Martin Vousden on the dramas at Augusta

Thought for the Day:
Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and when he grows up, he’ll never be able to merge his car onto a motorway

G’Day Mate
There is nothing more pleasing in sport, or life, as a tale of redemption – the hero who trampolines back from desperate disappointment or failure to eventually triumph (you can add the phrase ‘against all odds’ if you wish because most newspapers and magazines probably will). And so, despite huge sympathy for Angel Cabrera, who epitomised how to lose with grace, let us roll out the bunting and raise a glass or three to Adam Scott. Ever since he emerged as a pro golfer there have been predictions of a glowing future, replete with major championships. The most notable of these came from his coach, Butch Harmon, who famously said that Adam’s basic swing fundamentals were better even than those of Tiger, and he was right. Scott has always had a classically orthodox swing of perfect tempo. And the predictions appeared prescient as the young Australian made good progress, with a steady, if not spectacular accumulation of titles – nine wins in America, eight in Europe – with the most notable of these being the Player’s Championship. But that was in 2004 and the huge hole in his CV was his comparatively dreadful form in the majors. For a full decade he simply disappeared when any of the (more…)

Martin Vousden with Augusta on the horizon.

Thought for the Day
Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened

Heading for Augusta
Hands up if you know what connects the following golfers: Russell Henley, Brian Gay, John Merrick, Michael Thompson, Scott Brown and Kevin Streelman. If you can identify them all as having won on the US PGA Tour so far this season, you’re a bit of an anorak. But then, it is that kind of season. They are joined as 2013 winners by Dustin Johnson, Tiger Woods (twice), Phil Mickelson, Brandt Snedeker and Matt Kuchar. More relevantly, all of them will be at the Masters in just under a month – with the exception of Scott Brown, who won the Puerto Rican Open, which doesn’t have a full-point allocation for the Tour Championship and therefore doesn’t meet Augusta’s invitation policy. Hard luck Scott.

All of which is designed to let me off the hook by demonstrating how hard it is to predict the winner of any major, especially the season’s first, when there is comparatively little form with which to measure the runners and riders. In the last 10 years, for example, how many punters put their money on Bubba Watson, Charl Schwartzel, Angel Cabrera, Trevor Immelman, Zach Johnson or Mike Weir to have a green jacket draped around their shoulders? However, if we ignore those surprise winners and (more…)

Martin Vousden warming up for the 2013 season

Thought for the Day:
Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film

Almost there
With the greatest respect to all those involved in the Africa and Northern Trust Opens, which have just concluded on the European and US Tours respectively, the phoney war has ended and the real business is about to start. This week sees the first significant event of the year, the WGC-Accenture Matchplay Championship in Arizona. Its importance can be easily determined by the quality of the field it attracts, and for the first time in several months we have the world numbers one and two, Rory and Tiger, teeing up at the same venue. They are, of course, at the start of the early-season schedule that they hope will get their games in tune for the Masters, which is only eight weeks away. It strikes me as odd, though, that they choose to come out of hibernation for a matchplay event. These are so unpredictable and, in many ways, more difficult to win. Play your best golf and shoot a scorching 64, but meet an opponent who is one stroke better and you’re on the plane to the next venue.
Oh well, ours not to reason why.

Oh Dear
A friend assures me this is absolutely true. A pal of his is a keen golfer but not, how shall I put this, the most literate man in the world. Nevertheless he was delighted when his wife (more…)

Captain Watson, and a slow play rant from Martin Vousden

Thought for the Day:
War doesn’t determine who’s right but who’s left

Desperate times require desperate measures
There has been a lot of comment about the PGA of America’s decision to name Tom Watson as captain of the US Ryder Cup team for the contest at Gleneagles next year, and most of it has been positive. I suspect though, that this largely affirmative response is simply a reflection of the admiration and affection in which Tom is almost universally held, rather than a cool analysis of the decision per se. So let us try to be at least a little objective. By the time the competition comes around, if Tom were a UK citizen he would, at the age of 65, be an old age pensioner. Advanced age is not, of itself, a bar to such a job but what it means is that Tom will have not played on the US PGA Tour, from which his team will be selected, for a decade-and-a-half. Currently the US captain has four wild card picks, a third of the team, but Watson will not be teeing it up with the likely contenders for those picks week in and week out and therefore able to assess their abilities at first hand. Another worry is that, almost immediately after his appointment, Tom was asked his opinion of Tiger Woods, having been scathing in his criticism in the wake of Tiger’s marital problems. Both men say there will be no problem and Watson went on to say that Tiger will be in his team. To make such a call almost two years in advance, especially considering Woods’ pretty shabby record in the (more…)

