I don’t know about you, but I’m having a heck of a footer trying to remember the vast and varied passwords we need to use in order to protect our everyday privacy and particulars but which end up leaving you all flustered like a cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park trying to crack the Enigma code. Back in ye olden times, Ali Baba merely had to mutter the simple words ‘Open Sesame’ to access a whole host of privileges but that simply wouldn’t cut it nowadays when online passwords need to be changed on a teeth-grindingly regular basis. So he’d maybe type in ‘Open Sesame 40’ or perhaps ‘oPeN SeSaMe 40’ in an increasingly infuriated attempt to make the updated password different from the old password in order to satisfy the robust security criteria. Yet by the time this new, elaborate password has gained the required pass marks from the administrator the only thing it’s memorable for is its sheer unmemorableness. No wonder we can’t remember the bloomin’ thing. And what, pray tell, has this got to do with the Tuesday golf column? Absolutely nothing. I’ve just had a bad week remembering ruddy passwords.
Anyway, it seems good old Davis Love III hasn’t forgotten how to win tournaments. Team USA’s Ryder Cup captain winning on the PGA Tour? Now, that’s what you call leading from the front. Europe beware. During a year in which golf’s youth movement has invigorated and excited, the American auld yin’s victory in the Wyndham Championship at 51-years-young – the third oldest winner in PGA Tour history – provided another reminder that this remains a game for all the ages. Over the border in Vancouver, meanwhile, the remarkable 18-year-old, Lydia Ko, won the Canadian Women’s Open for the third time in four years. She was just 15 when she won it the first time. “I saw one of the photos and I looked totally different,” she said upon seeing images of that first win in 2012. “So I'm showing signs of age.”
Good grief. Love must have felt like Methuselah with gout in comparison as he turned back a variety of clocks and rolled back a succession of years to clinch an unlikely triumph. Ok, so it was not one of the strongest fields of the year and the event was played on a relatively comforting course that, yardage wise, wasn’t as formidable as some of the brutes that get stretched out in this crash, bang, wallop era but these types of victories have to be celebrated and cherished. The course and the conditions have to be right for something like Love’s success to happen and the Sedgefield venue that hosted the Wyndham was something of a throwback to those shot-making times instead of a battleground for heavy artillery and big bombers. Players flood on to the tour much younger now, there is more international travel, more money, more demands, more physical power required and thus more general wear and tear. Who knows? Half of the young guns currently leading the way in the global game could be burnt out by the time they hit 40 let alone 51.
Tiger Woods, the man who set the standard for all this athleticism and pushed the physical boundaries to the limits and beyond, is creaking towards his 40th birthday but it seems he’s not quite finished yet. The fact tournament organisers printed an extra 49,000 tickets for his first appearance in the Wyndham Championship demonstrated his continued attraction, even it’s become more for the ghoulish prospect of a freak show rather than a fireworks show. For 54-holes, though, he teased and tormented as he mounted a sprightly title tilt and manoeuvred himself to within one good round of answering some of the questions that have been hovering around him like a swarm of midges. There he was on the final Sunday, lurking two shots off the pace and with his traditional red shirt looking like it had a little bit more lustre than usual. His Sunday best, of course, was not good enough and he finished four shots back. Woods, therefore, remains a work in progress. It’s pilgrim’s progress, mind you. This was his best finish in a regular tour event since he tied third in the European Tour’s Turkish Airlines Open back in November 2013 but there were the usual shanks and duffs in the short game that continue to appear more psychological than technical. As most of us know, once these weaknesses take root, they tend to rear their heads at the most inopportune moment. Woods’s crippling seven on the 11th hole, which ended his challenge, illustrated the chinks in those flimsy, vulnerable bits of the armoury. There remain positives to cling to, however. The majors may be a bridge too far for Woods but another PGA Tour win is not out of the question. In this game, there's always time. A 51-year-old grandfather, who has just recovered from foot surgery, proved that. Now, what was that password again?
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here