THE SECRET LIFE OF TIGER WOODS

Notah Begay says it and when Notah Begay says it, sit up and take notice.  He says it is Tiger’s last outing, and he’s right.  It is Tiger’s swansong. There will be no second coming after this. And Notah thinks he can win.  At least one win this year and he expects him to peak in the springtime.  It may be just a matter of getting some more tournaments under his belt but the question remains: is this a good buddy-bolstering remark or the hard-headed opining of a seasoned golf analyst?  And who could blame Begay if he cast aside his seasoned opinion and led with his heart in supporting his good friend’s return to the professional circuit after a sixteen month sojourn - for these are two people who met and bonded at a youth tournament in California when a twelve year old Begay walked up to a nine year old Tiger and started a lifelong friendship with the opening remark “You’ll never be alone again”? 

But Michael Jordan thinks not and when Michael Jordan thinks not, then we need to sit up and take a double dose of notice.  As Tiger has tightened the net on the circle of friends that remain within his close-quartered entourage, those that remain are all we have to act as portals to the private world of Tiger Woods.  And private he is – for this is a man who has the capacity to appear and disappear with the stealth of a leopard and has named his boats Privacy and Solitude.  While many super athletes have personalised registrations and customised paint jobs that they like to vaunt, Tiger has blocked the tail number on his plane.  He flies under the radar, cloaked in the solitude of his self-made world, living in a sixty million dollar Florida home that is its own compound and which he inhabits mostly alone since his tabloid divorce some seven years ago.  Michael Jordan is one of the chosen who remain on the inside track and if anyone has any idea of what might happen in Woods’ future, then it is the lot of Jordan to provide that insight.  As late as last year, he expressed his belief that Tiger will never be great again.  He cannot tell him so directly because he loves him too much.  That’s as may be but he has put it out there in the public domain for public consumption and, by no stroke of divine intervention, there is an unquestionable certainty that his good friend Tiger has read it. 

Michael Jordan’s take on Tiger’s position leaves us with the distinct impression that Tiger should entertain a period of reflection on the future success of his career.  Is this the result of protracted conversations as friends are wont to do as they burn the midnight oil – let’s face it, there is nobody on Tiger’s horizon who is better placed to advise than Michael Jordan as he has already weathered that storm – or the out loud musings of a man who sees what his friend cannot see: that there comes a time in every life where a reckoning has to be made?  Whatever the history behind his assertion, we are left with the feeling that Michael’s musings are from a place of intimacy that few have access to. 

There is so much of Tiger that is conundrum and conflict and the end of a career that was foreshortened by a dramatic fall from the grace of a carefully contrived public image has made that reckoning a tainted thing, a staining on the ideal of his own perfection and opened his tightly held belief of destiny and glory to a rigmarole of regrets that seemed at times to border on the edge of festering.  But Tiger’s depleted game is not at a low point merely because of the injuries to his image.  His body has taken its toll and responded to the extreme exertions of training and workouts that he has exposed himself to over a protracted period of time.  Along with the powerful speed and impact of his swing, the physical regimes he has expounded have taken their toll on his joints and, by default, the healing time demanded by those injuries has detracted from his focus, fitness and practice.

And now he is back.

And we watch.

For failure.  For fear.  For excitement. For a score that will signpost his route back to success.  For the win.  For his fall.  For the fun.  For the fascination.  For the hope re-born.

This return was prefaced by an earlier outing at the Hero Challenge in December of last year and Tiger watchers who have agonised over his every shot will report that he made more birdies than anyone else.  He also made more bogeys too but the consensus says his game lacked the mark of confidence and the stroke of genius that dominated every part of his game when he played on stellar heyday form.  There is nobody like Tiger who can envisage a shot with such unwavering clarity that he can will it into being.  Like he did in 2003 in the Presidents Cup with the light fading as he putted against Els on the par-3 second hole at Fancourt Country Club.  Els had five feet and Woods fifteen.  Tiger took his shot and drained the bender into the hole.  The watchers at the hole will testify that he created it in his head and willed the shot into form for, when he took that shot, it was almost pitch black.  Those spine tingling days are long gone.

Rust or fatigue he was asked – and his honest reply left us in no doubt of the state of his Hero Challenge game: poor decisions, getting his legs back, not being ferried in a cart, and focusing for an extended period of time.  His caddie backlit that statement by saying his priority was to get him through all the rounds on his feet.  There were eighteen players selected, no cut, and Tiger came home fifteenth.  This was never for the win.

