As a columnist, it’s important to keep a sense of consistency in style and tone. As a reader, you’re probably completely scunnered by the consistency in the style and tone of this columnist.
If you’ve managed to stick with me all these years, in the same kind of way that a barnacle clings stubbornly to the rusting hull of a sunken ship, then you’ll know that I do like to garnish these haverings with the odd national observance.
Today, for instance, is National Napping Day, a time to celebrate the restorative powers of a quick 40 winks and the … Oi! Can you wake up please? You’ve only read 106 words of this.
Oh well, I don’t blame you. I even had to stifle a yawn as I typed the word ‘columnist’ in that opening sentence.
Thankfully, we got something of an eye-opening victory to savour at the weekend as Scotsman Calum Hill conjured a thrilling final day assault at the Joburg Open to win his second DP World Tour title.
Eight shots behind with a round to play, Hill just about required snookers but a rip-roaring eight-under 62 – his best round of the new season by four shots - set the clubhouse target and he stood firm to win in a three-man play-off.
In this pursuit of wildly fickle fortunes, those fortunes can change quickly.
If you were a betting man or woman, walked into the bookies the other week and said, “I’ll have a tenner on Calum Hill at the Joburg Open, please”, you probably would’ve been greeted with the same head-shaking, shrugging indifference you’d get if you put two quid each way on Oxford at the Varsity boatrace.
Hill had missed his last three cuts in a row and, by his own admission, was putting terribly. It’s a familiar lament in this game. As one noted scribe of yore observed, “half of golf is fun, the other half is putting.” Sometimes, it’s not even that good.
On Sunday, though, Hill seemed to hole everything as that temperamental tool of his trade sizzled like a red-hot branding iron searing the backsides of a herd of livestock. It was a terrific thrust and a timely tonic for Hill as he continues to make up lost ground.
Not long after his maiden tour win in the Cazoo Classic in 2021, Hill, who won three Challenge Tour titles in the space of 12 months during his rapid rise to the main European circuit, was bitten by an insect while at a tournament in Spain.
A seemingly minor nibble from that pesky, buzzing blighter ended up causing him considerable distress and he had to write off over 12 months of his burgeoning career.
His condition had befuddled the medical experts, but he was finally diagnosed with nerve hypersensitivity after a prolonged spell of uncertainty and no end of worry.
“There was a period there, which I think is a normal thing, where your mind goes to the worst-case scenario and you think ‘this is going to be the end of everything, what am I going to do with myself?’,” he said a couple of years ago as he dipped a tentative toe back into the competitive waters.
His Joburg Open triumph at the weekend completed his comeback. It’s onwards and, hopefully, upwards.
When Hill made his breakthough on the tour back in 2021, he barged his way into the top-100 of the world rankings for the first time.
We can only wonder how high he would’ve clambered had he not been struck down by that illness but he’s back on the ascendancy again in this second coming.
Robert MacIntyre, his Bounce management stablemate, has established himself as a global force during Hill’s convalescence while Ewen Ferguson, another of the Scots in a similar age bracket, reeled off a triple whammy of DP World Tour wins between 2022 and 2024.
Hill, and the rest of a sturdy tartan army on tour who are in their 20s and early 30s, tend to be as tight knit as a closely fought sewing bee and continue to feed off this friendly peer pressure and collective success.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that us crotchety auld lot who cover this stick and ba’ game for a living were grousing and groaning about Scotland not having a tour player under the age of 30 as our troubled brows were left as furrowed as a badly ploughed field.
But then, peaks, troughs, feasts and famines can be par for the course in this unpredictable, unforgiving game of formidable strength in depth.
I always remember my dear colleague Dougie Lowe, the late, much missed former golf correspondent of The Herald, raking over the debris of a fairly futile weekend covering the humdrum exploits of the Scots at a tournament a number of years ago and delivering a sombre, state of the nation address in the sanctuary of a watering hole.
“These buggers are playing us out of a job,” he muttered while reaching for the soothing elixir of a large dark rum and diet coke to temper the grumbling anguish.
I’m sure Dougie, a great champion of golf in his homeland, would’ve raised a glass to Hill and indeed the rest of the Scots during this upturn in fortunes over the last few years.
Hopefully, this latest win acts as a catalyst for more. Success, as they say, breeds success.
