a perpetual circle like particles in the Large Hadron Collider.

For me then, the two words of mass destruction are Slow Play.

The first thing you need to know is that it’s out there.  It always has been.  It’s primordial and existed in the Big Bang Soup before it crawled out and took on a life of its own.  The day golf was invented was the day slow play began.  Nobody ever began a sport for the first time ever and played it like they were in the Olympic heights of perfection so it doesn’t matter where you look, starting out is always at a slow pace.  Golf is no exception.  In all sport, some will learn faster than others and that is a matter of talent or time or money or opportunity or even a smacking of luck, which in turn leads to differentiation and, ultimately, competition.  Since competition is all about skill, dexterity and speed of execution, some will be faster and fitter than others.  It’s a given.  Get over it.

The second thing you need to know is that it’s here to stay – it doesn’t matter if you were not around in the garden of golf’s Eden.  If you play golf, once upon a time in la-la-land, you too were a beginner and the important bit is you were slow.  So as long as there is golf, there will always be beginners and there will always be slow play.  It’s another given.  Make room for it on your playing schedule whatever your level.  In everyday parlance, I think we call it forbearance.  Get on with it.

The third thing you need to handle is the need to grow the game.  I am going to make a cracking assumption here.  You want the game to be inclusive, right?  That means all-embracing: gender, non-gender, transgender, straight, gay, lesbian, old, young, middle-aged, colour, non-colour, fit and not-so-able bodied.  The list is by no means complete but you are getting the gist.  We encompass “people-kind” – I’ve coined a new word - with all their imperfections: a warts-and-all embrace.   If you’re really going to grow the game this means slow play is the take-off point and there is no avoiding it.  Give over and get it together.

The fourth thing you need to ponder on is image.  I’m not talking about how cool you look in your Calvin Kleins or how ace you are at the machinations of the golf swing.  Think telly.  Think what we see beamed in to our homes and heads with regularity:  the pro golfers who take time over their shots - and they are many.  Yes, some sit in the doldrums of a putt long enough for me to spring-clean the house, mow the lawns, feed the neighbour’s cat and paint the guest bedroom, but I never moan.  I see it like this – what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and that apt adage adds it up neatly in the astute “action speaks louder than words” axiom.  Whatever our handicap, we forever live in hope of improving our game and we will happily garner all that we glean from the television for use in our game.  We will never reverse the slow play trend unless it is regulated and broadcast into the public domain and brain.  Get my drift here.

The fifth and final thing you need to know is this: if I gathered up all the slow play solutions that have been postulated, turned them into wallpaper and bequeathed the resulting rolls to Queen Elizabeth 2, she could happily wallpaper over Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse and Hillsborough Castle.  And if she wants a day off from her official residences, she can cut and paste her way through her private residences at Sandringham House, Balmoral Castle, Craigowan Lodge or Deinadamph Lodge and still have a scroll down yardage of roll left over.  The message is… erm – the solutions are not working.  If they were, we would surely not be bantering the topic round like those quarks, anti-quarks and gluons of Hadron’s perpetual circuit.  Get a fix on it.

Do I have a solution to this?  Of course I do.  I wasn’t born yesterday or the day before and it’s taken years to cultivate this level of laissez faire.  My solution, God help us, for slow play is this: take an 18 hole golf course, split it in two lots of nine, divide the handicappers into two categories with fast players going round their nine holes faster than the speed of sound for as many times as they like while the slowbies and newbies and high handicappers haltingly grind round the other nine at their own preamble and speed.  Every few months, swop the nines over to maintain interest.  Mark the speedos from the slow-gos with different coloured tabards and if one class of golfers should cross the great divide onto the wrong nine, let the turf war commence.  Forget the Ryder Cup - handbags, golbags and man bags at dawn duels and we could all fight for the new accolade of the Sandbaggers Cup.  Get out there and try that for size.

ON POINT TO THE RYDER CUP

The Ryder Cup has not even begun but the controversy has.  It’s not the usual culprits of Team USA and Team Europe having a bit of boy banter.  Oh no, it’s much more complex than that.  

