Out of the Woods

 A very early start got us to Augusta National golf club at about 8:30 in the morning. The first priority then being to empty my wallet in the merchandise shop. 

A fishing chair (no arms allowed) was the first priority. Then with the weather forecast tomorrow, a brolly would come in useful. After that it was bits and bobs for people who asked and a half zip to for me. Masters green of course.

Then it was to the course where we set up our chairs on 13 before walking up 18 to see where Sandy Lyle made his miracle bunker shot to win in 1988. Next we hit the practise green and driving range where most of the big names were honing their game. David Clarke was on the bag of Justin Rose. David and I used to play 3rd and 4th team for Twickenham RFC in the day.

We then met Derek Lawrenson , the Daily Mail golf correspondent, and Wallasey member who warned us Tiger would be on the course at about 2pm. We dropped in to the 16th where it is traditional for players to try to skim their ball across the lake onto the green. Bit of a mixed bag but lots of crowd participation. Interestingly John Rahm got a hole in one with his skim last year.

After seeing a few Europeans including Rory McIlroy, we avoided the Tiger Woods show to return back to the hotel.

So what to make of it? Well it is a huge money making operation for Augusta National. Everything is geared to making it easy to part with your money quickly. The course and the general real estate is immaculate but the layout of the course makes it difficult to follow players around it.

Couple that with the fact there were very few players out there to watch  then day 1 was a bit disappointing. The weather forecast tomorrow is not good but we will see how things are in the morning.

In the meantime there is some Southern fried cooking to enjoy. Grits anybody?

Andrea Corr

Phew that's finished. A long four days ended yesterday at Sandy Lane and I came 61st overall out of 140 medal competitors. I beat Gordon Greenidge and Brian Lara but not Otis Gibson or Wayne Baptiste
One of our fourball hit a gross 80 yesterday which was very impressive.

Sandy Lane as a golf course layout was a bit disappointing. It was wide open off the tee and only protected by lightening fast greens. I was undone by the par 3 holes on the front nine, dropping 8 shots to par. That said the rest of the round was pretty solid.

The course has hosted a World Golf Championship event and is the second such I've played after the Victoria course in Portugal. It is the second course at Sandy Lane. The main one, the Green Monkey, is for hotel guests only and is still $4000 a tee time. There was nobody on it yesterday!!

The hotel is owned by J P McManus, John Magnier and Dermott Desmond, part of the hugely wealthy Irish racing community, Tiger Woods married there and Simon Cowell and Rihanna, amongst others, have homes on the estate.

Happy birthday to you....

The third anniversary of the blog passed while we were away. Gosh doesn't time fly. I started the blog to track the sale of the London property and would not have guessed that it would have taken two and a half years to complete that process, and at some cost. Still i got a very pleasant e-mail from the new owners this week enforcing how pleased they were with the purchase.

One is never sure what these old houses unearth once renovations start so it is good that no skeletons have been found in the attic. I must have done a good job bricking them up!!!

The place needed a new touch and I know they have done some alterations so good luck to them. They have kept my stained glass windows which they removed, so I will need to collect those at some stage, and may get a guided tour then.

So what else is new since May 2007....Tim , our oldest, got married, Emma, our youngest, produced our first grand child, Ava. I got to play golf with Tiger Woods (almost) in a Pro-Am, I managed to hang onto my job, although for how much longer is up for debate. Everybody had maintained good health given age and circumstances and all in all life has moved on in a reasonable and controlled manner.

In three more years I will have retired, my countdown clock says 1015 days to go!! I am sure we will have other grand children by then, and Ava can show them the ropes. England may have won a football trophy to go with the rugby World Cup and the World 20/20 cricket victory, but will the mighty Green Army bounce back into the Championship (that's the new Premiership for poor clubs who play British players in the team)?

So into year four we go, the blog at least gives my Google entry some credibility and it sits nicely with my named brick in the Olympic Park in Atlanta, the S Club brick at Twickenham Stadium and my fathers golf trophy at the golf club in Plymouth. A trail of discovery awaits anybody researching the Weathers clan.

Fore! No surely more than that?

After a few pints in the pub I am fullof ideas for blog entries. A good sleep, however, and they have all vanished from my mind the next day. As this morning I am in the unusual position of remembering them, I though I should go to print sharpish. So here goes.

