golfweloveit

Cheyenne Woods is competing this week in the Hero Indian Open. She says “It’s pretty normal for me to have the attention. It’s a perk. Since I was 5, I have been inspired by Tiger Woods. He is the only person in my family who plays golf. He is so successful and I used to watch him on TV, so to have that inspiration is really special. With respect to the pressure and the media attention, once I am at the golf course, I just focus on what I can control, which is the shot ahead of me. At the end of the day, I have to just go out there and play golf. When I am on the course, it’s just me and my caddie and my effort to play the game well. But yes, having the option of asking him about things here and there about the game has been quite helpful for me. I talk to him every few months and get to see him maybe once a year as we’re both extremely busy so it’s great to learn from him”.

From one Surrey club in trauma to one whose traumas are nearly over. Last week Mole Valley District Council Planning Committee approved a final revision of plans for Cherkley Court.

The owners of the 375 acre green belt site near Leatherhead which houses the former stately home of press baron Lord Beaverbrook have undergone lengthy court battles. After public opposition backed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England which led to construction being stopped in 2013, last year these reached the Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court which finally gave them the go ahead to develop the site.

The 18 hole golf course is designed by Tom Watson. The house has been converted into a luxury hotel and spa. Planning permission was granted on the basis that there would be 200 new jobs created for local people and the grounds would remain open for the public to visit. The latest October meeting showed that developers Longshot had spoken with prospective members who will use the golf course and they had chosen to change focus to make the club more efficient and family orientated. The course, which is built on chalk, will have the advantage of draining easily making it open all the time for winter golf.

We live in interesting times. The new Chinese-Thai owners of Wentworth Club announced at the Annual Meeting on Tuesday a restructuring of fees which sent shockwaves through its 3,000 members. When a golf story appears on the BBC News it usually means there’s trouble at mill.

Reignwood Group are asking for a six figure membership fee from April 2017. So in addition to the annual fee, which doubles from £8,000 to £16,000 there is also a one off debenture fee of £100,000 to be paid with new joiners – by invitation only – having to pay £125,000. This will make Wentworth Club the most expensive golf club in the UK. At present the joining fee is £15,000.

This kind of membership structuring is almost unheard of in Europe though it has been tried in exclusive clubs in the United States. The bold move is an apparent step to forge a stronger relationship between the club and the residents living on the Wentworth Estate. Also to rebrand the club as an family oriented country club. Investment in upgrading the three championship courses had to be found and it has been asked of the club members themselves.

Only two members spoke directly to the press. Broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson who said it angered him that such an iconic club could be treated in such a way, and James Wyatt who said these actions amounted to a cull of the membership. Mr Wyatt said he thought it was a way for the owners to reduce the membership from 3,000 to 800 exclusive people.

“They are looking for a certain type of person, wealthy people… it is a way of making the club private. Some corporate days are already not being allowed to go ahead any more. They dont want outsiders coming in and they dont want non members using the facilities”.

New Chief Executive Stephen Gibson talked about the need to upgrade facilities with a major renovation of the West Course supported by the European Tour. There was a vision that the club should be based around families with membership passed on through generations. So this would this would make it a golfing equivalent of the Hurlingham Club in London.

This is all sad for the majority of the existing Wentworth members who will not or cannot continue their membership in 18 months time. Wentworth does have a special place in the hearts of many British golfers for its long association with the World Matchplay Championship and the PGA Championship. I wonder how long it will be before the PGA European Tour Headquarters remain there if the club is to acquire the exclusivity of Queenwood just down the road. It would send out the wrong message to be associated geographically with elitism.

However, at the end of the day this is a private matter for the owners. It is their club and their property to do with as they wish. I have been reading this book, The Forbidden Game, Golf and the Chinese Dream by Dan Washburn about golf in China. It comes as no real surprise that the week that the Chinese premier visits the UK and the month that golf was officially banned by the Communist Party in China, this has happened at Wentworth.

I would imagine that Wentworth will become a tourist destination for hundreds of wealthy Chinese visitors who want to enjoy their golf, without offending the party. So the change of focus. They will want the club to be upgraded to give these visitors a special experience, so the current corporate business will change. It will be a transformation of culture.

We have been here before in British golf during the 1980s and 1990s when Japanese investors had a yen for our golf and began investing in properties such as Old Thorns, London Club and what is now the Trump Turnberry. That era passed with the fall in their economy and Japanese golf is now in a completely different place. Once the most golf mad nation on earth, participation in the sport has dropped 40% and abandoned golf courses there are now being used to house solar panels as a source of renewable energy.

Which makes me wonder if this too will pass.