Captain Darren Clarke of Team Europe has made his final selections and the twelve- man team is now complete – but it did not include the long anticipated inclusion of Russell Knox.  Captain Clarke says it was one of the toughest calls he has had to make in his golfing career; Knox says it lasted twenty seconds.  So I time it because I’m made like that: “Hi Russell; Hello, Darren; I’m afraid you’ve not made it this time; That’s okay, Darren; Better luck next time.  It really is a shame you hadn’t joined the European tour before you won last November; Bye, Darren”.  Of course I’m making it up but it must have had a glinting of those words in the conversation and I may be wrong here but that wasn’t difficult.  Short and to the point, yes.  Awkward, yes.  The agony only begins when you have protracted salutations and exchanges of conversation that require discussion.  I should imagine there was none to very little.  

(Sorry, Darren, but the point goes to Russell.)

The lovely Darren, in his lilting Irish accent that would probably charm the creamy head off a pint of Guinness, went on to say that team is more important than “the playing bit” and team ethos was the enabler of past successes.  He sure is right in that observation.  

(Take a point, Captain.)

Things got a little bit more hairy at this point, however, with Tom English of BBC Scotland, wading in with the astute comment that Knox had two ranking events left to play following his early August Travelers tournament win, and the playing therein would show his commitment and intent to qualify for the team.  He did neither, choosing instead to play on the cash cow that is The Barclays FedEx - which carries no Ryder Cup points – and doing so in spite of Clarke asking him to play at Wyndham.  

(Disregarding this genuine request is not your best move, Russell, so Darren scores the point here.) 

Knox appeared to become more obnoxious when he recounted in an interview with Golf Digest a couple of weeks earlier that there was a “moral obligation” to pick him and that he should be first pick of the Captain’s three wildcards.  We will never know if Clarke was swayed by that Knox-on-Knox egotistical remark but it certainly jars with Clarke’s statement of the importance of team ethos.  

(Not-nice- narcissism is null and dull so the point goes unreservedly to Captain Clarke.)

Team Europe were bewitched by all of this but the Americans loved it and so did Davis Love III, Captain of Team USA.  Stirring the Ryder Cup cauldron to fever pitch, he claimed he would pick Russell, pointing out that he’s the highest ranked player not on Team Europe.  And he’s right.  Knox is ranked at 20, ahead of automatic qualifiers Cabrera Bello 27, Wood 28, Sullivan 42 and Fitzpatrick 48.  The Captain’s wildcard picks of Westwood, Kaymer and Pieters show rankings of 46, 50 and 41 respectively.  (But you’re not getting any points here, Davis.  Sorry, you’re the opposition and it’s hard enough amassing points for our own side even if they are points scored from in-house fighting.)

Love is currently lumbered with a post-op recovery from a hip replacement – a sincere and unfettered return to rude health, sir - and is doing so under a copious mound of spreadsheet statistics and a mahoosive menagerie of advice from all and sundry, and Phil Mickelson (who wants another Gleneagles speech of that calibre?), on who should be his Captain’s picks.  All sides of the Atlantic are eagerly awaiting the names of those who will fill the shoes of the four vacant spots on Team USA and, inclusive or exclusive, this Ryder Cup match promises to be like none other before with a team of veteran golfers from the US desperate for a win against a disproportioned European side that sports six raw rookies.  

(Oh Darren, you may have easily won the PR exchanges with Russell but the portends for bringing home the Ryder Cup are not awarding you much by way of points here.)

It does not take long to figure that I am batting for Darren and his golfing dozen.  I have nothing against the US but I happen to live “over here” on the edge of Europe, right up close to the home of golf.  It comes naturally that I should want to hold on to the Ryder Cup - along with the throng of European supporters - but I can’t see it happening at Hazeltine.  Masters champion Willett is wilting and his form is not even smouldering given his recent exit from the FedEx Cup.  Fitzpatrick has the troughs and peaks of a Big Dipper beguiling his play with his top ten finish in the Masters cancelled out by his failing to make the cut at the Open.  The lovely Kaymer has left his best form sitting back on the wire-to-wire victory of 2014.  That’s two years ago, Martin.  It seems our great hopes lie in the stratospheric Stenson and the golden Rose, the solid playing of Westwood and perhaps the recent hot shot play of Rory who seems to have found a smattering of form at last.  

