There are a heck of a lot of television programmes dedicated to antiques these days. The other week, for instance, I switched on the idiot box to see the news that strutting, gyrating period piece, Mick Jagger, had become a father again at the age of 128.
Regular readers of these bletherings will be well used to poring over wizened antiquities, of course. Some of the cornball commentaries that form the flimsy basis of an introduction to these weekly wanderings of the muddled mind are so old they need to be started with a whip. Anyway, you can’t simply have an antiques programme featuring the man and woman on the street getting a quaint Royal Worcester round-hinged trinket box valued. Like everything now, it demands the involvement of a celebrity, presumably on the basis that the presence of a grinning, vacuous K-lister adds pounds to a cracked vase unearthed from the garret.
In an era when great swathes of the population dedicate themselves to a lifetime spent worshipping at the altar of bamboozling, media-generated deities, the appreciation of genuine figures of worth can be lost amid the clanking, clattering and churning of the here today, gone tomorrow conveyor belt.
This scribe was reminded of this when news filtered through that Paul Lawrie’s own matchplay tournament on the European Tour would be moved from Scotland to Germany next season. It was not a major surprise. For a start, Lawrie’s management company have links to the Quellness Resort in Bad Griesbach, where the 2017 matchplay tournament will be held. More telling, though, is that the two events in Scotland were poorly attended, a situation which no doubt forced the hand of those involved.
While it is welcome news that the event is going ahead – there had been rumours of cutting the losses – there’s still a sizeable tinge of regret. Here we have Scotland’s last male major winner, a two-time Ryder Cup player and a man who continues to put an extraordinary amount back into golf in Scotland having to take the tournament that proudly bears his name to some Bavarian spa town? Talk about a kick in the pearly whites.
When Lawrie launched the contest two years ago, there was no hiding his excitement. His name may be forever chiselled on to the Claret Jug but the 1999 Open champion was almost as gleefully giddy at the prospect of his title appearing on AA road signs directing people to the venue in his native Aberdeen. When the first staging of the tournament, at Murcar Links, attracted just 11,000 over the course of the week, the feeling of head-scratching disappointment was palpable. Lawrie is used to the locals of the Granite City displaying an air of shrugging indifference. Having enjoyed a rousing career renaissance in 2012 which swept him back into the Ryder Cup fray for the first time in 13 years, he hosted his own, free-to-watch Paul Lawrie Invitational on the Tartan Tour just a few days before he flew out to Medinah. Hardly anybody turned up.
His matchplay contest on the main European circuit is a far bigger animal but even a relocation down the coast to Archerfield in East Lothian this year did little to bring the punters in. A ticket price of just £15 was hardly a king’s ransom and the inviting, spectator friendly set-up was excellent. You can’t force people to come out in their droves, of course, and the sight of sparsely populated car parks and modest galleries was dispiritingly sigh-inducing and made for the kind of low key atmosphere you’d get in a vestry.
Golf fans in the game’s cradle are a fairly loyal, stoic bunch who often display the same sense of gritty, hardy resolve that used to be the reserve of the ancient mariner. But attendances at showpiece occasions in Scotland have been trending downwards in recent years and the figures have only added weight to suggestions that we’re sated with tournament golf in this country.
When you have a Scottish Open, an Open, a Ladies Scottish Open, a Senior British Open, a Scottish Senior Open, Lawrie’s Matchplay Championship and a Dunhill Links Championship taking place in the space of a couple of months, there’s plenty to choose from. We’re used to seeing the world’s best competing in Scotland. Anything other than that tends to be greeted with a degree of apathy.
Lawrie didn’t go into this venture to massage his own ego or receive back-slapping plaudits. Like his various acts of golfing philanthropy, it was done for a much wider cause. If the good folk of Bad Griesbach turn out in force to support his matchplay event, then great. It would be a shame, though, if Scotland’s last Open champion has to go to Germany to find appreciation for his unwavering efforts.
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