DISPLAYING the dim-witted decision-making you’d tend to get from a pheasant that opts to cross a busy A-road when all the evidence suggests it should just stay in the safety of the verges, your correspondent was coaxed into going for a bracing swim in Loch Long at the weekend.
Apparently, this cold-water dooking lark triggers the release of the feel-good chemical, dopamine, into the brain. The startled onlookers probably just thought a dope had been released into the wild as I lowered myself into the loch’s numbing embrace with about as much vigour as a coffin gently descending into a grave.
Once we got going, mind you, it was all very liberating. As that dopa-whatdoyoucallit coursed through my system – or at least trickled – I emerged from the invigorating plunge with the beguiling, head-turning poise of Ursula Andress stepping out of the surf in Dr No.
Well, that’s what I told myself. In reality, the harrowing vision shuffling out of the water led to one stunned bystander developing the kind of alarmed, horrified rictus of Chief Brody when he first caught a glimpse of the shark in Jaws.
I’m blaming this dive into the deep on the US Open. I needed something to refresh myself to combat the tiring, nocturnal activity that’s par for the course when there’s a major being held on America’s west coast.
For us lot on this side of the pond, gazing down the tee-times of Saturday’s third round, for instance, and discovering that the leading pair were not off until half 11 at night our time was about as uplifting as reading a court summons.
At least we weren’t the only ones grousing and groaning. The players themselves had good reason for a mump and a moan.
“It was a little ridiculous that we teed off that late,” said the eventual champion Wyndham Clark of Saturday’s starting times at Los Angeles Country Club which led to the final group just about finishing in the dark. “I would say right around hole 15 or 16 it started getting to where you couldn’t see that well. My putt on 17, I literally couldn’t see it, and we just played off of feel. It’s crazy to think that we’re doing that on the last two holes of a major when we could have teed off two hours earlier.”
Television, of course, rules the roost but, as Clark pointed out, the players at the sharp end being forced into a race against time makes something of a mockery of the idea of sporting integrity. In this game of extremely fine margins, the idea of the main movers and shakers in a major championship playing hit and hope in the fading light to keep the TV executives happy is a nonsense.
All credit to the bold Clark, though. Unless you’re an ardent follower of the PGA Tour, you possibly didn’t have much knowledge of the 29-year-old’s golfing pedigree. When you hear the name Wyndham Clark you almost say to yourself, “Did he not star alongside John Wayne and James Stewart in the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?”
The unheralded Clark certainly made a name for himself at the weekend, though, as he thwarted Rory McIlroy and won by a single shot. Clark’s major record prior to his breakthrough would hardly have prompted a stampede to the bookies – in six major appearances he had four missed cuts, a tie for 75th and a tie for 76th – but he displayed the control, composure and clinical instinct of a player used to major championship front-running, not being an also-ran. The underdog would become the top dog in this game of tremendous strength in depth. The praise and plaudits were thoroughly justified.
There will be many, of course, focusing on what McIlroy didn’t do as opposed to what Clark did do. Since the Northern Irishman landed his fourth major title back in 2014, during that barnstorming, three-year purple patch, he has won just about everything there is to win in golf apart from another of its grand slam titles. It’s a drought that should come with a warning from the Environment Agency.
Almost everyone and their auntie has said that it’s only a matter of time before the 34-year-old wins a major again. We all say that he’s too talented for it not to happen while declaring that if there is any sporting justice, he’ll brush the monkey off his back before too long. But we’ve been saying that for yonks. And it’s easier said than done.
Many of the game’s greatest players stopped winning majors in their 30s. Arnold Palmer was 34 when he landed his seventh and last. Tom Watson racked up eight by the age of 33 but never won again, although he came within a putt of knocking another Open off at 59
in that timeless Turnberry tilt of 2009. The swashbuckling Seve Ballesteros, meanwhile, was done and dusted on the major front by
31 with a haul of five.
Now, I’m not going to be so bold to say that McIlroy won’t add to his tally as he clambers up his 30s and rediscovers that major-winning habit of his free-flowing 20s. Predictions in golf, after all, tend to be a fool’s errand. But what if he doesn’t? Only time will tell. Roll on The Open…
