Royalty

After many a false start it now feels like my tenure as Wallasey golf club captain has started. Yesterday my 2020/21 year group were delighted to be invited by our 2013 past captains to the links of Royal Liverpool, Hoylake, Golf Club for our first Salver day. Each year group holds a Salver day and your club captain for that year invites you to attend. Some club captains reach a stage where they can no longer play golf, so on that occasion you miss out but yesterday there were 25 of the 27 clubs represented.

The day started with a very competitive round of golf for said salver, and the winners were Grange Park with 42 points, a very good score considering the wind conditions. The Wallasey effort contained the same two numbers, but in a different order!! 

Attention then turned to the main event of the day, the dinner in the first floor dining room. Although I  have dined at Hoylake before, this was the first visit to the dining room. The Liverpool captain was also very kind in showing my 2013 captain the library and a couple of other rooms tucked away upstairs making the whole experience very enjoyable for everybody.

We are fortunate to be playing at Hillside in a couple of days, and then in the Mockbegger trophy on Sunday so at last I will be able to record my thoughts and achievements in the blog, as I committed to do well over a year ago.

While I had a great time, yesterday was also tinged with sadness when we received the news that long standing member, Roy Bulmer, had sadly lost his fight with cancer and passed away. Roy was in his 90's and until recently had still managed the occasional nine holes around Wallasey.  Roy was one of a number of members who took care of me in my early days as a member, a gesture I have never forgotten. He was also a very competent amateur golfer. He was a seafaring man who would always take his clubs with him so to take advantage of any opportunity to play. One of his greatest achievements was to finish second in the Tasmanian PGA tournament in the day.

He also became the archivist for the golf club and I hope he was able to see the way the club is now using much of his collection of relics to the benefit of the clubhouse and social media sites.

I wrote to him only last week in an effort to update him on club news, I do hope he had an opportunity to read the letter and understand he was in all our thoughts. Rest in peace Roy.

TW3

 So another week passes with far too much golf and one or two other ancillary events to keep everybody focused. It all started with another match in the mixed Winter league, and that finished much as our previous event, with a fairly comprehensive defeat at the hands of the pre-tournament favourites. We were, however, holding our own on the terrace until I realised I was driving, so to paraphrase Fiona Richmond, 'I made my excuses and left'!

The Seniors played two competitions on Monday. I was honoured to be able to present a new trophy to the section to recognise my appointment as Captain, and it was agreed the competition would be a 'Champion of Champions' event. Consequently the winners of all the Senior trophies in the 2019/20 season played off to identify the Victor Ludorum. The competition running along side it was the Senior major competition for the Golden Jubilee Trophy. Derek Mountfield, the ex-Everton central defender, was fortunate to win both with an excellent score of 40 Stableford points. The newly refurbished clubhouse will include an honours board for the Senior major, so Derek will have his name up in lights. well done!

On Wednesday it was the turn of The Visionaries to take centre stage as we turned out at Heswall for our monthly competition. Jayesh and his helpers made it a wonderful event not withstanding the deluge which accompanied us down the first few holes. The day improved, as did the golf so we now look forward to competing for some silverware when we play against The Eagles at Ormskirk in a few weeks.

Thursday and Friday were reserved for friendly fourballs. Firstly at Wallasey I was joined by our 2004 Captain and both our respective equivalents from West Lancs. Unfortunately local knowledge counted for nothing ans we were soundly beaten 3 & 2, as fatigue gripped me in the middle part of the round. On the Friday I ticked off another local course as I played West Derby with their captain and his regular fourball partner. The captain of Royal Liverpool made up the four. He had been a junior there when he was 13 years old and had not played the course for many years. It was a delight to understand the history, changes and memories for those bygone days. To add to the enjoyment I had my first victory of the week!

Social distancing guidelines continue to influence how each Club tackles the golf and hospitality and I am pleased to see that so far people seem to  be respecting the rules and golf can continue at the moment in an enjoyable manner.

Yesterday was one such example of that. Usually at Wallasey the Captains Prize event is a straight forward knock-out in which about 130 people participate. We had insufficient time to fit that into the calender this year, so it was agreed that there would be a qualifying Saturday competition in which 8 people would progress to sudden death knock-out over the coming weeks.

Over 150 people entered even with the weather being so severe, and the scoring was pretty good considering. I ran a fund raiser alongside the competition and was delighted that it raised over £350 for my chosen charity, Autism Together. They, like all charities, have suffered as their traditional fund raising events have had to be curtailed or modified, so cash flow has become a problem. Every little helps, as they say, so we at Wallasey will try to do our bit

Next week is looking to be a bit quieter on the golfing front, but that could all change in the blink of an eye. Fore!

