Cathryn Bristow

While it is great to play with a touring male player during the Masters pro-Am tournament (I played with Michael Campbell last year), as the game of an amateur golfer is much closer to the game played by LPGA touring females, I humbly asked if I could be paired with Cathryn Bristow (standing next to me in the picture) an LPGA touring pro.

Cathryn 28, a Kiwi, won a golf scholarship to the University of Oregon.  Introduced to the game by her elder brother at the age of 13, by 17 she was playing so well that she gave up her other love, cricket, to focus full time on the game.  She finished college as the best player ever in the history of the University of Oregon. She proceeded to sign up for the Futures Tour, the LPGA feeder tour, where she plied her trade for two years based out of Houston.  Last year, she went to Q-school and qualified to play on the European Tour.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/golf/8096648/Bristow-can-survive-on-LET-ex-pro-McKinnon

Life on the tour can be a blur.  Because of so much travelling, she does not have a place she calls home.  She plans to live the entire year out of a 20kg suitcase.  In it, she has a golf outfit, a pair of jeans, two dresses, running shoes, two golf shoes, and a pair of heels.  Her computer functions as her entertainment centre where she reads, listens to music and communicates with her coach.

Off the tee, we drive about the same distance and with the same consistency - in fact, I think I hit more fairways than she did.  But on shots out of trouble, and in and around the green, she is in a different league.  She told me that half her practice time was always devoted to the short game, and half of that was on putting alone.  She guaranteed me that the winner of any tournament would always be in the top five for the fewest putts in the tournament.  From 100m in, her target was to get the ball up and down.  She knows when to take the penalty if the ball is in thick rough and bump it in and around the green.  She only works on mechanics during off weeks.  Otherwise, it is plainly to hone the strokes and get confident.

I asked if she ever choked at crucial periods in games.  She said no.  The sense of being nervous is always there.  But she knows how to slow things down.  The biggest destroyer of a golf game is a wrong decision under stress.  This is why one needs a good game plan.  Most pros use the practice rounds to do two things.  First, to decide on what club to use off the tee.  The second is to consider all the possible pin positions on the green and decide where you do not want the ball to go.

Cathryn had one great golf story.  She had just missed qualifying for the US Ladies Open 2012 and was the first alternate.  On the morning of the tournament, she received a phone call that a South Korean girl had pulled out and the slot was her's if she could make it to Kohler Wisconsin by noon.  She was in Chicago and had her golf clubs checked in already.  She made it to the tee box just on time - ie doing a Rory.  Suzann Petersen and Jennifer Johnson - her playing partners - were amazed when she turned up on the tee box.  She described the environment as electric, with large crowds, especially since she had Yani Tseng and Na Yeon Choi in front of her.  She shot 83 on the first day.  She did much better to shoot 75 the next day, but missed the cut.

http://www.golfchannel.com/tours/lpga/2012/us-womens-open/

Cathryn goes to LA at the end of May to qualify for the US Open again.

For the record. On Halim South-West, Cathryn shot 75 and Lisa 99 off the whites.  Charles, the other aspiring pro in the picture - a nice young Welsh gentleman, shot 76 while I shot 86 - both of us off the black tournament tees.  

The Pure Exhilaration of Matchplay Golf

Matchplay is the most exhilarating form of contest in golf.  Two golfers go out on the course, shake hands, and over the next set number of holes, it is head-to-head, one-on-one, mano-a-mano.  It is surely built around skill, but has elements of strategy, confidence and mental strength.  

There are two ways to win a hole.  As the first player, you can either go aggressive - attempt the killer shot, get it right and put the pressure on your opponent to do the same, or play the conservative shot and wait for your opponent to do the opposite and make a mistake.  The player that goes second also has to choose.  If the first player has played himself into trouble, you can either play the "normal" shot, or lay it up.  Its not easy to change from the "normal" way of playing - to stick a club back in the bag and ask for a pitching wedge when you feel you can make the original shot.  Just ask Jean van de Velde in the Open Championship in 1999.  

A scratch golfer also explained to me the concept of momentum, which is really confidence.  He told me that he had lost an 18 hole match after leading 6 holes.  He had started to feel sorry for his opponent and lost the competitive edge.  This allowed his opponent to nick a couple of holes.  Then the opponent started to get the rub of the green - a lucky bounce - and things changed.  As his confidence waned, his opponent's grew and that by itself decided the match.  On another occasion, when he was 4 down at the tee box of the 15th hole, his opponent declared to him, "I guess its over".  He simply said that there were still four holes to play.  He went on to win the next five holes, winning the match on the first extra hole.  His lesson : its not over till the last putt is rolled in.  Close out the game as soon as you can.  Have no mercy.  Don't feel sorry for your opponent.  "Its part of the game."    

The 2013 Jagorawi Club Championship first playoff round was my first taste of serious matchplay, having qualified for it for the first time.   My opponent on record had a lower handicap and has had the experience of playing in the tournament multiple times.   We shook hands and off we went on the Old Course.  By the 9th hole, I was 4 down.  I wasn't feeling particularly nervous or bad, as I wasn't favoured to win. I was enjoying the experience with marshals trailing us.  He started talking, in a matter of fact kind of way, about who he would meet in the next round.  I said I would still do my best to catch him.  

