What started as an entertainment match between Tiger and Phil, and to be honest wasn’t very good golf, had its latest incarnation yesterday.
The Match version 4 was between Phil and Bryson who were partnered by two NFL Quarterbacks, Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buchaneers and Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers.
The venue was a star attraction, the sublimely visual Moonlight Basin Resort at Big Sky Montana. Charity was the big winner with several million meals donated to Feeding America and funds to My Brothers Keeper charity. President Obama appeared on the telecast.
All square after the first nine, Rodgers putter got hot with birdies at 10, 11 and 12. Mickelson and Brady got one back at 15 but Rodgers sank the winning 10 foot birdie on 16 to win 3 and 2.
Quote of the march came from Rodgers “Bryson, he’s a maniac man. The things he thinks about and talks about, it’s a bit overwhelming at times”. Indeed.
I stayed up until 1am for Match 1 which took place over a Thanksgiving weekend, and what I saw was some trash talk and some mediocre golf. Match 2 at the Medalist featured Tiger and Peyton Manning. By Match 3 I’d given up as there was only one pro, Phil, and three celebrities Charles Barkley, Steph Curry and Peyton Manning. It’s an entertainment vehicle that’s all American and it doesn’t really travel, though it has to be admired for the fantastic fund raising it does. And outfit of the tournament goes to Tom Brady as Forrest Gump.
This month England Golf allow non members to obtain an official handicap. For £40 a year the official handicap allows access to the My England Golf app where players can post scores and track indexes. The subscription model follows the Open Play scheme running in Scotland where non members can obtain and maintain a handicap for £5.99 a month.
County and national competitions remain open to golf club members only. But at club level independent golfers can be integrated.
England Golf’s website has a new Hole In One club for recorded aces.
The R&A’s Rules of Golf app is also extremely useful to take with you on the course. Free to use in ios or android it has 10 essential rules videos 30 diagrams and 25 how to videos with special sections for juniors and golfers with disabilities.
The field for the 149th Open Championship gas now been finalised. Lucas Herbert, Rikard Karlberg and Johannes Veerman came through from the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open. Marcek Schneider won the Kaskada Golf Challenge on the Challenge Tour to secure his place.
At Final Qualifying Sam Forgan, Deven Lawson and Connor Wordsall came through at Princes, while Nicholas Poppleton, Louis De Jager and Daniel Croft were successful at West Lancs. At Hollinwell the top scorers were Richard Mansell, Jonathan Thomson and Daniel Hillier and St Annes Old Links saw Ben Hutchinson, Sam Bairstow and Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano qualify, congratulations to them all on securing their places to play at Royal St Georges next week.
From July 19 golfers in England will once again be able to remove flagstocks and rake bunkers. England golf has updated its ‘Play Safe, Stay Safe’ covid protocols to define what can be expected after the lifting of restrictions.
Its revised guidelines state “all golf course furniture may be returned for normal use, including the removal of flagsticks, standard hole cups, bunker rakes and ball-washers”.
However the guidelines recommended that clubs provide hand sanitiser stations on the course and around practice facilities to ensure that golfers can regularly clean their hands. Also that online booking for tee times and registration of players details continue.
Pro shops, with the wearing of masks at the discretion of the member or visitor, return to normal as do driving ranges and indoor areas such as simulators,.
Any alterations to the rules and handicapping provisions that enabled competitive golf to be played during the pandemic are also set to be removed.
As of July 19 there will be “no restrictions on the golf course with regards to course furniture, sharing equipment, touching golf balls or the size of groups, beyond those set by the club”. This is subject to the Government confirming on July 12th that all restrictions will be lifted.
At the time of writing, there is no change to the Covid-19 guidance for golfers in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
I was looking through social media to see what was happening in golf when I came across a post which said something like this:
“Having to listen to husband going on about his golf swing when all I want to do is slob out and watch Love Island”.
I thought this was funny and looking at this woman’s twitter account she was quite hilarious about other things so I decided to follow her because I had spotted that she was followed by one of my favourite actors, Adrian Lester, and although there wasn’t any clues as to who she was I ssupected that she must be a public figure, a professional comedian, because the wit was so sharp. I thought this would liven up my news feed.