Fast forward to the PGA tour, Torrey Pines, South Course, San Diego.  It’s late January.

He’s playing and we watch with the same fascination and hope that we experienced at the Hero Challenge Display.

Hundreds of fans lined up to watch Woods on the first tee.  And they lined up in their droves, outside the ropes, to follow their hero.  Tee to green, the fans, the bewitched, the bemused, the golf aficionados followed his every move.  Round the greens they swarmed like drones to a hive, several rows deep.  He managed to hold par on the first nine.  As he made the turn, even the workers at the Scripps Clinic at Torrey Pines came out on the balcony and lined the glass-fronted building.  But Tiger let it slip away during a six-hole stretch on the back nine, finishing the day on a 4-over, 76.  Next day on the easier North course, he made par when he needed to make sixty-eight.  His round was inconspicuous and he was never any threat.

While his short game might have had some merit, his new swing never hit the mark.  He likes to play off a fade but he never looked like he knew how to execute one. Even Tiger himself looked relieved when he managed to keep it out of hazards and the rough, while his putting lacked the shine and accuracy that we expect of him.  His body language spoke silently but loudly.  Gone was the loping stride of his six foot- one frame.  The set face, so long familiar to us with the starched stiffness of supreme focus, had disappeared.  In its place were a variety of expressions that ran the gamut from frown to smile and covered every shade of emotion between.  Tiger has long been as much an actor as a golfer and the persona he projected on his red-and-black garbed winning Sundays was designed to intimidate his every foe.  You could not envision him wearing those colours today.  He ended Friday on the North course with a birdie and a smile but that was all.  He missed the cut in his first competitive field of professional golfers.

Now here’s the rub. 

Tiger is still wounded.   Deep down, those scars are still there.  It’s not in the adjusted swing that it shows - for Tiger has sported three different swings in his career so far.  It shows in his favoured fade shot and it is painfully clear he is no longer in control of that long ball.  Notah Begay says that he swung by Tiger’s place fairly recently and watched his old mate beat out those balls in a continuous stream of precision but even the least experienced golfer knows there is a huge difference between hacking a bad ball off the grass when you can unswervingly follow it with a stream of others that allow you to correct your error immediately.  Any predictions of Tiger’s return to a major win in the next year based on range and practice tactics is a far cry from the failed fade we have recently witnessed out there on the course.  With fifteen minutes between shots, there is time for the worrying pinprick of a minor fail to mushroom into a cascading faucet of self-doubt.  And it is here, when Tiger’s A-plan has flown out the window, that we can see the rot evident and the wounds revealing themselves.  There is no fall-back plan.

Tiger got on his plane and headed for Omega Dubai Desert Classic, European Tour.  It’s early February. 

We are watching again, looking for something glorious that would mark him out for success.  The hope in us is now dwindling towards the dying of the light.

Woods shot an opening round of five over, 77 – a round which sported five bogeys and no birdies.  It was inglorious and his worst score outside of the US in a non-major since 1996.  The television announcers commented on his physical condition on almost every hole.  Tiger walked slowly, very slowly.  By the fifth hole, the Twitter army were speculating on a withdrawal.  His look was pained, although he later denied that pain.  Tiger did not withdraw and he even began to warm up, but he remained aloof throughout the round and made minimal conversation with his fellow players.  His look was fragile, intent, and he had the air of a man who knows he has lost his cloak of invincibility.

Tiger is fit.  He can walk the course.  He would not be out there if his orthopaedic team had withheld its approval.  The word on the street says he is exercising twice a day.  That is no bad thing but it is the type of exercise that counts here: a return to the old, demanding regimes or a new programme designed to accommodate the damaged back?  The question remains inadequately answered but the hope must be for sense and sensibility to prevail and a physio team to monitor his every move.  Sean Foley was hired as Tiger’s coach in 2010.  Under Foley’s tutelage, Tiger’s swing became steeper and he regained the distance of his younger years but Brandel Chamblee has a distinct take on this.  Reviewing Woods’ progress at Dubai, Chamblee remarked that Tiger’s swing could be dangerous to his health.  Woods admits that his current swing is designed to avoid another injury but Chamblee is of the opinion that this swing is a remnant of the golf swing he had seven years ago and he sees this as the cause of Tiger’s injuries. 

