Enjoy golf from a safe distance - on the Cote d'Azur
Women in the headlines again
Only a prior commitment in the south of France dragged me away from the R&A Autumn Meeting last week. The Cote d’Azur, redolent of Scott Fitzgerald and pink champagne, of happy holidays catering for every age group and with better weather even than Fife, beckoned. So, I went running to Cap d’Antibes, where leisurely al fresco lunches go on as long as those in the middle of a 36 hole alternate shot foursomes match.
Temporary immersion in this sybaritic paradise resulted in a suspension of reality comparable only to staying at Pine Valley for more than four consecutive nights. It meant that my golf experience in the last seven days was vicarious. At least, though, it met the acid test for watching golf on tv which, as regular readers know, is have you played the course you’re looking at? Only if the answer’s yes will you understand the challenges the players are facing. Luckily both the Irish Open and the Solheim Cup were played on courses that were familiar to me.
At lovely Royal County Down, Rory McIlroy again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the closing four holes of an event where a win would surely have meant more to him than any other apart from the Masters itself. It takes nothing away from Rasmus Hojgaard’s brilliance last Sunday with a final round of 65, in which he waited five holes for his first birdie before finishing with three on the trot, to point out that the talented young Dane had more than one big slice of luck.
Normally when a front runner is overtaken by an exceptional round by the eventual winner all the loser can say is well done and Rory was very gracious in the way he handled another disappointment. Nevertheless for much of last weekend the feeling was that the Amgen Irish Open was his to lose and it was his bogey at fifteen and three putts on seventeen which really opened the door.
Each time a cherished prize slips through his grasp the pressure on him when he’s in contention over the closing stretch of a key competition will get more intense. Can it be that his burgeoning business interests are starting to distract his attention from his game? And would it really matter if they are? After all Arnold Palmer was only 34 when won his last major, younger than Rory is now and that didn’t prevent Arnie from being golf’s best loved former champion for decades.
An interesting, though rarely asked, question is which is the best course that’s never hosted the Open. It can also be asked about the US, where others are better qualified than me to answer it and suggestions are welcome. On this side of the pond County Down has to be a very strong contender for this accolade. At the very least it should now join Portmarnock in the frame for consideration as a potential future Open venue.
It’s easier to see which previous Open host courses merit a return to the rota. Top of this list is definitely Muirfield, about which an announcement will hopefully be made very soon. What better message could incoming R&A CEO Mark Darbon start with than unequivocally making clear that the Honourable Company has done more than enough to meet any reasonable criteria for staging the oldest major of all?
Next in line would normally be Turnberry, but as we all know the obstacle there is not the suitability of the course but the name of its owner. So let’s take a drive three hours down the coast into England to Royal Lytham & St Anne’s where Bob Jones won his first Open in 1927. Drab though its surroundings are, it remains a stern and worthy test of golf and also has a simple but delightful dormy, of which more in a future post.
It’s said that Lytham’s fallen out of favour because it can’t cope with the numbers now expected at an Open. In this context the R&A Business Meeting was told this week about the record-breaking number of spectators at Royal Troon in July. Access for those who chose to travel to Troon by train this year was certainly very easy. But do bigger galleries automatically mean it’s more fun? And should they lead to some otherwise worthy venues being ruled out?
Since 1981 fourteen Opens have been played at two clubs where I’m a member and I’ve also attended Opens at six other venues. In fact totting up the days I’ve slipped away from my day job for this purpose I’ve spent two months of my life at Opens. It’s time very well spent because watching golf offers more opportunity for civilised conversation and nurturing friendship than any other game.
By far the most enjoyable of all these was 2021 when Covid restrictions limited the daily attendance to 32,000. This resulted in easier and faster circulation around the course, no irritating galleries twenty deep forcing almost everyone to crane their necks for a glimpse of the players, and shorter queues to enter the stands and obtain refreshments.
On 12 July I highlighted Joe Pompliano’s fascinating analysis of the differences between watching tennis at Flushing Meadow in New York and Wimbledon in London. In summary, everything at the former is bigger, richer, grander and more in your face, than the latter (non-subscribers can still access my comments free of charge at substack.com/@timyeogolf).
His conclusion was that sacrificing income by limiting spectator numbers and not chasing every last dollar of sponsorship income enables the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club to create an iconic and world famous event. Is this something the new team leading the R&A should pause and reflect on as they plan future Opens?
An obvious difference between the US and the British Isles is the much larger number of courses where the US Open can be held. The USGA also announce the venues for future Opens much longer in advance than the R&A. Personally I see some benefits from knowing a bit more ahead of time where Opens are going to be held, not least for the members of the host club whose enjoyment of their own course is disrupted for many months and who may wish to adjust their travel plans accordingly.
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The well merited US triumph in last week’s Solheim Cup reflected the superiority of their team and was widely expected. Nevertheless the very gutsy European fightback in the singles gave US captain Stacy Lewis some anxious moments on Sunday afternoon. If it had not been for the bizarre omission of Leona Maguire from all but one of the matches on the first two days, the result might have been even closer. Leona’s tweet “Form is temporary. Class is permanent.” looked apt to me.
The home team dominated the par fives which were said to be reachable in two shots by all of them. This admirable achievement nevertheless also contains a warning. The 14th hole on the RTJ course measures 615 yards. Last Sunday both Rose Zhang and her opponent Carlota Ciganda reached the green with their second shots.
A big chunk of the golf world is finally waking up to the fact that kit which enables today’s super fit players to hit the ball longer and longer distances does not benefit the game. It makes courses more expensive and less sustainable to maintain and slower to play. It also renders many historic and beautiful courses unsuitable for professional competitions.
All this has been obvious for decades. I first wrote about it in the Financial Times twenty years ago. We are regularly assured that progress is being made in the USGA/R&A discussions to address the problem, though agreement on concrete measures to solve it is apparently still a couple years away. I wish for the good of golf itself they could find a way of speeding this up.
To end on a positive note the Solheim Cup was also a reminder that watching match play, and especially international team match play, is a very enjoyable and often more absorbing alternative to the endless sequence of four round medal tournaments which dominate the professional scene. Even the players enthused about it. Nelly Korda told the post-tournament press conference “it was probably the most fun I’ve had on a golf course ever”.
Amen to that, especially as an integral component of it, like its amateur and male equivalents the Curtis, Walker and Ryder Cups, is a series of alternate shot foursomes matches.
ENDS