(There are more points to be scored here for form - or lack thereof -but I'm doing my best to refrain.)

Musings like these brought me to the idea that maybe it was time to introduce another Captain’s wildcard – one that would allow the captain to de-select at least one automatically qualifying player if his playing was lacklustre on the run-up to the Ryder Cup.  Now that would put the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons and keep them on red alert and, if that wildcard was available to Clarke right now, there might have been a late shoo-in reprieve for Knox.  

(But that is only conjecture and a pointless exercise to parry.)

To Hazeltine and beyond…

ANIMAL CRACKERS GOLF

ANIMAL CRACKERS GOLF

Golf got off to a flying start at the Olympics.

But long before these 120 golfers rocked up to play golf as an Olympic sport - after an absence of 112 years - there were other players moving in on the space.

The building of the Rio golf course has been, at times, sunk in a quagmire of court cases, environmentalists’ protests, and public mistrust.  It has been a virtual minefield that has courted controversy at every turn and, for a while, it looked like there would be no course and no medal contest.  However, those altercations and back steps went way over the heads of these key players who blatantly ignored the ignominy and zeal of all parties with equal proportions of disdain and disregard.

And who could blame them?  Here was a bunch of guys and girls who knew first hand the meaning of survival of the fittest.  Competition was wired in their DNA and they were designed to adapt.  So, when the IOC, Rio organisers and the architect Gil Hanse designed a golf course that looked like paradise, these punters displayed a very human characteristic, modelled on that old template of frontier pioneers, that manifested itself in the form of land grab.  Lock, stock and no smoking barrels, they seized the opportunity to claim the land.  Such was their sphere of influence that the designers had to restructure holes 13,14 and 15 to conform to the standards set for these invaders.  It was an amazing takeover and one that was purely indigenous in origin.

First on the tees then was the capybara – these are rodents and, as the parent of a son who owned two pet rats (named Verdi Gris and Rat-a-touille) and two guinea pigs (called Edward and Anthony), I am a fan but there’s no taming one of these shrews or easily bagging one to take home by way of a trophy.  The capybara is the largest rodent in the world and likes to live near water in socially gregarious groups numbering about twenty.  They grow to two feet in height and weigh in at an average of 100 pounds.  They will usually allow humans to pet and hand feed them but the latter is normally discouraged as their ticks can be vectors to Rocky Mountain Spotted fever.  And they gave Superintendant Neil Cleverly a massive headache.  Charged with making the golf course happen on the ground but with a less-than-ideal time frame of two growing seasons to do it, he used a strain of grass developed in Texas and known as zeon zoysia.  Right bang on song, midnight at the oasis saw the nightly appearance of the capybaras at the course’s water hazards where this special grass turned out to be a favourite overnight snack.  They appeared at various times during the tournaments too, especially during practice rounds, and the players stopped to photograph them. 

The parity of disdain continued with the infiltration of the burrowing owls.  Oh yes, you have guessed it perfectly right:  their prime role is to burrow – and they just happen to love open areas with low ground cover which is the exact design for the course at Marapendi.  They are also deviant from your stereotypical expectations of owls in that they are active by day.  Long-legged, yellow-eyed, sporting white eyebrows, and head-bobbers when distressed, they like to burrow or railroad themselves into someone else’s underground home.  And love the bunkers they did, digging deep to form their nests.  On the first day of the men’s tournament, a long-legged owl, looking for breakfast as players warmed up, got himself into a stare-off with the elite golfers but eventually retreated to his abode in the depths of the ninth bunker. 

The next set of invaders came in the shape of the gnarly, knobbly caiman – a small crocodile that doesn’t grow much beyond five feet.  But what they lack in size, former English golfer-turned-commentator, Sir Nick Faldo claims they make up in bite.  “You know the way in Florida the gators are always quite sleepy?” he said,  “Well, this one opened its jaws and snapped them shut angrily.  We moved on swiftly.”  Wiesberger joked there were extra hazards on the greens and I’m guessing, Bernd, you haven’t found suchlike hazards gracing your Austrian golf courses.  They were clearly territorial, too, in that they frequented holes 2, 3, 5, and 9 – odd numbers for oddball animals.  Well, Sir Nick, you need to know that alligator pupils are always 90˚ to the horizon except when flipped onto their backs.  This move discombobulates both their vision and balance and causes them to freeze, unable to see, and with no idea which way is up. 