This week Golf Punk, “the magazine for the rest of us” as they call it, hired new golfer Denise Van Outen to be a video blog reporter. The first one saw her whizzing around Kingswood in a buggy driven by boyfriend Eddie not saying anything profound, hitting an odd shot, observing the customised bling on her golf shoes and making a saucy comment to the boyfriend at the end. Golf Punk have put DVO in their Swinging Sirens section alongside decorative golfing females not wearing all that much. My only reaction to this was to wonder how they can physically hit a golf ball in skyscraper heels. It’s physically impossible. I tried it once and it didn’t happen. Then my bunions began to bark and I longed to put my feet in the sand as she has done here.

I’ve come to accept that it is all about the cheesecake picture sometimes and really, so what? If it cheers some poor male golfers up, makes them less hostile to women on the course, makes her money and keeps her name in the media then go ahead. Because actually DVO is a breath of fresh air and may well be exactly what we need to make golf more appealing and shed its unsexy image. She talks about golf in a relatable way.

“If someone had said to me 10 years ago I’d take up golf I would have laughed” she said “but now I just love everything about the game. I’ve found when I’m on the course I dont think of anything else, I just concentrate on the game. We have a lot of laughs and golf is quite rock and roll. It’s sexy and full of innuendo, so that’s right up my street. You’ll find old clubbers aren’t in the night clubs, we’re all out here on the golf course. Golf brings out the devil in me, it’s really good fun”.

This is all priceless. Good work Golf Punk in bringing DVO to the fore.

Good work by Bernie Macguire on golfbytourmiss who brought the story of an interview with Alvaro Quieros which had to be pulled by Sky Sports. While Andy Sullivan was on his way to a dominant wire to wire victory on the Oceanico Course in Vilamora, it was the Spanish player who was bringing the drama to the week.

On the 12 th tee of the second round Quieros called for Chief Referee Andy McFee to attend because his own attempts to encourage playing partner Gary Stal to play quicker had been met by silence. By this time Quieros was very agitated and Thomas Bjorn, Chairman of the Players Committee who was playing in the group behind stepped in. Stal, who won the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship earlier this year, apparently started to play quicker when the referee was called. Quieros called the pace of play appalling. In the interview with Sky Sports which was not screened he called Stal “a cheater” and in colourful language expressed his discontent with the whole issue of slow play.

Andy McFee has said that this is an issue which he had been trying to work out a plan to resolve for the past thirty years.

Well if the Tour officials cannot work out what to do then erruptions of this kind by frustrated players are the inevitable consequence. The word “cheater”, while controversial, does draw attention to the grey, psychological area of whether slow play is gamesmanship. On a professional level while it is bad for the tour for individual players to have slow play vendettas going on, perhaps naming and shaming individual players is the only way to go. European Ryder Cup Captain Darren Clarke has spoken in favour of Quieros’ actions saying “slow play is something we need to work really hard to stamp out and the sooner we get on top of it the better. One slow chap can make a big difference to everyone else’s score”. That said, what is the solution. It’s such a tricky area because if a slow player is penalised too harshly by the tour then the tour are putting a restraint of trade on the player.

It’s comes down to the roots of golf. Integrity, fairness and respect for opponents. Tour tortoises should be put on the spot by the tour. Andy McFee promised to “have a word”.

It was the paella which did it, rather than the paso doble. The VT before their performance of Kirsty and Brendan cooking the Spanish dish in the kitchen drew gasps from the British public which turned into posts on the twittersphere. “I’ve never done this before” said Kirsty, even though she must have tried the dish as she was married in Spain and her family have a home there. “Ainsley Harriott might have something to say about this”. Even if he didn’t the great British public did. “Carrots in the Paella??” they cried. Finally it was women who were talking about Kirsty on social media rather than men making men comments. So some of the core voters were concentrating on her cooking rather than her dancing and not voting for her.

A floor length frumpy dress and an odd hairstyle showed the wardrobe and make up departments were still not helping Kirsty to shine. But she tackled the paso doble with attack and finesse and her dramatic face which shows every emotion fitted the mood of the dance well. But, apart from a sympathetic Darcey Bussell who said she should be proud, something she says to different competitors each week, the judges disagreed. Len brought up the paella again. He said the dance was like the dish, “tasty in parts but with a few funny bits floating on the top”. Craig fell short of calling it a di-saaaster, but said she had as much shape as a broomstick. She’ll be alright for Halloween night then.

The scores came in 4,6,6,5 total 21, two points lower than last week. Kirsty pulled one of her faces.