And then the momentum changed.  I stuck my approach on the 10th for a tap in birdie.  My opponent congratulated me - like "good you won a hole."  On the next hole, a 198m par 3, I landed the ball within six feet of the pin.  He sliced his tee to the right, short sided the green, and was on the green for three.  He conceded the hole without putting.  On the next hole, I landed the ball safely on the fairway while he landed it in the bunker.  I approached the hole from 168m, and struck an ugly fading shot.  It was heading for the greenside bunker.  But it took a lucky bounce, deflected left and landed 4 feet from the hole.  I apologised.  He hardly acknowledged this.  He only got it on for three from the fairway bunker and lost the hole.    On the next par 3 hole, I landed off the green while he landed his 30 feet from the hole.  I chipped it for a gimme.  He putted and left himself a 3 footer.  He took a long time over the ball and missed.  

He lost 4 consecutive holes and we were level.  

The momentum had swung completely my way.  He was driving and approaching exquisitely in the first nine.  This disappeared.  He started to draw the ball excessively, and his irons were a little less sharp.  By the 15th hole, I was one up as he drove clipping the trees.  I then made an elementary mistake on the 16th hole.  I started to believe I could do no wrong.  A bogey let him back in at level.  On the 17th, he watched me sink a three footer to keep the match level on the 18th tee.  

On the 18th, I did not feel a single bit of pressure.  We both drove on the fairway, he out drove me by perhaps 30m.  I studied the 180m approach to the elevated green, perhaps a 200m shot in total with OB on the right and sand traps on the left.  I rejected the 3 wood my caddie Gode offered and went with the 5 wood to lay up to keep the ball in play, which I did.  I knew this would encourage my opponent to go for it and win the match.  He had a 150m + 20m elevation, 170m shot off a sloping fairway.  He did as expected and  sliced it to the right.  Both of us had a 30m pitch.  I went first again and landed my six feet from the hole.  He landed his five feet from the hole.  

My caddie indicated a break a little further outside than I would have thought.  But we have played so often together that I knew he was probably right.  I rolled the ball, and on the last roll, the ball dipped into the cup from the side.  My opponent who had an easier five foot putt acknowledged the putt.  But he must have thought, "The injustice of it all!  I was leading by four holes.  He  had a lucky bounce on the 12th hole, and then he manages to roll a dying putt on the 18th that had no right to go in?"  He missed his putt by some distance.  I had played a one over second nine.  He shot a six over.    

I did feel sorry for my opponent after the match. He is a nice, gracious man and in the end, is a much better golfer than I am.  I am sure he will beat me again and again in social golf.  But the lesson is this.     Strategy counts and this depends on understanding what your opponent is likely to do and his likelihood of pulling it off.  Secondly, in matchplay golf, it is a crime to think about the next match before you close the current one out.  Momentum is a killer.  Have no mercy.  Its part of the game.  

Margaret Hilda Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher (13 Oct 1925 - 8 Apr 2013) will walk down history as one of the greats of the 20th century and remembered as one of the best Prime Ministers of Britain. She, together with Reagan and Gorbachev, were politicians that shaped an era. She will be remembered best for being a "conviction politician"- a person unafraid of sticking to fundamental beliefs in the face of strong, and at times violent opposition. For this, she earned the sobriquet of being "The Iron Lady". Her inflexibility led to her final downfall as she failed to quell a revolt within her party. She eventually left active politics in 1990.

In Reagan, Thatcher found a moneterist soulmate in the Friedman/Hayek mould. She believed in the power of free markets. Following her election as PM in 1979, Thatcher began dismantling the socialist state that Britain had built up since the war. She believed in limited government, implemented budget cuts and introduced deregulation. She fought inflation by raising interest rates. She lowered taxes. She privatised state owned companies and most importantly stared down the trade unions in the fight to create more flexible labour markets. The drastic medicine Thatcher prescribed for Britain led initially to a deepening of the recession in the early 80s, resulting in high unemployment and riots. Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23 per cent by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous Prime Minister. Public discourse called for a policy U-turn. She famously announced at the 1980 Conservative Party conference, and I believe her most famous quote:

"To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say. 'You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning.'"

Thatcher's deep distrust of Communism made her a strong American ally during the Cold War. She believed in a strong nuclear deterrent and believed in standing up to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, her defining role in history will be as war leader during the Falklands War. She is famously portrayed rebuking Alexander Haig in the production "The Iron Lady" when Haig told her that he that he was trying to avert a war. Thatcher said:

"So am I. But you do not do this by appeasement. You increase its chances. You see this table? This was where Neville Chamberlain sat in 1938 when he spoke on the wireless about the Czechs as "far away people about whom we know nothing and with whom we have so little in common". Munich! Appeasement! A world war followed because of that irresponsible, woolly-minded, indecisive, slip shod attitude, and the deaths of 45 million people."

I will remember Thatcher as the conviction politician of our time, an inspiring figure who held on to clear fundamental beliefs, and doing what she thought was right. She also gave me my first taste of share ownership.  I subscribed to British Gas when it was first privatised in 1986!  She possibly rescued Britain - known as the sick man of Europe at that time - from becoming a dysfunctional state.  Even opponents had to admire her tenacity and her strength of character.

She goes down in history as the longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century and the only woman to have held that office. RIP Baroness Thatcher.