The final animal to add to the invaders is that snake-in-the-grass, the boa constrictor.  Knocking your ball out of bounds or in the rough carried a hazard that is probably not covered in any rulebook.  Who would want to stand in the sights of a slithering boa constrictor and have a hearty discussion as to the possibilities of a snake being a movable or immovable object?  Who cares?  Professional or amateur: if you’re daft enough to be embroiled in the out-workings of full relief, then the consequences are yours by right of your stupidity.  I, for one, would be so quick off the escape block that there is the possibility that I might smash the legendary Mo Farah’s records.  And right on cue, on the second day of the women’s tournament, volunteers captured a large snake near the eighteenth green – that’s the place where the largest viewing gallery hangs out.  Oh my!

But here’s the thing… the top five golf players in the world declined to turn up at the Rio games, with the exception of Henrik Stenson from Sweden, and represent their countries because of an animal.  It wasn’t any of the miscreants above - who had slid quietly into residence by the back door of the Reserva di Marapendi - but the culprit for Rory, Jason, Jordan, Dustin, and a subsequent whole-flock more of no-shows, had flown in by the front door in the shape of the Zika-virus-carrying Aedes mosquito.  Thanks to Rory, this virus has now gone viral to infinity-and-beyond and he has done more for raising awareness of this health issue than the World Health Organization. 

As excuses go, however, it was lame…

…and Pádraig Harrington summed it up neatly when asked if those who were not competing misread the situation.

“I think completely, yeah,” he said.  “I would have to say there was a lot of sheep in this decision.  They kept just following each other out the door.”  Well done, Pádraig, that’s the correct animal to nail their mass defection with.

Pádraig Harrington grew up in Ireland so he should know a thing or two about sheep.  He might not be of sheep farming stock, given his origins in Rathfarnham on Dublin City’s Southside, but his knowledge of that animal probably springs from that famous theory of Six Degrees of Separation.  Frigyes Karinthy first proposed it in 1929 in a short story called “Chains” and it theorizes that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.  If you live in Ireland, you don’t need a short story, written by a Hungarian, to tell you this.  Sometimes, we can’t breathe for interconnectedness and I’m sure Pádraig knows someone who knows someone, in two degrees of separation and over a pint of Guinness, who has told him how sheep behave.  Sheep will follow the leader sheep even if it’s heading off a cliff or to the slaughterhouse.

Which is why he had plenty to witter on about when leader sheep Rory McIlroy decided he no longer wished to represent Ireland in Rio.  Rory was having none of it and he cited various reasons, chief among them being the desire to avoid a close, blood-sucking encounter with a mosquito carrying the Zika virus.  The rest of the players jumped on this excuse bandwagon.

But here’s a thing.  While Brazil undoubtedly registers “High” on the advisory health sites, Florida is also documented on the same sites as a “Moderate”.  Appearing in the Olympics required only a seven-day stay in Rio but a high number of professional golfers base themselves in the US and, in particular, in Florida where the exposure risk is moderate but for much longer periods of time.  Would I be wrong to propose that the greatest reason so many golfers withdrew was not the flimsy fears of a disease-bearing mosquito but more to do with that potential infection of which golfers live in particular life-smothering dread: the absence of a large monetary prize at the end of seventy-two holes?

I have an animal to describe that sort of behaviour: chicken.

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RIO! A NEW DEPARTURE FOR GOLF

I like getting something off my chest and when I do, I like it to be early doors.  Don’t want anyone labouring under any illusions as to what I want to say, so here it is: my take is that golf doesn’t need showcasing in the Olympics.  It’s become a dirty business.  Not golf.  The Olympics.  The IOC has derogated from its responsibility in dealing with performance enhancing drug users in many of the participating sports and has done so at the expense of good, clean athletes and viewers alike.  I have become so cynical that I found myself watching the “horse dancing” and wondered if the mounts themselves were “on” something.  How bad is that?

