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 competition, seems odd. And it won’t go away. In every press conference between now and Gleneagles he will be asked about Tiger.

The third issue revolves around the question: How important is the captain? I would contend that a competent hand on the tiller won’t win you the competition but a bad one can lose it – for recent evidence I would point to Hal Sutton’s disastrous stewardship at Oakland Hills in 2004. And if we think back to last September, Jose Maria Olazabal was a logical, rational, popular captain who presided over a disastrous two days and a triumphant third. But that last day Lazarus-like comeback from the dead wasn’t inspired by him but by the players, most significantly Ian Poulter. I haven’t heard anyone suggest that Davis Love III was responsible for America’s collapse, any more than he was responsible for their earlier ascendancy. Over the first two days his team played excellent golf, and on the third day they were out-performed by Europe.

Finally, it has been suggested that because Tom Watson is so popular in Scotland, where he won all five of his Open championships (and came so close to adding a sixth in 2009 at Turnberry) that the Scots will be cheering for him, rather than team Europe. Nonsense. The natives of Caledonia will happily welcome Tom back to its shores, and equally happily see his team thrashed.

Act in haste…
Ian Poulter has been at it again – firing off a hasty and ill-thought out message on Twitter and then repenting it at leisure. At the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Kapalua, Hawaii, the wind was gusting up to 40mph. Playing conditions were difficult and on the par three 11th, Poulter took an eternity, and then a bit longer, over his birdie putt, giving the distinct impression that he was trying to make the point to the event organiser that conditions were unplayable (and the round was eventually abandoned). Not unreasonably, Johnny Miller suggested that he was being a bit of a drama queen to which Ian tweeted: ‘Johnny miller [sic] why don’t you come interview me live and say that stuff straight to my face?’ Two points here, Ian. First, Johnny Miller would have no problem being critical of you or anyone else while looking you in the eye. Second, if he had to go and interview every golfer about whom he offered a negative comment, no matter how gentle, there wouldn’t be enough hours in the day.

A few hours later Ian tweeted: ‘Just watched coverage on @GolfChannel. Really sorry I took way to [sic] long on 11th…. Just trying to win a golf tournament. Trying to do my job.’

So why not concentrate on that and stop creating feuds and arguments where they don’t exist you petulant boy?

Bloody sake!
I played golf yesterday – well, 13 holes at least. The reason for cutting the round short is that I was held up for five holes by a twoball in front that refused to call me through. My game is capable of going from good to abominable at any time but it did seem that having to wait three or four minutes on every shot was having a significant effect on my play, so I decide to call it a day and rehearsed a polite but pointed message to the two guys in which I reminded them that the idea of a single player having no standing on the course was taken out of the rules at least four years ago. It turned out that they knew this, and their reason for not calling me through was ‘The fourball in front of us have only just cleared the green.’ With as much restraint as possible I reminded them that what is happening in front of their match is irrelevant, they only need be concerned about what is going on behind them – that is, I was moving considerably quicker and therefore should be invited to play through.

It is always disappointing to discover what a tenuous grasp of the rules so many golfers seem to have.

Quote of the week
Like most professional golfers, I have a tendency to remember my poor shots a shade more vividly than the good ones.
Ben Hogan