In these gee-whiz, hi-tech times of click, click, tap, tap, scroll and swipe gadgetry, the idea of scribbling something down with a pen on a piece of paper is almost as antiquated as the sight of a farmer tilling a field with an ox while his fair lady birls a couple of hand-scrubbed semmits through the mangle.
I was reminded of this the other day when leafing through my increasingly fusty Filofax in search of a phone number carved onto a dog-earned, yellowing sheet of paper that bears more than a passing resemblance to a clump of Hellenistic parchment. The aforementioned Filofax, which, like this correspondent, was once a symbol of thrusting, dynamic, organised vigour, now makes the Dead Sea Scrolls look like a bloomin’ iPad.
The reason for a flick through the contacts was to find a number for Scottish golfer, Craig Lee, in the wake of Graeme Storm’s victory in South Africa on Sunday. Having lost his tour card by just £87 last season, only to get it back after being handed a reprieve when Patrick Reed came off the order of merit having failed to play the required number of events, Storm’s fairytale success went down, well, a Storm. The hero of Hartlepool has probably been invited to Trump’s inauguration to sing a few jaunty folk numbers by the Teesside Fettlers. Storm is about the only person who’s not been asked, after all. Lee, meanwhile, must have been pondering what might have been. He finished just over £1300 behind Storm on the money list but lost his card and is now in something of a limbo. This fickle game of fluctuating fortunes always comes down to fine margins, of course.
The first European Tour event of 2017 produced a captivating storyline; Storm, a loyal, sturdy stalwart of the circuit edging out Rory McIlroy, the tour’s biggest and most marketable star.
For Keith Pelley, the chief executive of the European Tour, it was a cheery way to usher in the new year and no doubt his trademark, blue-rimmed spectacles were steamed up with rampant exaltation. Pelley has made a variety of sales pitches since taking over the reins in 2015 and he always maintained that 2017 would be the time to judge him on his words and actions. So far, so good then. In the early days of this lang, drawn out month, Pelley has confirmed that an eighth event – the French Open – will be added to the new, cash-sodden Rolex Series while it was announced that McIlroy will compete in the opening tournament of that lucrative Rolex programme, the BMW PGA Championship, at Wentworth in May. Given that particular championship is the circuit’s traditional flagship – despite Pelley’s initial insistence when he took over that it wasn’t – it was imperative to the new heid honcho’s grand plan that McIlroy committed to the showpiece having given it a wide berth on occasions in the past. The hope is that the rest will follow. While there is plenty of money swilling around, the tour is subsiding some of the Rolex Series purses. In terms of maintaining and attracting sponsorship, Pelley needs his big hitters to turn up and, even better still, bring a few of their American pals with them. As he says, it’s about making the European circuit a “viable alternative” to the all-powerful PGA Tour. That was an ambitious declaration in itself and in the cut-and-thrust of top level administration, you keep your friends close but your sponsors even closer.
Over on the other side of the water, the newly appointed PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, has already talked about golf’s need to embrace and engage the constantly evolving means of consumer consumption. Pelley, too, is very much a new-media man. In a fast-moving age when folk are constantly drawn to the light of a touch-pad screen, which at least proves that we are actually the descendants of moths, the issue of luring in a fresh audience instead of simply pandering to the old one remains high on the agenda. Many of us – this scribe included – tend to embrace change with all the surging, forward impetus of a narrowboat gently navigating the Norfolk Broads and Pelley’s fondness for the razzmatazz of things like music on the tee, night golf or short hole shoot-outs can be greeted with sneering, dismissive, gimmicky indifference. The debate about knock-about innovation and the preservation of the game’s integrity will always be heated but Pelley deserves credit for a can-do, let’s try it approach in a sport that has often been hindered by an entrenched, “it’s aye been” mentality. His unbridled, all-singing, all-dancing enthusiasm for the new may even convince me to ditch the Filofax. Now, that would be a bold leap.
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