On the second day of Omega Dubai Desert Classic, Tiger Woods withdrew.

At the outset of this comeback, Tiger said he was physically fit and his golf was getting there.  In 322 tournaments played, he has been forced to withdraw five times but four of theses have been in the past nineteen months.  He has reached a point where his body looks like it is something he no longer trusts but, more tellingly, he no longer seems to trust his golf either.  It doesn’t leave him much to play with but the greatest sadness of all is watching a fabled professional golfer searching for something out there that he no longer knows how to find.

Nor do we – and somewhere on the Dubai golf course, our hope expired.

As the freak storm descended on day two of the Desert Classic and stopped play, Tiger put on his cloak of invisibility and slipped quietly away.  He did not face the media or his fans but left that duty to his agent, Mark Steinberg.  His leaving, like his life, proves that a leopard never changes his spots, or a tiger his stripes.

We wait for his next appearance without the shred of hope.

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright…

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright…

I have wanted to write a piece on this golfer for some time, not because I am a sports reporter or even an amateur in golf punditry.  My rating in the grand scale of those who know a thing or two about golf is well below par but I have always followed this golfer, not because I love him – that would be an overstatement – but because he fascinates me.  He fascinates me in much the same way as a moth is drawn to the light: it’s a star-studded flight full of aerial acrobatics and displays but the watcher knows full well that the flight of the protagonist will only end in its own destruction no matter what the display, no matter what the outside interventions.  The power to halt that flight and prevent its eventual outcome is not in the hands of the observer, nor does it appear to be in the hands of the perpetrator either.  Like Icarus who didn’t heed his father’s warning to avoid complacency and hubris and flew too close to the sun, this player seems destined to have had, and lost, the golden gifted wings of golf.  The man who constitutes the legend that is this golfer is called Tiger Woods.

And a legend in his own lifetime is exactly what he is.  That he changed the game beyond anything that came before with his incredibly demanding fitness regime, his passion for practice, and a swing that he executed with such incredible speed and strength that made everyone sit up and take note is beyond dispute.  He is credited with increasing the popularity of his game and the size of the prize money on offer.  He was a leader from his first exiguous outings on the golf course and, even at a tender age, if others wanted to compete in his league, they had to up their game.  That has been his game plan ever since and those skills, ingested in his young years, have translated positively into his professional career. The boy that was born to golf, coached by his single-handicapper father from a tender age, and raised a Buddhist by his mother has wisely used discipline, hard work, focus and competition to drive himself forward to achieve his vision and goals.  He was a man possessed of the highest echelon of self-belief, an unstoppable mix of confidence blended with skill that carried him all the way to the top of his professional tree.  And then, when all was within his grasp, he seemed to open that clenched fist of a lifetime of success and let it slip through his fingers like chaff in the wind.

Even his birth name seems to have singled him out for stardom and if the meaning of the names of a baby can be a portend of the life to come, then Eldrick Tont Woods was destined to impress.  His parents, Earl and Kultida Woods, formed a unique name that began and ended with the initials of their first names, although there is a suggestion that the root of his name is to be found in the Old English Aildric, which means “old and wise leader”.  His second name, Tont, reflects his mother’s Thai origins and means “serious-minded and mature”.  However, his father appears to have alternated between the nicknames of Tiger and Sam, the former in homage of a Vietnam War colleague and friend and the latter simply because Earl thought his son looked like a Sam.  Tiger named his own daughter Sam as a reverse tribute to his father.

As a clean-cut sportsman, he ignited opinion.  When that carefully crafted exterior presented to the outside world came crashing down round a fire hydrant, he inflamed widespread interest.  When he struggled with injuries, he amassed support and respect.  When he tumbled from grace and the rankings, he made us groan in pain.  Wittingly or unwittingly, there is one thing Tiger has never achieved with his fandom: he has never commandeered mass rejection.  Despite his ups and downs, he incites a loyal following and, such is his halo effect that, upon announcing his long anticipated return to golf, television viewing and ticket sales have raced to a peak.  Tiger does not attract the dedicated golf aficionado alone - he has the capacity to attract the journeyman fan, the wavering follower, and even the plain disinterested.  In that, he is alone and above the rest of his field in this achievement and has the equally rare distinction of achieving such a celebrity status that he is instantly and internationally recognisable by that single name of Tiger.  It is a brand – like Madonna, Elvis or Bowie.