I suspect it’s all about fat-cats in fat positions on fat salaries and fat track promotion of their own fat lifestyles at the expense of honouring naturally gifted, clean athletes.  After the last samba of Rio has stuttered to a halt, the drumbeat of “Carnaval” has been silenced, as sure as the leanness of Lent follows hot on the heels of the traditional Fat King (King Momo) and the Carnival of Rio, there will be a backlash of malcontent that will turn the rollicking riot of Rio into rot.  Not merely for the participants of the Games but also the inhabitants of the shantytown favelas: the unpicking of the event is yet to happen.  Already, the promised fat purses to aid the favelas have never materialised and the city’s coffers are reputedly empty.  Fat chance of justice then – but the jury is yet to convene.

Against this background, golf has dropped itself back into contention after a 112-year absence and onto a course that was designed by Gil Hanse, ably assisted by LPGA Hall of Famer Amy Alcott.  Pocket-sized description says it’s wide off the tee, imaginative, fun and a smattering reminiscent of Castle Stuart in Bonnieland.  (That means Scotland for those not familiar with the local lingo.)  The Castle Stuart comparison is simple: it was also designed by Hanse.  There is no rough.  There is no need.  Stray balls will be punished by out-of-bounds in underbrush policed by snakes.  After the last light has been switched out on the Rio Olympics, this Reserva de Marapendi course will revert to public use and is thus designed to accommodate the dabbling hacker or professional golfer alike by keeping them engaged and hopeful with wide fairways, multiple approach shots-to-green options, and short-grass recovery shots.  Seventy-nine bunkers - featuring local and indigenous sands – rumpled and dimpled fairways, brush and bush in the absence of trees, dunes and the omnipresent afternoon Atlantic winds form the defences of this course: 7128 yards for the men and 6245 yards for the women at par 71. That’s the play so far.

And the natives love it, moving in with alacrity to possess the space.  As the course is situated way out west of the pulsating heart of Rio, it is not your usual city slicker type who has taken up residence.  These residents would be more at home sharing a screen with naturalist Sir David Frederick Attenborough.  Yup, I’m talking wild and wonderful in the shape of capybaras, three-toed sloths, burrowing owls, boa constrictors and caimans.  And the soccer mad country of Brazil does not really understand golf: witness a spectator who briefly picked up Justin Rose’s ball on the final day of play after an errant tee shot.  Happily, she dropped it again and Rose was given a free drop.  When it comes to majors, golf is used to being the biggest show on the advertising planet but now it is one of 39 sports or disciplines.  The first two days’ attendance appeared to be thin on the ground but Saturday and Sunday attracted a capacity crowd and, for that reduced compliment of followers who made it to the first couple of days, there was the added reward of getting up close and personal with the participants.  Nobody was complaining.

Sixty players took to the course to play four rounds over four days. The player with the lowest score at the end of seventy-two holes would win.  It was never a team event.  Each competitor was representing his country – although clearly American Matt Kuchar arrived in Rio under the illusion he was a member of Team US Golf and only found out he was playing on his own at a press conference before the tournament.  But Kuchar came up smelling of roses: he was the only medal winner of the four-man entry from the US, walking away with bronze.  Kuch, you’re a man after my own haphazard disposition.  Neat work.

Saturday saw the separation of the leading men and then the final day went down to the final hole.  Mr Iceman met Mr Nice Man and the gambit for gold got under way.  Mr Nice Man - Justin Rose - played wonderfully throughout.  A staunch supporter of golf’s inclusion in the Olympics, he played for his country with his soul.  It mattered.  It mattered from the second you saw the selfie with Andy Murray at the opening ceremony.  It mattered when he turned up at various venues, posted more selfies, and supported Team GB, all the while building lifetime memories.  It mattered when he claimed the first hole-in-one on the first day of the tournament.  And it mattered as he stood on the eighteenth hole, putter in hand, to tap in that decisive birdie from three feet to finish on a composite score of 268 and 16 under for the gold.  The future’s bright, the future’s Rosey.

