IRVINE, SCOTLAND | A sunny Wednesday at Dundonald Links, the venue for last week’s ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open, provided the calm before Thursday’s storm. The chance of rain was 100 percent, the wind was to blow at 15-25 mph, and localised flooding was “possible.” For once, the forecast was accurate.
Come Thursday morning, an announcement went out first thing about a one-hour delay which eventually grew to 3 hours and 20 minutes.
Yet far from dreading what was to come, the women had been dripping with excitement at the prospect of such eventualities. Charley Hull and Georgia Hall were just two of the home contingent to be rubbing their hands. “I think that British people handle the weather a lot better because we understand it,” Hall said.
When one among the caddies mentioned that the Americans, whose tours tend to follow the sun, were apt to feel uncomfortable in waterproofs, it took one back to the 2010 Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor in Wales. That was the year when the USA’s allegedly waterproof jackets started to leak via the embroidered stitching which spelt out the players’ names across the back.
It was the incorrigible Ian Poulter who, when asked if he had enjoyed the news that the visiting team had had to buy new waterproofs (at the cost of more than £4,000), came out with a mischievous, “Well, ours are keeping us nice and dry.”
“The outdoors can make you happy. Challenge yourself at things that you like doing. If, for example, you like running, turn 3k into 5k and enjoy the sense of achievement.”
Charley Hull
The press are always on the lookout for a follow-on story and, in the case of Hull’s cigarette moment at this year’s U.S. Women’s Open, the one which had ballooned her number of Instagram admirers to more than 600,000, she was keen to revisit the incident with GGP before it was extinguished for good. Because it had caused more amusement than anything else, she wanted to make it doubly clear that she would not want youngsters to think, If it’s OK for Charley to smoke, why can’t I?
In January of this year, she had been given some powerful tablets to slow her down following a diagnosis of ADHD, that quick-as-a-flash condition which had caused her to run out of steam in the closing round of last year’s AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath. “I was taking several of these tablets a day and they were making me feel worse all the time. Then, all of a sudden, I had the strength of mind to chuck them in the bin. The vaping and/or smoking took their place.”
More and more, she is concentrating on fitness, and she recommends that others should go down the same route. “The outdoors can make you happy. Challenge yourself at things that you like doing. If, for example, you like running, turn 3k into 5k and enjoy the sense of achievement.”
Hull loves the younger fry, and there is a video – posted by the R&A on YouTube ahead of this week’s AIG Women’s Open at St Andrews – of her taking a 9-year-old girl named Gracie by surprise before suggesting they hit a few shots together on the Old Course. Her advice for the child is to play with boys and to hit the ball hard and hit it past them “because they don’t like it.”
On to Lydia Ko, another great character among the female professionals and one who had her own message for the junior brigade. She hoped many more of them would get inspired by what they had seen at the Olympics: “Not only by myself but by seeing the Games, picking up on the dream, and then hoping to become an Olympian and represent their country one day.”
Ko’s mother, Hyeon Bong-sook, was telling GGP how her daughter had never changed from the day she started to play golf. “She’s been very consistent from the start, not just with her play but the way she reacts to everything,” she said. The mother’s tribute to her daughter would be matched by Rose Zhang when she said, “I admire nothing so much as the way Lydia carries herself. What she’s like off the course is what she’s like on it. Out of everyone, she earns the right to be good. It makes me feel comfortable that she’s still around for me to see her.”
Meanwhile, Céline Boutier’s mother shook her head in disbelief at how her daughter had become such an out-and-out star in France. Boutier, of course, was the early leader in the Paris Olympics before finishing in a share of 18th and returning to the Scottish Open which she won last year. “In the beginning,” said Mme Boutier, “she was good at a lot of things – from playing the piano, to swimming, to golf. When she was 12, I asked her, ‘What do you want to do? If you want to do everything, you must realise you can’t be good at everything.’ ”
Which was when this shy soul chose golf.
Colin Cann, her caddie, said he had to wipe away tears at one point at Le Golf National, so moved was he at the way the crowd supported her from start to finish.
Cann would agree that had Boutier come from anywhere other than France, the fans probably would have started to fade away from the moment it became obvious that she was not about to win a medal.
Finally, a word of praise for Dundonald, which was bought by Darwin Escapes in 2019 and is today among the finest of modern links.
Plenty of balls may go a-missing in the gorse, but would you believe that the paper mill and water towers which originally dominated the course, had similarly done a disappearing act? All thanks to a forest of strategically-placed pine trees.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Lydia Ko
Paul Devlin, Getty Images