A golfing roundup of 2012, with Martin Vousden

Thought for the Day:
The hardness of the butter is inversely proportional to the softness of the bread

That Was The Year That Was
It has been a great year for sport but a mixed one for golf. Here are my awards for the 2012 golf season

Bulging-eyed Raving Lunatic of the Year
The Ryder Cup was won by the Americans in less than two days. Until that final Saturday fourball when Ian Poulter launched his own one-man crusade, birdied the last five holes and gave his team-mates the sliver of self-belief they needed to romp through the singles and snatch the unlikeliest of victories.

Depressing Read of the Year
Hank Haney’s book The Big Miss revealed Tiger to be, at times, spiteful, aloof and mean-spirited. We may have suspected as much but did we really need to have it confirmed?

Event of the Year
The Ryder Cup – it’s the only contender.

Worst Shot of the (more…)

Who’s this bloke Jim Innes then? Martin Vousden’s view of the week.

Thought for the Day:
Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled

In Memoriam
So Farewell then, 2012 golf season
No-one will win the money list
On both sides of the Atlantic
In the Same Year
Ever Again
That was your catchphrase
(with apologies to Private Eye’s E. J. Thribb, aged 17½)

Tomorrow, the world
Shortly after that astonishing period between 1976 and 1980 when he won five consecutive Wimbledon singles titles, Björn Borg was asked how he always managed to win, no matter the opponent or circumstances. He replied, in that almost monosyllabic, unemotional drawl he perfected: ‘I play the big points better.’ In golf we have our own Ice Man, named Rory McIlroy, who also plays the big points better. By birdieing the last five holes of the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai to win by two, he rounded off the European Tour season with the kind of flourish that only the best achieve. No, strike that. His six-under par round of 66, and 72-hole aggregate of 23-under par was so much more than a flourish, it was a statement of genius – not unlike Kevin Pietersen’s 186 in the second Test in Mumbai. The difference being that Rory did not come spectacularly good for one round in one event, he just carried on doing what he has been doing all year – beating the very best without needing his very best game.

In Dubai he was reportedly suffering from the effects of a virus and, despite his girlfriend administering regular doses of (more…)

And what colour tee did you use Martin?

Thought for the Day:
Don’t judge people by their relatives

Crowing like a cockerel
I played golf yesterday and shot 79, and if I hadn’t messed up the last hole with a triple bogey, I would have played the back nine in one-over par. You are not remotely interested. I know this and yet I can’t stop myself from mentioning it. It’s a phenomenon I have noticed in golfers down the years – that when we do well on the course (by our own standards), we want to shout it from the rooftops, or at least send a global email to all our golfing pals. I don’t believe I am a naturally bombastic or boastful person and, if anything, lean towards those classic British traits of unassuming (if false) modesty, probably because, as those same golfing pals would quickly point out, I have a lot to be modest about. And yet my sainted and suffering wife has learned that whenever I return from a round, she must ask, despite her absolute indifference to the answer, how I got on. She has to do this because of the three times a year when I surpass my expectations, beat my handicap of 12 and can regale her with a blow-by-blow account of every arrow-straight drive, laser-like approach and holed putt. The fact that she continues to ask is only one of the reasons why I love her more than my 7-iron.

But it’s not just me. Sit in any clubhouse and listen to the conversation of a fourball that has just finished and one of them will be describing his fabulous shot/wretched bad luck at the 13th. His (or her) companions will be sitting in apparently rapt concentration, hanging on every word. But look a little closer and you will realise that they are not listening at all, they’re just waiting for the speaker to (more…)

Not a twitter fan, eh Martin?