But it was no walkover.  Mr Iceman, in the form of Henrik Stenson, was firing on all four cylinders.  Hot off the high of his phenomenal win at The Open, Stenson had the passion to represent his country and was well supported by Swedish athletes from other disciplines turning up to cheer him on in his quest for gold.  Gold was almost his on the final green but he missed his chance to hole out from twenty feet.  He also missed the return putt for par and his was the silver.  Despite my reservations about golf in the Olympics, I was with the action all the way.  It was brilliant.

Of course, I have a stake in Roses’s win.  Sports psychologists will always tell their sporting charges that they must think and speak the language of positive prose.  With that in mind, I tweeted Justin.  There’s not huge scope in 140 permitted characters to ramp it up in the stakes of powerful positivity but I gave it my best shot and Justin Rose responded.  He followed my every tweeted instruction: “Simply brilliant.  Well done”, “Go for gold.  Got my fingers crossed”, “My grandson is following your journey tru 18 today and repeated after your every shot ‘Justin Rose is playing for MY country’ - he’s five”.  And Justin acknowledged those tweets – by giving his all on the course and by responding on Twitter.  Totally rad.

It’s time to get back in my armchair and re-visit that course.  The ladies are just teeing it up and I have another set of contenders to watch as these players begin their hunt for gold, silver and bronze…

FACT: JULY AND THE JOYS OF GOLF

Golf has never seemed more exciting or demanding than it has of late.  Take the last month with two of the four majors of the year squish-squashed into July to allow us the freedom of being able to watch the return of golf to the Olympic 2016 platform after a 112 year absence.  August would have been promising for golf but for two “slight” problems: the world top ranking golfers took a raincheck from Olympic golf, eschewing the Zika virus and the security issues that required you to name your next of kin and your dentist as a matter of course before you even departed for Rio; and that old chestnut which has blighted sports from Armstrong on his bike to the scandals at Sochi is now threatening to turn the summer Olympics into a withered winter of discontent as the international federation and Bach fail to tackle the debacle of those athletes who use performance enhancing drugs.  Much though golf may need all the help it can get to promote it on the world stage, the question has to be asked: does golf really need to be associated with an event that is replete with cheating participants?  Keep golf clean and away from Rio.  Simple fact.

But now, let’s backtrack to the beginning of July when Royal Troon was the talk of the town and our thanks must go to Phil and Henrik for the most amazing show of golf since the 1977 Open on the Ailsa Course at Turnberry, Scotland when vintage Watson won by one stroke over veteran Nicklaus in what came to be known as the “Duel in the Sun”.  Before he and Stenson even got to battling positions on the two last days of Troon, Mickelson had us hanging off the edge of our seats as he sought to end the first day on an insurmountable high by making an all-time record course score which would have seen him as the first golfer to make a sixty-two.  Instead, he had to settle for becoming the 28^th player to score 63 in a major and the ninth to do so at The Open.  Amazingly, as that ball - heading for centre stage in the eighteenth hole - lipped out, we all felt the wow-factor sting of a historical moment lost in the “forever” abyss.  Curse on that hole - simple fact yes.

Day three and four of The Open saw the men separate themselves from the boys.  On any other day, Phil Mickelson’s final score of -17 would have seen him a winner of any major but he reckoned without the steel of Stenson.  For those of you who reckon that Troon was too easy, get a grip.  Why, oh why, would the score of the next eleven places added together not exceed the combined score of Stenson and Mickelson’s gladiatorial efforts?  We witnessed history as Sweden’s Henrik Stenson shot a 63 for a four-day total of twenty under par and set the bar for the lowest seventy-two score in The Open history.  Accurate off the tees, faultless on the fairways, precise with his putter, Stenson swung the back nine in a truly astonishing display of links golf.  Even with Phil on form and thrilling to watch, he could not outplay his rival.  The “Amazing Jewel in the Sun” was undoubtedly Stenson.  Cometh the hour, cometh the Iceman – a simply indisputable fact.