His life beyond the course revolves around his love for the Transformers and comic book heroes.  He is an insomniac who reads books on physics and cosmology.  When he is not texting friends deep in the small hours of the night, he is playing video games.  His passion for the Navy SEALs is the stuff of boy hero-worship and stems from his fixation with his father’s profession, the military, and it is to the military he turned, and the SEALs in particular, as he struggled to come to terms with the death of his father in 2006 – a person he missed not only as a father but as the man himself who was his best friend and confidante.  He has nursed a long-held desire to be a SEAL, training with them over a sustained period.  That Tiger sustained many injuries is beyond doubt but much has been made of the power of his swing and driving the ball a country mile as the enemies of his body.  Very little attention has been given to the idea that as much injury may have been sustained in the programmes of intense training he undertook with the Navy – carrying thirty pound ammunition boxes while running uphill, the regular four-mile timed stints of running in combat boots, the high weight, low reps weight-lifting and the body slamming, bruise-inducing training of CQD (Close Quarters Defence).  In the end, golf won out and so did the physical and mental scars.

The loss of his father was a huge body blow to Tiger.  It was a new experience for him to deal with loss and grief, even death itself.  They were factors over which he had no control and Tiger displays all the hallmarks of someone who lives by the dictum of control to achieve the ultimate state of perfection. The one man he could always turn to for mentoring and guidance had gone.  Earl accompanied Tiger to many tournaments, often not setting foot on the golf course, but electing to stay behind at the accommodation just to be on hand for his son.  The death of his father left Tiger alone and with a problem he had to work out for himself.  And in this, Tiger, the intensely private man, the nerdy man, the bookish, boorish man, even the lothario, failed.  He had no precedent to measure this experience against.  The painful reminders of his father’s absence on the range or on the golf course were hazards he needed to avoid but his very career hung on the need to expose himself to those measures on a daily basis.  It was not only the requirement of his professional career but literally all he had known from his toddler years onwards.  In grieving for his deceased parent, Tiger was caught between a rock and a hard place.  His futile attempts to escape – the Navy bonding sessions, the extra-marital affairs, the partying - turned into distractions that ultimately wrecked his marriage and his career and did not fill the empty hollow of loneliness.  Earl truly believed his son was destined to change the course of humanity as the Chosen One.  His mother called him the Universal Child who could bind all races together but the golden-winged Icarus flew too close to the sun and all his life exploded round him while the man himself imploded.  For the first time, this perfectionist had to face his imperfections and shortcomings.

But Tiger is back with an adapted swing of reduced force.  On his first outing at the Hero World Challenge, he scored more birdies than anybody; he also scored more bogeys.  The desire to win is still alive but it remains to be seen if he is riding the crest of an assured comeback and if the supreme self-belief has returned.  Despite the hype and the increase in television ratings and the surge of interest, he appears as a shadow of his former glory – more mortal, more vulnerable, less assured.  He knows it’s his last outing.  His close friend, Notah Begay, says so.  His road of mourning has been an unconventional one, permitted to be so by privilege and prestige and celebrity status.  It is a road that many could not afford to pursue but, in the end, he paid the ultimate price.  

The armchair psychologists have been out in force too, dialling in on their ability to diagnose from afar.  Some are plain whacky or funny and some seem to show well-deduced and logical conclusions.  The diagnosis taking centre stage appears to be Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, a disorder characteristic of personalities who are intellectual, emotionally distant, perfectionists, who display tight control of their environment, and are extremely sharp at using logic to explain behaviours and thoughts.  This is Tiger in a nutshell.  The corollary to that, according to the armchair psychologists, is to accept that emotional vulnerabilities are normal aspects of everyday life and to realize that, in letting go of his perfectionist, obsessive streak, he can gain even greater control of his game and his life.  Be that as it may, who has considered that if Tiger were to vent his frustration on the course, he would be lambasted by the highest and lowest of opinions for bringing the “gentlemanly” game of golf into disrepute with his puerile behaviour?  You need only look at some of the mild antics of Speith and McIlroy – a club flung here or there, a sulky face at a missed shot, a slightly sullen interview or imperfect body language – and you can see why Tiger, an introvert by nature, would not want to display a single emotion in public.  His status in the game would release a firestorm of media opinion at the slightest emotional reaction. Michael Bamberger wrote a book – “Men in Green” – and in that book, he quotes Palmer, Nicklaus and Watson.  They all say the same thing in their own individual way: they would never trade places with Tiger Woods for all the money in the world.