Thought for the Day:
Drive too fast to worry about cholesterol

Dumb and dumber
It is almost certainly an age thing – as the years pass I become more and more Luddite and look at technological developments with an increasingly jaundiced eye. Or rather, I look at the way in which these ‘advances’ are used, and the ones that cause me to scratch my head most frequently are those involving social media such as Facebook, Twitter et al. Because of my job writing about golf I felt the need to try and maintain an interest in these events, and for a while I followed a few pro golfers who Tweet – people like Ian Poulter, Justin Rose, Lee Westwood and the like – but I had to give up, for a number of reasons. First, and most obviously foremost, life’s too short. There are far more interesting things to do than discover that Ian Poulter is watching an Arsenal match on television (such as, for example, watching an Arsenal match on television), or that Luke Donald has just dropped his bags off at the hotel before joining him. Second, I did not once, in several weeks of following these guys, learn one thing of value, of interest or even of mild diversion. Even if you’re one of the best golfers in the world, your thoughts on the minutia of your daily existence are of no interest. Third, and this genuinely puzzles me, how egotistical, how wrapped up in your own distorted view of the world or, to put it more crudely, how far do you need to be up your own backside to assume that other people are as interested in you, as you clearly are in yourself? Fourth, nobody who uses Twitter, it seems, has the faintest idea how to cogently express a thought.

These reactionary, and no doubt very unfashionable thoughts have been prompted by a Twittersphere spat between two of the women on the LPGA Tour. Two weeks ago Brittany Lincicome was playing in the Sime Darby LPGA in Malaysia and not having a good time. She tweeted: ‘Golf is SOOO dang frustrating Can’t wait for the year to be over!!!!!!!!!!!’ She later added: ‘Rain rain go away. Actually if it stays around I won’t have to play anymore!!!!!! ’

I object to this message not for its content (which is typically trite) but for the juvenile (more…)

Martin Vousden on Life after the Ryder Cup. And resurrections.

Thought for the Day:
Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?

A (Scottish) Sense of Perspective
During the early part of last week at the Dunhill Links Championship it was noticeable that everyone, it seemed, was still on a high from the Ryder Cup, with one notable exception. I spoke with, among others, Peter Hanson and Thomas Bjorn – who had been at Medinah as player and vice-captain respectively – Thomas Levet, Bob Torrance, Chubby Chandler and, to get an American perspective, Huey Lewis (sans The News). Every one of them was more than happy to chat, indefinitely it appeared, about the astonishing events of the previous Sunday.

The one exception was Paul Lawrie. He was polite, as he always is, but refused to be swept along in the euphoria. He acknowledged that it was a great win but then added: ‘But that’s done and I’m here now to prepare for this week’s tournament. Life goes on.’

He was ever the same, which is one of the reasons I like him so much. He is the absolute antithesis of the strutting star who complains if the courtesy car is 10 minutes late, or who refuses to acknowledge fans who want an autograph or picture or just to say: ‘Well done’. It makes interviewing him a bit of a nightmare, though, because he has never really enjoyed talking about himself or his feelings. Ask him for a hole-by-hole guide to the Old Course at St Andrews – which I had to do for an American magazine a few years back – and he is thoughtful, articulate and considered in his replies, which he gives at length. But ask him what he feels when he’s playing there and you get almost nothing. He will chat happily about the game, courses, tournaments and even other players but try to get an insight into his emotions and you’re quickly heading into a conversational cul-de-sac.

I don’t know if it’s a Scottish thing because I found Catriona Matthew to be exactly the same. Both appear to be slightly puzzled as to why anyone would (more…)

Martin Vousden on the Miracle at Medinah

Thought for the Day:
Miracles happen when you least expect them

Lazarus, eat your heart out
It may be several days, or perhaps weeks, before we can stop pinching ourselves and asking the question: ‘Did that final day of the Ryder Cup really happen?’ Even at several hours distance, the image of a scoreboard slowly being filled with the colour blue has an air of other-worldly fantasy, a sense that, much as we might like to dream of such things, they do not happen. And in 85 years of competition, they don’t. Yes, at Brookline in 1999 the Americans reversed a similar scoreline, but they were on home soil and had a raucous, deafening crowd roaring them on. Such a turnaround has never been achieved by an away team. And the 1999 Americans were also helped by Europe’s captain Mark James, who took the unusual decision of putting three rookies, (Jean Van de Velde, Jarmo Sandelin and Andrew Coltart), none of whom had played on the previous two days, in the top half of the draw. They were all heavily beaten and Team USA got the fast start it needed.

This time around Europe was offered no such help and Davis Love top-loaded his running order with in-form stars who had looked invincible – the first five places were taken by (more…)