Tiger Woods is used to scoring a few birdies in his day to day working life, but the 9 and counting who have come out of the woodwork claiming to have had private lessons with the main man over the years is brewing up quite a storm , and Tiger probably feels at the moment that he has shot an albatross.

The ladies he has been philanderering with (good word that...ed) have all been well pubicised and will no doubt do kiss and tell for months to come.

What I want to know, though, is what part Tigers long term, and very loyal , caddy Steve Williams has played in all the goings on?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I understand the role of the caddy is to point out the projected target and indicate how far his man is away from it, he should then advise which club to use, and line his player up to the hole. He then cleans the club after the shot and puts the club back in the bag himself. He also keeps the score.

I think there is more to this than meets the eye.

Call that a half Simon?

Now a week is a long time in politics, and I think I have said that on here before, but just imagine that one weekend you are attending the Patterdale Show in the Lake District, and then paddling a raft in a race, dressed as a viking.

The next week you are teeing it up with the greatest golfer of modern times, Tiger Woods, in the BMW Championship at Cog Hill near Chicago.

Next week its Brentford v Bristol Rovers, but hey ho!!!

So first the show. Well my mucker 'Off the record' Dick has reported the events at the show and on the river here in his blog of 31st August, and a fine summary it is too. There were sheep and dogs, and shepherds and shepherdesses, if one is allowed to call them such these days. To my mind thought the best Sheep were the Black ones I consumed throughout the evening!!

I was excused duties on the raft to be honest as it was unclear whether our new design would take the weight of five of us. As Dick points out in the end it would only carry three such. Still we took part and by all accounts have kept the race alive following our pirate escapades last year.

So myself and SWMBO arrived home on the Monday to be presented with (almost) the trip of a lifetime. I got a call from the BMW golf office in London telling me there was a space at the pro-am prior to the third leg of the FedEx Cup and could I get there?

Well a quick call on Tuesday to the boss, then Virgin Atlantic and finally to Octagon in Chicago and we are both on our way. We arrived to be greeted with a chauffeur and a logo'd BMW and so it went on for the week....shopping madam? we'll drop you off, just call when you need a pickup.....off to the course sir, let us take you....and for three days BMW did us proud.

The highlight arrived on the Wednesday when I got to play the pro-am. The previous night my German colleagues and I attended the partner party where we got to choose who to play with. They fancied a European, but by the time our number came out of the hat they had all gone.

I suggested we went for Lucas Glover. That would sandwich us between Tiger and his team and Sergio Garcia. It would also give us a first tee start and Lucas is after all the US Open Champion. They went with it and that's how we got to be in reception inthe hotel at 5am with the Tiger man himself. He signed a few autographs and drove himself to the course (in a Buick!!).

We followed his group all the way round, and beat them by 4 shots, coming a creditable 4th out of 52 teams, but sadly just outside the prizes. All in all though, a great day, which I shared with Lucas Glover, my caddie Joe, a Chuck Evans Scholar, and a few hundred other people who were gracious enough on the 18th green to applaud my approach putt.

As I mentioned in my blog only a few days ago, golf is one of those games where you can tread the boards on which perform your hero's. On this occasion I was able to do it at the same time

...and he's got this downhill tester to win the Open

Well what a sound weekend of sport it has been, as I type, the last Aussie wicket falls and England win a test at Lords for the first time since 1936. A Michelle for Freddie which gets his name on the honours board again, and England go 1-0 up with three to play . The missus and I went on Saturday and had to put up with the bar room stewards who all said, why did we not enforce the follow-on, look at the slow run rate, etc etc, but we experts knew the game plan and it has worked a treat.

Second event on the menu was the wonderful Open Golf Championship at Turnberry, won from behind by Stuart Cink, who was never alone in the lead, but got to the front when it mattered to beat 'Old' Tom Watson in the four hole play-off. How the world would have loved to see Tom win, as he had previously done as 'young' Tom Watson, in 1977, but it was not to be and he was gutted as you would expect.

So too was Lee Westwood who was two ahead at one stage but bogeyed three of the last four holes to blow his chances.

