Every now and then a bad news story becomes a good one and I am delighted to report that the collie I told you about in No.71 has been found alive and well, with only relatively minor damage to its mouth, roaming on the Sussex Downs behind Eastbourne. One can only surmise as to the events that led to her ending up there and finally being reunited with her ecstatic owners. Imagine their relief!
I apologise to non-golfers for straying onto the fairways once again, but there has just been a major competition in Australia that has grabbed my attention for the past three days. It is called the President’s Cup and features a US Team, led this time by Tiger Woods and an International Team, captained by Ernie Els, that is made up of the twelve best players from the Rest of The World, excluding Europe. It is a Ryder Cup style contest and it was the thirteenth playing of the biennial competition. It has been dominated by America, although the Internationals ran them pretty close this time. I won’t go into all the details of the Competition, it was more the status of golf that concerns me. I said “straying onto the FAIRWAYS”. An appropriate term. Golf has always prided itself on being an honourable, self-policing game, where players are expected to play by the rules and those that do not are generally very quickly found out and tainted for life. I suppose almost inevitably, with the dramatic increase in prize money over the last twenty years, some players will be tempted to bend and/or break the rules in the hope that they will go undetected and line their pockets with abundant filthy lucre. Plenty do, as I have witnessed with my own eyes over three decades of walking the fairways as a commentator. However, we have reached a pretty pass when players blatantly cheat in front of the tv cameras, it is there for all to see and officialdom wibbles and wriggles and fails to take the decisive, zero-tolerance action that the situation demands. Two players on the US Team, Patrick Reed and Matt Kuchar have blatantly and wilfully broken the rules this year and yet they are still plying their trade on the PGA Tour, able to earn more money than most of us can ever dream of. It shames the game, the Tour officials involved and the players. The gall they possess to continue, as if nothing has happened, with the lamest of explanations, makes my blood boil. The really soul-destroying aspect is that a number of less well known, “inconsequential” players have been banned for anything from a few months to years, for no more heinous acts than we have witnessed this year. The powers that be need to take a long hard look in the mirror this Christmas and hopefully it won’t be a benevolent, white bearded old man they see staring back.
I seem to be hitting an uncharacteristically serious note this evening, for which I apologise. It does happen occasionally. The Tutt family are in the middle of preparing for a few days in the Capital. There’s a trip to the London Palladium to see Goldilocks, about which I am quite excited. Not because I yearn after Panto’s, but because I’ve never been to the Palladium before and I feel that is a gap in my life experience. In a previous existence, I used to carry out Pubic Duties guarding the Tower of London, hence a visit there is a must, so that I can bore the children with the many fascinating tales of my experiences on Tower Hill. Actually they really are quite interesting, but probably not to my teenagers! No doubt Winter Wonderland will be on the agenda, whilst I am determined to try whispering sweet nothings to my wife in The Gallery at St Paul’s. We will be staying in the old County Hall, once seat of London’s Government and now a Premier Inn. (An interesting juxtaposition). I will try to imagine myself as a Councillor under Mayor Boris and see what unanticipated roads that might take me down. It is close to the London Eye, so I suspect we might get inveigled into a Greater London survey on the big wheel. I would rather jump through burning hoops into an ice bath but my will may not prevail……
Friends of mine are enjoying beautiful conditions in the Alps……no envy here.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 