Depending on your levels of self-discipline and mental resolve, you’ve possibly already embarked on that annual, anguish-laden, jowl-shuddering, teeth-grinding process otherwise known as a New Year resolution. It’s that time of the season, after all, when we’re supposed to lock ourselves into a padded cell of abstinence, think of something that we enjoy doing and vow to stop doing it because all those tut-tutting, healthy-living zealots and killjoys insist we’re doing too much of it. Somebody mentioned to me the other day that in order to usher in 2017 with a sprightly, fresh-faced, flab-reducing sense of purpose, I should do something that gets me out of breath a couple of times a day. That clearly means I’m going to have to start smoking. So, let’s light up, waft away the fug and have a peer at a couple of varied things we’d like to see in 2017.
BREAKTHROUGH WIN FOR SPAIN’S MAJOR-LESS MATADOR
When it comes to the majors, Sergio Garcia has been a bridesmaid more times than Elizabeth Taylor’s best friend. Since finishing runner-up in the 1999 US PGA Championship, he has experienced the kind of close shaves that Victor Kiam used to promote. Indeed, to underline his competitive consistency over this 17 year spell, the majors of 2000, 2010 and 2012 are the only seasons in which Garcia hasn’t posted a top-10 in at least one of the big four events. In recent campaigns, the likes of Adam Scott, Jason Day, Henrik Stenson and Dustin Johnston have all broken their major duck. In 2016, all the men’s majors were won by first-timers. Garcia will be hoping there’s a first time for everything in 2017.
READY, STEADY ……. GOLF
Everybody knows that golf can be the kind of wearisome, plodding plooter that can be as onerous as chomping through a sturdy bowl of muesli. Ready Golf, a pace-of-play policy being pushed by the Royal & Ancient, basically means that in strokeplay competition, players should batter on when ready rather than stick rigidly to the age old ‘farthest from the hole plays first’ doctrine, a traditional stipulation that often meant this hapless correspondent was always playing first. That dreaded phrase ‘it’s still your turn’ continues to ring in the lugs to this day. Ready Golf went down well at October’s Irish Closed Championship and should be a common sense initiative that continues to be vigorously promoted and pursued, particularly at club level, to get the game moving along.
A HEALTHY TWIST IN THE TIGER TALE
Not since Quasimodo burst onto the scene had there been such scrutiny of somebody’s back, but Tiger Woods’s dicey dorsum has kept the cogs of chatter clanking on over these last couple of years. Having made a tentative return to action at the end of 2016, the new year brings a sense of cautious optimism for Tiger. Can he stay fit? Can he be competitive? Will he ever win again? It’s the usual shroud of intrigue surrounding him and if the 14-time major winner pitches up at his happy hunting ground of Augusta for the Masters, all that will be missing from the inevitable circus will be acrobats and the wall of death. The winning may indeed be over for arguably the game’s greatest ever performer but his shimmering golfing legacy remains assured. Even his most robust detractors surely wouldn’t begrudge him at least an injury-free 2017.
JOINING THE DOTS TO FATHOM OUT THE AMATEUR TO PRO PUZZLE
When it comes to helping our lads and lassies make the step up from the amateur game to the professional ranks there still hasn’t been an Archimedes moment, although this scribe often loups from the bath tub in the scuddy and starts shrieking ‘Eureka’ only to be told to at least put on a pair of baffies by a startled sports editor. There is no shortage of folk keen to lend a hand and aid this treacherous transition as the home of golf seeks to produce a new generation of golfing stars. Paul Lawrie’s Foundation, the Team Scottish Hydro programme, Aberdeen Asset Management sponsorship? There are plenty of bits being done here and pieces being done there but it could do with Scottish Golf, the PGA and the various backers and benefactors to pull resources, come together and formulate some kind of decisive, single strategy.
WISHFUL THINKING IN A HYSTERICAL AGE
Thanks to social media – which at times is about as sociable as a war monger – we now live in an era of rampant, rapid-fire hysteria and knee-jerk reaction. At this frenzied rate, the next generation won’t have any knees left to jerk. In 2016, both Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy endured so-called ‘lean years’ despite knocking off five wins between them during the course of the year. The fact neither of them challenged at the majors – well, Spieth did until the last six holes of that now infamous Masters – was a source of much harrumphing in golfing circles. Since the tyranny of the Tiger age, the to-ings and fro-ings at the top of the world order these days simply illustrates the strength of the game in the upper echelons. The fickle nature of golf, and the remorseless demands and scrutiny that’s heaped upon the leading lights, means fevered observers regularly switch from cooing adoration one minute to mournful doom merchants the next. In this game, it seems you’re never far away from a crisis. Just about the only folk not panicking were McIlroy and Spieth themselves. Can we all calm down in 2017? Now, that may just be a wish too far.
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