The Turnberry track was wonderfully turned out, and it drew me back to a may day in 1989 when I played it with a couple of friends, Figs and Greg, as part of our Scotflog tour that year. Golf remains one of the few games which joe public can compete on the same playing field as the heroes of the sport. I guess swimming and cycling share that ability and there may be others. So I thought, given Tiger had a horror day on Friday, I wonder how I would have done against him hole for hole. Well given I am an anorak in a few areas, and golf being one such, I was able to fish out my card from 20 years ago and compare..... And here we have it, I parred three holes which Tiger did also, and I bettered him on 10 and 13, deep joy!! Interesting we both struggled around the turn eh!! My comments in the diary indicate Iactually played better than the score suggests.......

Field of Dreams

Blimey! what a weekend. The house was invaded by our youngest and his mates, seven in all I think, who came down to support 'Trotter' who was playing on the wing for Birkenhead Park in their EDF Intermediate Vase cup final at the RFU in Twickenham Stadium.

How jealous was I that he got to run out on the hallowed turf, but good luck to him. I have known 'Trotter' almost as long as Kieran, and Maxine the same, so it was only right and proper that we went along too. I am, after all, a fully paid up member of 'Park'. Trouble was it kicked off at 10:00, being the first of three finals.

Anyway, there must have been over 1000 people watching, maybe more, as Exeter, Northampton and Leicester supports drifted in during the second half, and as a final it was not half bad.....Park took the lead with a few penalties, then Chester (for it was a local derby) scored a fairly soft try, but Park battled back to be leading 14-18 and they dominated the second half without putting the game to bed. 'Trotter' was playing pretty steady, a few good breaks and some sound defence, when sadly he was thrown a slow looping pass by his centre. If it had gone to hand it was glory time for 'Trotter' , but the Chester winger had all his Christmases instead, intercepting and running seventy yards to touchdown under the posts. 21-18 win for them, then. Still 'Trotter' managed to score later so the weekend was not a total disaster!!

The Masters, the first of the four major golf tournaments, was being televised this weekend, and it brought to mind a contrast between most major sporting events and golf. 'Trotter' was one of the few who can tell their kids they have played at Twickenham Stadium, and trod the same sods as many legends of the game. The final was one of five which the RFU and EDF collaborate to try to get grass roots players playing there. Football has its Amateur Cup and FA Vase aimed at lower league players running out at Wembley, but your average (or below average) Sunday league player has very little chance of playing there. There are amateur races at Aintree and Ascot for jockeys or point-to-point riders but again they are limited.

With golf, however, anybody can effectively turn up, pay their green fee and tread the same turf, putt on the same greens and shower in the same facilities as Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Bobby Jones, Seve Ballesteros or any of the other famous names associated with the sport. Indeed, while playing Valderama in Spain a few years ago, I was delighted at the 17th to chip over the brook and onto the green for three, two putting for a five. I was only too happy to point out that at the Ryder Cup a few weeks earlier, Tiger had failed with his chip and found the brook, only managing a bogey. So for one hole, and one hole only, I was better than Tiger!!

The irony of course ,is that Augusta, where the Masters is always held, is almost impossible to play as a visitor, but hey, there are enough other top courses around to more than make up for it.

Take a letter, Miss Jones

IBM has just announced that it is giving all its temporary secretaries four weeks notice, worldwide, and moving secretarial services to Bangalore. That's going to be a bit of a culture shock isn't it.
Imagine the problems there could be.

• tea and coffee for meetings takes days to arrive
• Christmas parties become less fun and
• the gossip and scandal network falls into disrepair.

I remember a secretary who came in to work each Monday with different coloured hair, depending on which food colouring she had used for the weekend party she had attended. Washing it out was always a problem.

Another secretary regarded herself as a personal friend of Tiger Woods. Her name was Alex, interesting Tiger has selected Alexis as the middle name for his new daughter. Alex was a bit of a girl, and these are the sort of characters which office environments need.

Given, though, that mobile working , hot desking and client based engagements, have removed the whole office social scene, the secretarial changes were a cost saving waiting to happen.

Give it a while and we will all be Avatars conducting business on Second Life. After all there are now over 7 million inhabitants. If you come across Witherspoon Gilks, say hello, that's me.