Perhaps it is not the combined forces of the other professional golfers in the field that are Tiger’s opponents.  Perhaps that award goes to the conflict within him and to the demons that haunt him.  This is Planet Tiger and the corrosive nature of fame - and how much he has dealt with those demons is a question none of us know the undiluted answer to.  At best, we are left with a guesstimate.  Life with Tiger is one long question without much by way of a definitive answer but, as Tiger himself has come to acknowledge, the question is sometimes the only answer. 

Meanwhile, I shall continue to watch, fascinated.  My instinct tells me he will never achieve another major.  He is done.  His records to date are his final score.  My heart wants much more for him: to equal or break Jack Nicklaus’ record, to achieve peace, happiness and fulfilment in his personal and professional life, and to carry on being the ambassador – no matter how unwillingly – he has been for golf.  It is then my head kicks in.  It is then I think of his ambassadorial role in the wider context of his life, the women, the gambling, the cheating, the carefully crafted image, the public persona, the duplicity, the Team Tiger cover-ups, the conspiracy of silence, the lying, the buying of his way out of indiscretions, the buying of his way into privileged experiences and then I think, “Who cares?”  There is only one way a moth to the light can end.  Fascinating or what?

MIRROR, MIRROR on the wall, who is the worst golfer of them all?

Golfers.  There are none in my immediate family.  I mean zilch, diddly-squat, zero.  I should know.  I’ve done the research.  I don’t mean a quick flip on Ancestry.com for a feverish five minutes.  I mean the kind of research that ended in two books and many tales of ado about something – but no golfers.  I have no idea why I might have got this rogue gene but, Divine Intervention or not, someone had a great laugh when my blueprint was written. 

I like to be clear about things.  I get confused very easily – another laugh at my expense on the part of the Blueprint Maker – so from get-go let’s put it out there that I am a rubbish golfer. With attitude.  I don’t think I started out with attitude.  Those that know me from my start line in life testify to the fact that I once was that shy child with big, blue questioning eyes.  Nowadays, I’m not so shy, my eyes are still blue and I question everything, loud and long.  And along the way, I’ve acquired attitude.   It’s a protective mechanism and necessary when you have a brain that flights itself into confused mode at the drop of a hat.

So when I notice something quirky about myself – well, I’ve noticed a lot of quirky things about myself but I largely ignore them as they wax and wane according to the phases of the moon but this is a consistent quirk and it is related to my ability to play golf – I sit up and take heed.   It keeps me out of confused mode and fulfils my need to keep things clear.  In a nutshell then, whenever I watch golf on telly and absorb the players’ techniques and approaches, I go out and play a better game immediately afterwards.  I thought this was Divine Intervention again, having a laugh at my expense, but the pure coincidence became an observable constant and it happened every time.  I knew it was so because, whether I had had a lesson and done my stint at the practice range or not, if I didn’t watch the pros on tour, there was a noticeable slump. 

That was enough to get my attention. 

Could this be true?

Or just a load of old twiddlefart on my part?

Think about it: every great piece of scientific research began in a theory and every great theory was begotten in empirical observation and every empirical observation was born in a “Ooh! I wonder if that could be true” moment and if you have followed my logic in this sentence thus far, you really do read my blog.  Thank you and well done.

Intrigued and inquisitive but hugely ill-informed – that was how I would describe myself on the subject of mirror imaging.  But then I fell into the clutches of a certain man.  Let me introduce Giacomo Rizzolatti, MD.  He’s a neuroscientist and, together with his mates at the University of Parma, he has been hamming up on an interesting little nerve cell called a mirror neuron.

Imagine it like this:

You are walking along the fairway.  Suddenly, there’s a shout of “Fore left” from somewhere off to your right.  You duck but your playing partner looks round to ascertain whose “left” is in question.  Too late!  That miscreant ball has smacked him right in the cornerstones of the cathedral of his manhood and he keels over.  That’s the way of errant golf balls but, automatically, you clutch the area of the south chancel of your own basilica and you feel his pain. 