St Andrew

It was  a big weekend for me, just past, as I had been asked by the current Wallasey Golf Club captain to speak at the St Andrews Dinner and propose the toast to him.

The St Andrews dinner is one of the most popular dinners on the circuit. It is attended exclusively by members of the golf club, is a black tie event, and signals the last formal dinner hosted by the 2019 captain. People have lived or died by the speech they have given.

The Spring dinner in April is the main externally focused event. The Captain invites fellow captains from other golf clubs, the Captain of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club (Hoylake) traditionally proposes a toast to Wallasey Golf Club, and a Wallasey member will then tell stories concerning the other invited guests.

The St Andrews is a lot more relaxed, until that is, one has to get up and speak. Many ex-speakers came over to me to offer advise, and I was invited into the pre-match drinks reception, so to speak, where ex-Captains also offered words of comfort.

Nothing prepares you though for the moment when you stand on your feet and the room goes hushed, except the work you have done yourself beforehand.

Now I was not first choice, but the original speaker got his availability wrong. He was courteous enough though to give me a copy of his speech, from which I was able to get an idea of the flow and timing. I wrote down ideas as I thought of them for many weeks prior to the event, and had some brutal editing sessions along the way. That said, the start of the speech only came to me in the car driving to the Club, and several chunks were removed as I sought shelter in the 'little room' during the evening meal.

I am pleased to report that the speech went down pretty well. There was a constant hum of amusement during it with several raucous moments.when I made some pointed remarks about the Club infrastructure. All in all the Captain and past Captains liked it, and many members came up afterwards to congratulate me.

So job done and onto 2020 to see what entertainment is in store at the Hot Pot supper. 

Joan Weathers (1925-2019)

My mum died last night at the grand age of 93. She had been in hospital for three weeks, but we had seen a decline in her from just before Christmas and while the hospital was the right place for her treatment, I am sure, as an independent lady,  she would have liked to be self sufficient to the end.

She was one of seven children, she had five sisters, Jackie, Betty, Peggy, Norah and Doreen, and a brother John who I never met. She is survived by Jackie. The strangest thing I can remember about them is the only Christmas present I ever got from Uncle John was a set of plastic golf clubs. It was in the early sixties and he clearly saw something in me which nobody else did!!

They were brought up in Wisbech in the Fenlands of Cambridgeshire, and she attended Wisbech High School. The acronym, RHS, was said to stand for 'wandering hands society'. I suspect my mum was not a member of that society as she left home at the age of 16 to join the Army. In her own words she was so naive, she did not even know where babies came from!!

This naivety did not last long apparently as the girl she was billeted with was 'a bit flighty'. It was the height of the second world war and she was posted to Folkstone as one of the girls who moved ships and planes across the map of Europe with roulette type sticks. She was regularly telling the story of how she and some friends were chased back to barracks by an armed sentry on the night of D-Day as all leave was cancelled but nobody had told them!!

I remember visiting the area in my teens when we went to the local pub the soldiers frequented and saw the names of the military signed on the ceiling.

At the end of the war she stayed in the Army and joined the Army Training Service (ATS) as a physical fitness instructor. It was at this time that she met my dad, Paul. She followed him around watching cricket and football and they eventually got married and I appeared on the scene.

We lived in Isleworth in West London in a house owned by my aunt, and my grandparents lived next door with my cousin Mike a few doors further up the road. We stayed there until 1959 when my dad took a new job with Shell Mex and BP and we moved down to Plymouth.

Mum was a typical housewife of the time, and while Dad travelled around the South West buying sites for new petrol stations, my mum was my taxi for school events, and sporting occassions. She would transport me and my mates in her pride and joy of an A40 called 'Noddy'. When I reached the age of 17, Noddy became my pride and joy as well and shared many a boys night out with the S Club and other school chums.

As I was now less demanding on my mum, she branched out,  with a friend called Rosemary, into the unheard of area of child care. The pair of them convinced a local church to allow them to run a playgroup in the hall. Dad and I then spent several evenings touring Plymouth buying second hand bikes, slides, prams and swings to go in the hall. Dad built a sandpit and put clothes hooks on the wall, and the playgroup was opened. It cost 50p a session and was hugely popular with professional people, artisans, sportsmen  and teachers alike. Mum and Rosemary knew the world, and were never short of Plymouth Argyle tickets as several players dropped their children off in the mornings.

She attended Home Park with dad regularly and it left a big hole in her life when he died prematurely in 1980 just after I had married and presented them with their grandson, Tim. She relocated briefly back to Wisbech but going there did not really work out, so she returned to Plymouth and eventually found a pleasant house a few hundred yards from our original family home.