And so the following night she was in the dance off. She braced herself to go, saying nice things about Brendan, and prepared to watch the incredibly popular Daniel O’Donnell dance to Come Fly With Me again. But this was a judges vote rather than the public. Kirsty drew herself up and performed something way beyond what we have seen from her before. It was accurate, flowing and fighty. And she took the judges with her. All respect, she survived. It was a Beautiful Day after all.

I admire the excellent Golfshake.com which continues to grow and expand. This week there was an article about freelance golf writer John Huggan by Kieran Clark. He sent some clear and profound messages about the current state of the sport. My comments are in brackets and italics.

Read the full article:

http://www.golfshake.com/news/view/9220/In_conversation_with_John_Huggan.html

Some strong thoughts about the way that equipment is making the game one dimensional, not interesting to watch and the governing bodies are doing nothing to redress the situation. The skill and shotmaking which we grew up watching has been gradually taken out of the game. The distance the ball travels needs to be redressed. (This is at the very heart of what is wrong with the game today. I have heard that the new Chief Executive of the Royal and Ancient has admitted that golf is dying. Well, what is being done to save its life? Diagnosis is one thing, radical life saving treatment is another).

He says that many top players would like to play in Europe but the prize money on the PGA Tour is much bigger. If purses were to get within 10% of American prize money they would then come. He calls for a world tour outside of the United States which would fill in weak spots, for example in February when the tour would go to Australia and New Zealand. (In an ideal world, but it would take the elevation of events outside the United States into World Golf Championship or even major championship status with prize money of that level to attract the American players to travel outside of their tour more than once a year. This is why there needs to be much more dialogue and more generosity from the PGA Tour, which is unlikely to happen because they want to protect their domestic brand).

The contraction of print media is damaging the game.There are only three dedicated golf correspondents at UK newspapers (James Corrigan, Telegraph, Derek Lawrensen, Mail and Doug Proctor, Sunday Post in Scotland). Media Centres can have a depressing eerieness with the sparcely populated media which is becoming increasingly common. Without dedicated writers to observe faults, make arguments, the game is losing its critical voices. Many writers have disappeared completely. The coverage will be limited to PGATour.com a promotional extension of the PGA Tour. There needs to be hard, critical comment. (Indeed. But until the sport is overhauled and the “terrible image that non-golfers have of it” as he says makes way for a better public perception then the voices will be kept within a community of those who love golf and not reaching out and allowing new people to join us. Trade newspapers are preaching to the converted. There needs to be a huge outreach to the public to draw more new people in before the print media will find space. Editors with limited resources are sending out a clear message against what they percieve as an elitist and non inclusive sport. It is that which needs changing and the coverage will follow).

There is something wrong with empty courses.

(Yesterday afternoon, a weekday, on a sunny, relatively warm day, I was at a club where the course was empty apart from one junior practicing with his mother watching him. Apart from that it was completely empty. There is something wrong with this to see a course almost completely empty for great swathes of time).

And, Mr Huggan Kirsty Watched on twitter. He said that she should have been stopped from trotting out onto the 18th green at Woburn to commentate on the British Masters prizegiving in high heeled shoes. Her dad should have a word.

(High heeled shoes on the green? Kirsty plays golf in them, see picture above. Quite a feat).

Fifty seven thousand people attended the British Masters at Woburn last week, which returned to the tour calendar after an absence of seven years. A worthy British winner in 21 year old Matt Fitzpatrick who lead from start to finish wrapped up the event in style. There seems to be nothing but praise coming from all quarters. The professionals felt that it was good to have another tournament on mainland Britain, it was uplifting for some of them to play at home. The host club provided a magnificent course in immaculate condition and Sky Sports presented the event in an immaginative and patron friendly way. Ian Poulter, this year’s host said that “British golf has been away for too long”. Let’s hope that this event stays firmly put on the schedule. Masterclasses at the close of play by top professionals provided  an interest for spectators and the spectator village was beautifully branded and presented. Full marks too to Sky for transmitting the tournament on their non-premium channel Sky One. The only thing I would change about something pulled off so magnificently would be the date. Previously the British Masters was played in the Spring when the purple azaleas and rhodedendrons made the course look even more attractive to TV audiences and the conditions were easier. Next year the British Masters will be played at The Grove in Hertfordshire which is glorious in the spring. In an ideal world it might be better to play it towards the end of May in the slot occupied by the BMW PGA and move the flagship tournament towards the end of the season in October. Wentworth attracted huge crowds to the World Matchplay in the Autumn, to me it would make more sense. Otherwise, what a start for the rejuvanated tournament. A triumph all round.

So for the ninth time in eleven outings the President’s Cup has been won by the American team. But that statistic belies that something special happened at the Jack Nicklaus Club in Incheon, South Korea. It must have been compelling to watch the final day live. It was golf at its very best – the 15.5 – 14.5 result that could so easily have been a tied match 15-15 but for Anriban Lahiri’s missed 4 foot putt on the 18th green following Chris Kirk’s unlikely holing of a 15 foot putt.