Or you are armchair-watching Mickelson and Stenson in that epic battle down the home straits of this year’s Open at Troon. The tension builds, your breathing rate changes, your heart accelerates.  You’re in the telly now, feeling it, living the adrenaline rush, steadying your nerves, releasing your tightly clutched hand, stop, check, practice swing, you’re on the eighteenth, stop, check, practice swing, walk away.  You can feel your heartbeat banging on your eardrums.  Tachycardic drumbeats.  You walk back, stand over your putter, you drive home the winning putt and you raise your fist to punch the sky.

You’ve got it – you’ve just let your mirror neuron out to play - only it wasn’t actually you who lifted the Claret Jug or juggled with your nobbled knobs, much though you lived the in-the-moment experience.

These sort of gut-level experiences have occupied the minds of psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers as they puzzled over why we understand so instinctively the thoughts, feelings and intentions of others with such immediacy.

And that’s where we return to the lovely Professor Rizzolatti – who, incidentally, is a double-ganger for Einstein – because he is the man who discovered mirror neurons in the frontal and parietal cortex of the macaque monkey.  These mirror neurons brain cells respond equally whether we are performing the task or witnessing others performing the same action. 

I’m not even a talented carrot in God’s own Irish potato field but I know my onions when I find them and, in this piece of research, I had found my proof.  Forget your Golf Biometrical fitting, your Garmin Approach S2 GPS golf watch, your FitBit Surge or your Blast Motion Golf Replay analyzer.  All I needed now was a fitting of an AR headset filled with the re-runs of quality professional matches and I could take off on a tour de force on the course, mimicking the best players. 

And if the effect of carrying a headset around with me for eighteen holes proves a bit of an asinine job, I am planning on roping in James.  He’s an engineer par excellence.  That’s Sir James Dyson, “the” engineer.  If there’s a man on this planet that could invent a lightweight piece of kit that could incorporate a golf cap and an AR headset, he’s the man.  While he’s at it, he might even be able to invent a set of clubs that could propel themselves in the perfect swing-thing trajectory and then I could play the perfect round of golf.

Sir James, I am a willing guinea pig.  I know you can work miracles.  You're the only man on this earth who has turned my son in to an ardent hooverholic (Yup, I think I have invented a new word) with your Dyson V6.  He thinks he's eight again and is ramping it up with that cordless "Luke Skywalker Lightsaber" lookalike vacuum cleaner.  His other half is delighted.

And finally:

Merry Christmas to all of you who have taken the time to read my blogs throughout the year.  I am grateful for your support and following.  To 2017 and the new golf season…

SIGNIFICANT OTHERS AND THE BRITISH MASTERS

I have two “significant others” in my life.

The first is my son Ciaran, my firstborn child and now a grown man.

Last Friday, he was my chauffeur and chaperon for the day as I headed for Colchester Hospital and a date with a planned foot operation.  At 07.30, we arrived on the ward, me nil by mouth and dying for a cup of decaf tea and Ciaran (that's Kieran for those of you who are Anglicised) looking like it was the first sunrise he’d seen in his entire 32 years.  I was in Colchester's orthopaedic department and was seen first by the anaesthetist. 

There are certain ways to ask a demanding question of anyone and the art is to ask it in such a manner that ensures it will rank well in the annals of social politeness. Being educated by the Sisters of What-Mercy!, you learn the subtleties of those approaches at a very young age.  It was what Darwin meant when he talked about “survival of the fittest”. Those years of learning deserted me in one fell swoop as I cast my eyes on that consultant anaesthetist. He looked young enough to be my son and I wondered if he was suitably experienced to see my vital signs through an operation.  I can only blame the leprechauns operating a no-holes-barred policy in my brain as I pole-axed him with a lancing gaze and asked him if he was actually old enough to take my airway.  For the uninitiated: keeping an airway viable during the administration of an anaesthetic is vital to staying alive.  When he stopped laughing, he assured me he'd been doing his job for thirty years and all would be well.  I still don't believe him.  

The admitting nurse then came to review me and wanted to know if I'd ever been suspected of having CJD.  In my book, there is only one way to answer that sort of daft question so I trotted out my standard reply.  "I have often been called a mad cow but no one has ever considered me as full blown CJD yet".  I don’t know why her shoulders were shaking and she dropped her pen on the floor but she seemed to lose concentration after that and she couldn't finish her routine set of questions.  At this point I should report that my son did not know whether to die from laughter or embarrassment and kept his face buried in his hands.  There are points in life when you know your children would like to disown you – I think this might have been one of them - for, on her departure, he reminded me that I was to keep silent and only answer the questions in a suitably contained and mature manner.  As I consider my children among the best of my teachers, I took his words to heart and resolved to keep quiet.