She saw that golfweloveit had followed her and she took a screen shot of my account and wrote this:
“My husband has joined twitter and is catfishing me”.
Catfishing, as I learned from the sorry tale of Jane in Neighbours, who was conned out of her life savings, is when someone pretends to be someone else for an ulterior motive. So golfing husband was supposedly pretending to be me… Anyway, she had nearly 3,000 followers who all saw my blog and digital skills advertised for free, so thanks for that.
This however, happened just a day after someone thought it was a joke to contact me on messenger pretending to be Martin Kaymer. I soon pulled the plug on that.
It was a dramatic week in Detroit last week. First Bryson De Chambeau parted company with his long time caddie, which prompted Sam Harrop, reportedly ‘golf’s premier parodist’ to turn this into a song.
Then the Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama withdrew, having tested positive for Covid. When his playing partner in the first round, Rickie Fowler, was asked how he felt he said he was vaccinated, wasn’t worried but had a discussion with the press about the five pages of protocols sent by the R&A to players travelling to Royal St Georges to compete in The Open.
“We’re jumping through hurdles and dodging bullets and they’re bringing in 32,000 fans a day”.
He complained. But this will be just one week before all restrictions on sporting events are lifted in England, though I expect every one of the 32,000 – and especially me – will treasure every moment of being there.
Then two South Korean players Sung Jae Im and Si Woo Kim, both in the top 50 in the world, announced that they were dropping out of The Open to concentrate on their preparations for the Tokyo Olympics. The incentive for them winning and Olympic medal is strong as both are due for compulsory military conscription before the age of 28, a major career disruptor. Remember Sang Moon Bae, who had 20 months in the military between 2015 and 2017, and hasn’t recovered his form. Winning an Olympic medal would exempt them. Im, who is 26, has just this chance. Kim, who is 23, has another shot in 2024, but should this be their motivation for skipping a major? Their places in The Open have gone to Emilliano Grillo and Keegan Bradley.
But the biggest drama of the week. Leave it to Phil.
Every year, there is a pearl. We thought that him unexpectedly becoming golf’s oldest major champion at 50 would be enough attention for one year, without having to stir up some kind of controversy. But obviously not.
In Detroit he vowed never to return after a local newspaper ran a story about a court case when a bookie placed one or more very large bets for Mickelson, but was unable to pay the $500,000 he owed.
Mickelson got his lawyer to speak to ESPN saying that the newspaper shouldn’t have dredged up a case that was over 20 years old and the sole purpose of doing so was to embarass Phil.
He also took to twitter and carried on drawing attention to the story, which was published behind a pay wall.
Several media representatives present at the tournament thought that he wasn’t really justified in being upset, taking aim at the media, and threatening to boycot the tournament as payback, he is after all, a current major champion gracing this event for the first time.
Perhaps, as he often has done, he realised that he’d been, once again, silly, and unreasonable to keep poking at this, and the following day made a U turn, asking people to do random acts of kindness, then he would return.
Whether it was immature and a tad egotistical, seemingly pointing out the tournament were lucky to have him there, or not, what this was was yet another pearl of Phil. Every year, there’s something.
What is concerning is this. He said of his Twitter account, which until now has been mostly Phireside irony
“when stuff happened this week, it was nice to have a voice”.
Now that is a portent of things to come. When he inevitably becomes Ryder Cup Captain, we had better hold onto our hats for a huge twitterstorm, there will be something.
Spectator tickets for the 150th Open Championship at St Andrews next year will be sold through a ballot. Applications are open now until Monday 4 October, exckusively theough the free to join One Club at theopen.com.
Up to four tickets per day from Monday to Wednesday practice days and Thursday to Sunday championship days can be applied for. Tickets for adults for the championship days are £95, half price 16-24 year olds and under 16s accompanied by an adult go free.
The R&A are looking to allocate the tickets to every generation and also to fans from all over the world.
Unbelievably, hospitality packages for the 2023 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool are available for advance sale to members of the One Club now and will go on general sale later this month.
Well now that The Kardashians has been cancelled, what better way to fill up her spare time than to start playing golf. Kim Kardashian announced to her 216 million Instagram followers that mama Kardashian, Kris Jenner, had bought the entire family golf clubs for Easter. And to show willing Kim took hers to the nearest driving range.
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