Golf, at this correspondent’s level at least, is a fairly anguish-laden palaver of swiping, howking, heaving and grunting that would make the murderous thrashings of a medieval executioner look reasonably civilised.
For those of us eeking out a grim existence in this barren, yet heavily populated environment of remorseless golfing futility, the sight of the newly crowned Women’s British Open champion, Ariya Jutanugarn, breaking into a smile as part of her pre-shot routine during her weekend win at Woburn was all deeply confusing.
I mean, how often have you stood on the first tee at, say, your local club’s Nancy McCorkindale Perpetual Rosebowl competition and been so at ease with your decision making and so confident about the eventual outcome that you end up beaming from lug to lug prior to addressing the ball? The answer is probably never as great waves of negativity flood your feeble mind and a pitiful 3-wood skitters into the whins and leaves you muttering and hissing through clinched teeth like Albert Steptoe peering at a sizeable dentist’s invoice.
There’s often not much to smile about in this game. Perhaps the Scottish Ladies Amateur champion, Ailsa Summers, is feeling a bit down in the dumps with it all too. Her omission from the Scotland team for this week’s Home Internationals has caused a fair bit of grousing and groaning in domestic circles.
Summers, 22, is one of an increasingly rare breed. An amateur golfer who juggles full-time employment with competitive action. In an era of professionals-in-waiting and the kind of furious amateur-to-pro turnover that would jigger the pistons on the factory production line, the message Summers’s non-inclusion sends out is hardly encouraging for those not pursuing a career in the paid ranks.
The Scottish Ladies Championship, with a shimmering history dating back to 1903, had already been devalued in recent years by a date in the schedule which meant the leading Scottish players who were at college in the US couldn’t attend. Now, the champion doesn’t merit a call up to the national team. Of course, nobody has a right to selection but to preserve the integrity of national championships, perhaps the national champions themselves should be automatic picks?
Selecting teams in amateur golf has always provoked much bickering and back-biting but as times move on, the governing bodies expand and more folk get involved, the dossiers and documents increase and various strategies, aims, objectives and complexities get developed in an effort to devise an almost E=MC2 formula for getting into a team. Einstein may have knocked up a concept for mass-energy equivalence but ask him to pick a seven-strong squad for an annual four-cornered golfing tussle and he’d probably choke on his own brain trying to fathom it all out.
Led by performance director Steve Paulding, Scottish Golf now has a variety of selection policies in place which take into account a myriad of factors including historical records of players in tournaments, world rankings, fitness, medical conditions and climatic considerations at said event.
This formalising of the whole process is all well and good but surely team selection can’t just come down to ticking a series of boxes? Windyhill’s George Duncan was a surprising winner of the Scottish Men’s Amateur Championship at Royal Aberdeen over the weekend and will now be waiting to see if he earns an out-of-the-blue call-up to the Scotland team for the forthcoming men’s Home Internationals at Nairn.
With Scotland’s four top-ranked players unavailable due to their participation in the US Amateur Championship – another sign that cherished old events like the Home Internationals are losing their lustre - Duncan, who had shown no previous form on the domestic scene until his eye-brow raising triumph, has a good chance of a cap. Yet, if the selectors stick to the same ‘criteria’ which saw Summers left out of the women’s team then there are going to be more red faces than at a glass blowing convention.
In an amateur scene heavily influenced by world ranking points, showpiece occasions continue to become something of a closed shop, especially for those campaigners, like Summers, who have no great desire to make the leap into the professional scene but still want to remain involved in the cut-and-thrust of top level competition.
Reduce the opportunity, the ambitions and the rewards and you take away much of what drives these players on in the first place. And that cannot be good for the amateur game.
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