That’s when I was seen by a Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) prevention nurse who explained to me very nicely what a DVT, pulmonary embolism and cerebral vascular accident can do to the body and how to prevent it all happening - then she actually read my notes and realised what I did for a living.  At that point, she crept away quite sheepishly.  I still got in trouble with Ciaran even though I'd said not a word to this nurse but smiled and nodded as if I was interested throughout her spiel.  There is no pleasing that son of mine.

All was now ready for me to go to theatres...

…and that’s when I was told my consultant had phoned in sick…

… which is how I came to be foot loose and fancy free at the back end of last weekend… 

Instead of the required post-op pose of “toes above nose”, I found myself still on my feet with nothing planned to do.  And those feet were itching to do something.  That’s when I fell into the clutches of my other “significant other”.    

He’s my grandson and I care not a hoot when I say in a totally biased fashion that he is drop-dead gorgeous.  He is five and I get to be five, too, when we tag along together.  I have worked very hard at being a grandmother and, after years of watching me interact with him, my children have labelled me well.  In the family circle, I am referred to as “soft-touch Nanna”.  I wear it well.

And so it came to pass that we found ourselves, me and little legs, on our way to The Grove, near Watford, in a sheets-of-rain deluge on Sunday morning for the final day of the British Masters tournament.  My back seat driver was in fine fettle as we wended our way along the motorway and he was uber excited to be heading for his first-ever live tournament.  Meanwhile, as driver, I was contemplating the horrendous drive and thinking: should have stayed at home and watched it from the comfort of my sofa.

The British Masters was founded in 1946 and was originally known as the Dunlop Masters, which, in turn, was a continuation of the Dunlop-Metropolitan Tournament that began life before World War II.  It was designed as a seventy-two-hole end-of-season event with a restricted field and was held every year up to 2008.  It has been held at many prestigious courses around the UK and, despite its numerous name changes, was one of the most lucrative events on the European Tour.

It disappeared for five years, making its comeback on the European Tour’s schedule in 2015, where it was hosted by Ian Poulter at Woburn from 8-11 October.  I was privileged to be at that event and follow young Matt Fitzpatrick as he won his maiden professional title.  This year, tournament ambassador and a former world number one, Luke Donald, chose The Grove to host the Sky-supported 2016 British Masters. 

This is where we were headed and I had in my charge one excited little boy.  “Will Rory be there?” was the first inquiry.  When I responded in the negative, back came the next question “Are we going to see Justin Rose?”  I explained why Justin would not be playing so the next question was “Well, I want to see Jordan Speiff.  Will he be there?”  Sorry, Jordan, but your surname is just a tad too much of a tongue-twister for my grandson.  Finley was becoming dejected with my constant negative responses so I took charge of the flow of conversation and said, “You will see Andrew Johnston”.  In the rear-view mirror, I watched the penny of dawning knowledge drop all the way from the top to the bottom of the well and saw his cherub face light up and eyes pop.  We both shouted together “Beeeeeeef!”.  

Suffice it to say it was a totally successful outing.  I had one reservation going there.  My grandson is the sort of child who asks a thousand piercing questions in a nanosecond and expects a thousand perceptive answers in the same time space.  He keeps me young and my brain working.  I love it but I wondered how he would cope with the respectful silence that should accompany each player’s shot.  It never presented as a problem.  He was so enthralled by the “live” action on the tee boxes, fairways and greens, the use of different clubs, and swing versus putting techniques, that he remained uncommonly silent for long periods.

At one point, Finley was poised so close to the passageway of Beef from one hole to the next that he could have reached out his hand and touched him but Finley was overawed by the moment and is just a tad reserved in the presence of someone who is not of his immediate circle of family and friends.  I tweeted this reservation to Beef the next day and, as sure as night follows day, back came a wonderful “Hi Finley” greeting from Beef.  He is the man!  Finley and I respect this golfer.

As to my foot op…

…just don’t ask.

BANNED FROM PLAYING GOLF

I miss golf.

Yes, I really miss it and it is not just because the riveting Ryder Cup has run its course for another two years or the four majors are done and dusted, the FedEx Cup and its associated millions have been captured for this year, and that extra jewel in this golfing year, The Olympics, is over for another four years.