Mum then turned to volunteer work, especially for the National Trust at Saltram House, she also worked as a ward clerk at the local Greenbank hospital a few days a week. She joined in with walking groups and played badminton regularly, but this combination soon took a toll on her knees and her mobility started to suffer. She lost her walking group days out as she was struggling to keep up, so she turned  to her garden and it became her new pride and joy as Noddy Mk3 had been sold when she found it difficult to drive.

As calls for help became more frequent, and the distance between London or Liverpool and Plymouth became a problem, mum moved to an independent living apartment in Hoylake near where we live. She never really got the Liverpool bug though and although she developed a small nucleus of friends in the flats, the wider benefits of an extended family alluded her.

Nonetheless she was always interested in the progress made by the children in their careers and more recently she has been delighted by the way our oldest granddaughters, Ava and Sofia, have been bonding. She truly adored her grandson, Tim, and was always full of support for him when his life course took to choppy waters.

She was a very attractive woman, even to the end, and as a small reminder it is my intention to construct an Andy Warhol,  Marilyn Munroe style pop art collage. I hope she would find that appropriate. We hope to scatter her ashes at the memorial garden in Plymouth where my dad was laid to rest all those years ago. They will then once more find happiness in each others company.

A thrash round a field

Rory McIlroy had just come back from a boys weekend in Ibiza, before he went on to win the Open Championship at Hoylake last week. Clearly that sort of break can do your golf the world of good.

I was one of the volunteer marshal's and did seven or eight shift from the Tuesday onwards. It was fascinating to see the players close up and wonder at how they hit the ball so far with apparently little effort. I am told something's called timing and practise are to blame!

I did not exactly meet the world but I did see David Clarke, an ex-Twickenham RFC lad with whom I used to play golf. He was caddying for Cameron Tringale, who had two steady rounds but was unable to make the cut mark.

David must be one of the most unlucky caddies around, he was with Justin Rose when he turned pro, and went through the hard times with him. They parted on good terms some time later but before Justin started winning big. He was with Michelle Wie when she had totally lost her game, and then moved on to VJ Singh for a while, and VJ has never been the fame force since his deer antler scandal.

I did appear on the BBC news at 7pm on the Sunday as a lady reporter did a piece to camera. I had my back to her and looked like I was perched on her shoulder like a parrot. We got £12 food allowance which did not buy too much food at the prices they were charging, so I saved mine up and got a bottle of champagne from the beer tent...every little helps.

So after Rory played so well after his boys weekend away, I wondered what difference my trip to Lisbon had made, and the formula seems to have worked. I went round Southport and Ainsdale yesterday in 82 shots, helping Wallasey to gain an honourable 4-4 draw. Interestingly when I consult my records I see that during our Southport flog expedition in 1988, I birdied the first hole and then went round in 103, so I seem to be improving!

Dominic Foos

The Boys Amateur golf championships are being played on the Wirral this week, with my club Wallasey featuring on the first two days before the top 64 players then go into the knock-out stage at Royal Liverpool ( Hoylake).

I volunteered to be a marshal, so have watched the cream of European U18 golfers strutting their stuff for a couple of days. There were two Americans in the field but otherwise it was dominated by Brits, Italians, Germans, French and Spanish.

The weather on day 1 was wild, but that did not stop a few players beating par with 5 under being the clubhouse leader. The course standard scratch (CSS) at Wallasey was 76 which is 4 over par,  so the leader actually was 9 under in real terms. The CSS at The Royal was 77.

Day two saw conditions more favourable with the CSS reduced to 74 at Wallasey, and it gave me the chance to see the new wonderkid on the block, the German Dominic Foos.

Dominic is just 16 and has a handicap of +6. For non-golfers reading this that means he should play courses in six shots less than the par for the course. He is already being courted  by American colleges for a 2016 start, he has his own web-site, and a monogram designed on his initials DF, much like Tiger Woods does.

The question is though, is he really that good? Well frankly yes he is, but he is not commanding the European boys arena uncontested.

He played his stroke play rounds with Bradley Moore and Connor Syme and all three of them qualified for the knock-out stage due,  in no small part to playing holes 13 & 14 in a combined total of 10 under par. Connor lost in the last 32 but Dominic and Bradley have made it through to the last 16.

Dominic was 3 holes down against Harry Ellis, the English Amateur champion, but won 5 holes on the bounce to triumph   3 & 2. With good French, Italian,  Spanish, Belgium and British players still left in the competition, the final couple of days are going to be riveting. You can follow it all here, but remember you heard his name here first!!