It was an extraordinary thing to see American players actually shaking with the intensity of the situation. J B Holmes playing Hideki Matsuyama had a pitch into the 18th green which he gripped and ungripped the club his hands were visibly trembling. A slow player at the best of times Holmes seemed unerved by the closeness of the competition. Perhaps with the Ryder Cup scenario in the back of his mind, Americans usually win the President’s Cup, how could they have put themselves into being threatened by the Internationals?

With a sigh of relief US Captain’s son Bill Haas managed to get Sun Moon Bae to concede the final hole and the match was won by the narrowest of margins. International Captain Nick Price alluded to the Ryder Cup: “I think it was 1983 when Europe lost by a point, Seve [Ballesteros] was in the locker room, and all the European players were down in the dumps and they were very depressed that they had lost,” Price said. “He looked at them all and said, ‘No, no, don’t be depressed. This is like a victory for us. We only need one more point.’” He said we (Internationals) are at that point now.

Well, its taken them a long time to get there. In 1983 the close Ryder Cup match at Palm Beach Gardens came in only the third match of a united European team. It’s now eleven matches in and the Internationals are still massive underdogs.  Presidents Cup matches were set up originally with 34 matches to Ryder Cup’s 28, far too much.

It’s been cynically called an event mired in an identity crisis not helped by a lack of interest in the event by both teams. Nick Price has said how difficult it has been to get the team to bond with them speaking six languages from seven different countries under a manufactured flag and no Tour Commissioner of their own. But Adam Scott said that this year there was much more investment from the Internationals. Branden Grace was a star performer. On the American side Mickelson played a particularly good singles against Charl Swartzel and grabbed the headlines for himself, yet again, by a ditzy rules infraction, dissing the opponents, ordering weird selfies and generally being the gung ho talisman inviting the US players to rub his rotund belly for luck. All elevating the event into the realms of bizarre entertainment rather than yet another sluggish golf team event.

Mickelson looks to be eyeing his future role in team golf competitons with relish. Of course he is looking to captain future sides in both this and the Ryder Cup. But what sort of captain he will make… There was a photograph of him with George W Bush taken last week that showed a little glint in his eye. It’s just my intution but it’s the first word of this Cup that I suspect he’s really interested in. What a politician he will make. It’s going to be so entertaining!

This week Luke Donald and Graeme McDowell sent a “go on” message to Kirsty from the competitors at Woburn supported from similar words of encouragement from Jamie Redknapp, Phil Tuffnell and Shane Warne who were in the Pro-Am. Such messages of support did seem to buoy Kirsty’s confidence, which she needed to have when it was revealed she would be dancing as a dog.

As noted previously BBC wardrobe are not playing the tabloids game who trailed Kirsty’s casting on Strictly as her wanting to “flash the flesh” and “sex up the show”. Going out at 6.15 on a Saturday with a family audience who watch the show, it seems the producers think this hasn’t hit the right tone and their wardrobe department seem to have a brief. In the opening scene she had a hankerchief across half of her face. And then coming down the stairs she had a her feathery tail across her face again. What was going on, had she broken out in hives?

Once revealed the dog costume was an beige opaque bodystocking with a mass of brown feathers. The costume is worth noting because it played its part in the dance. On twitter one wag likened her outfit to the car in Dumb and Dumber.

The make up department had painted on a very smiley dog face. The American Smooth went smoothly and there seemed to be a significant rise and fall, all was going well until the feathery tail got caught up in Brendan’s costume. “Wardrobe malfunction” pleaded Kirsty to the judges as soon as she had finished the dance.

“A great improvement on last week ” pronounced Darcey Bussell. Len Goodman spoke to Brendan rather than to her. “You kept her on a tight leash, well done Brendan”. Bruno talked of more flow and grace being needed. Craig didn’t mince his words. “There were balance issues and the arms were devoid of all emotion and feeling”. Ouch.

Despite the painted on smiley dog’s face Kirsty was clearly hurt by this. It seemed as though the judges were talking about her rather than to her. Brendan Cole talked about the cute dance being for his small daughter Aurelia to enjoy. The scores came in 5,6,6,6. An upward movement of three points from two weeks of 20 marks.

When the results from the public came in Kirsty and Brendan were again one of the last to be told they had gone through. When Kirsty sat with Claudia all the other competitors were interviewed about how relieved they were, except her.

The hype around Kirsty needs to be quiet and let her get on with this demanding task. Let her dancing do the talking please publicists.