I miss golf for all those reasons but the biggest reason I miss golf is that I cannot currently play.  I have been banned.

I didn’t aim to get banned but get banned I did.

Those of you who know me well will vouch that I am 99.9% a boringly reliable salt-of-the-earth type.  Those of you who know me extremely well will vouch that there is a zero-point-one chance that I will kick over the traces every once in an erstwhile while and I know you’re hoping that I have done something wild – like I once laughingly declared – and run naked down the third fairway at Waldringfield just for the sheer delight of upsetting the staidly pristine world of local golf.  

I have been tempted but I have three large reasons never to do something like that - my grown-up children in the guise of one son and two daughters.  Teach your children well and they will become your most reasoned judge and jury.  Who knew they would turn out so clever?  In fact, my three can morph into a lynch mob at the mention of my name and love to dole out a punishment.  I haven’t figured out if this is revenge tactics on their part or if they feel I am entering my twilight years and they’re just trying to keep a caring eye on this miscreant parent but I am sure that if I were jailed for wild antics on the golf course, they would take great delight in not paying my get-out-of-jail card.  My only support in this department would be my little grandson who is of such an innocent age that he lacks the social understanding of the need for clothing, apart from keeping a body warm on a cold day and because his mother tells him that he must put some on before he ventures out.  That sort of support amounts to nowt.

The third fairway intersects with the fourteenth at Waldringfield so if you’re into naked jolly japes that’s the most effective maximum exposure spot at the local course but I did not avail myself of my zero-point-one urge and I still got banned.

It all began in January of this year.  With my genes steadily going south faster than the speed of sound, my age trying to take me out and that well-researched family history indelibly imprinted on my brain, I decided to up the ante on my “achievements” bucket list.  You need to understand that I have a close working relationship with my genes and I am only too well aware how much they conspire to strangle the life out of me.  In what was supposed to be a miniscule but informative background history to a mahoosive family reunion in Ireland, I wrote a piece that just kept on growing.  Two reunions later, that output comprised two books that took me back to a relative in Kilmactranny in 1749.  In between the now and way back then relatives, I discovered a common theme as I read through an Everest of research documents – they largely told the story of death by strokes, hypertension and aneurysms.  It was all too obvious that exercise was the answer.

I am easily distracted so I set targets for the year.  A half marathon run, a three-day bike ride and the need to train for those would keep me focused.  Simple.  Or not.  What I didn’t know then - and I surely know now - is that being female, middle-aged, having a bunion and increasing high impact work gives you a shoo-in to the world of microfractures.  Last time I checked, I met all of those criteria.  And how! 

That’s how my left foot and me ended up in the clutches of Mr Orthopaedic Surgeon.  He promptly banned me from running and golf.  He wasn’t wrong but he did encourage me to cycle and gave me his blessing for that super marathon ride in the hills of Donegal in September.  Since March, it was the best week my aching foot has had – non weight bearing on the pedals of a flimsy road bike crashing down mountainsides in wind and rain at thirty miles an hour.  Even the uphill drags did not hurt my foot.

But I still miss golf and tomorrow, in an effort to rescue this lefty of mine, I have a date with that back-to-front gown, beloved of the NHS, and designed to test your inner Harry Houdini.  That hospital gown has been designed to house the Pentagon at the front but with such an insufficiency of material at the back that even a hamster’s backside would be utterly exposed.  There is no hope for an adult human in these gowns and, again, the good old NHS has produced the answer in the shape of a one-size-fits-all pair of paper knickers.  One size does fit all because the measurements were taken from a sumo wrestler and their generous proportions would cover a size six from chin to ankles.  Now there’s a set of garments that should be taken out to the third fairway at Waldringfield and I would be up for that sort of modelling job but not tomorrow.  

Tomorrow, I am heading for a bunionectomy and realignment of my hallux.  In layman’s terms, that’s my big toe that’s in the firing line for a paring down of the bony lump and straightening of the bone.  The protracted recuperation time will help heal the microfractures. 

Mr Orthopaedic Surgeon has told me I will be running and golf fit by January (he hasn't seen my game) and he will lift the ban.  That is the plan and I am following it to a tee.  I will be so heady with delight by then that I may yet allow my zero-point-one percent to have its wicked way on the third.  But don’t mention it to my offspring…

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.