The end of July promised us the PGA Championship at Baltusrol, New Jersey.  And it delivered – but mostly rain.  Sheets of it.  Stair rod rain.  Cats and dogs rain, rivalling anything Ireland can produce.  I was washed out waiting by the telly for play to resume.  And when it did, I should have seen Jason Day grip his 2-iron for the second time on the 18^th, having used it off the tee, and close the second shot of 258 yards to within fourteen feet of the pin.  He putted for an eagle but, despite the Day magic that followed in the fabled footsteps of John Daly and Jack Nicklaus, he lost to Jimmy Walker.  I should have seen it as it happened but all I have had is the opportunity to watch the re-runs because I was in fields afar celebrating my daughter’s thirtieth birthday.  No contest.  Simple family fact.

But the real joy of July came in the rotund shape of the aptly named Beef.  That’s beef with a capital B.  A rumbustiously rollicking lad, a fillet of fun, who endeared himself to a army of golf fans with his straight-down-the-line answer as to how he would celebrate his Spanish Open win.  His response skirted nothing and included getting hammered, seeing his mum and brother, and spending time with his North Middlesex GC friends.  Unlikely candidate and not your usual PR-guided profiler, this warm-hearted golfer seems to unite two nations divided by a common language and, miracle though it is, he is universally understood by dwellers east and west of the Atlantic waters. 

So what makes him the great unifier?

Butch Harmon nailed it when he said, “He’s a breath of fresh air”.  He’s Joe Ordinary, the friendly boy from next door who loves his mum and family.  He delights in spectator encouragement from outside the ropes and warmly responds.  He gives hope to every high handicapper that, somehow, the dream is possible and they can emulate this local lad.  He sports a beard that looks like it houses a nest of stray house martins and one of his favourite rappers is twin beardie Scroobious Pip.  Psst, Andrew, who’s Scroobious?  Simple musical fact: rap and me don’t mix, man.

Recently, PETA UK wanted him to rebrand as Tofu.  Give an A* for effort to “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals UK” but this man is as staunch as the rump of a British bulldog and he’s not for turning.  He has a wedge branded with nine types of beef.  For the butchers and discerning eaters among us, that’s T-bone, ribeye, brisket, sirloin, tri-tip, flank, filet mignon, porterhouse and skirt.

In a real twist of irony, Beef’s nickname has nothing to do with beef.  As a twelve-year-old, his hair was thicker and curlier and it stuck out like an Afro, thanks, in part, to his quarter Jamaican heritage.  Out on the course, an older player had a “Andrew, wot’s up with your hair?" moment and called him Beefhead.  The name stuck and has been with him ever since.  Prophetic in the round simple fact, I think.

And then there’s the chest bump sequence.  At last year’s BMW PGA Championship, he made a hole in one to win a car and he celebrated in Beef style with a fantastic airborne chest-on-chest connection with a mate who was following him. 

He loves his sleep.  Ten hours are requisite to keep him vibrant and he once declined a round of golf with Rickie Fowler because the start time was way too early – 08.30 for those who are interested in this timely fact.  The diehards of golf will be tut-tutting all along the fairways by now.  Tradition dictates you must be on the first tee by cockerel call - otherwise, you can’t be serious.  He’s not, of course: a Christmas tree still lurks at the back of the sofa, home fridge is full of chocolate and beer, he is a comfort eater by his own admission, plays burgers off his practice tees, eats a Caesar salad twice a year as a cap-tip to a healthy diet and rates John Daly as his hero.  Indisputably simple facts.

Summer is his five-year-old niece and she is his number one fan.  She followed him round Troon and proffered hole-by-hole support for her “Uncle Beef”.  He has his heart stolen by her and wallowed in relaxing evenings far from fairway play by indulging in games of “Top Trumps” with her.  Top family fact that.

But make no mistake: this young man is serious about golf. His late father introduced him to the beautiful game at an early age.  He is a joy to watch plugging away on the course and my simple prediction says he will never become a simulacrum of his homely self as fame and fortune grow.  He has already amassed a massive cult following that is undoubtedly deserved and, although he looks like he should be working at the local Tesco, he makes golf appealing.  I suspect his homespun mannerisms will do more for the exposition of golf on the world stage than any inclusion in an Olympic format.  He is a prime cut of Beef.  Fact, pure and simple.