PORTHCAWL, WALES | Shwmae, which is a cheery Welsh greeting, is the first word of a column that is coming from Royal Porthcawl Golf Club, the venue in South Wales of the AIG Women’s Open, or in Welsh the AIG Agored Merched.
For Wales to stage the Agored Merched is big potatoes. It’s the largest women’s sporting event ever held in a country known for its singing and its rugby, that is smaller than New Jersey and has a population of 3 million. In North Wales there is a village with 58 letters and not many vowels in its name, and on account of the amount of space it takes up, we won’t mention it here.
England, Scotland and Northern Ireland stage the men’s Open, one of the game’s four major championships. It is an anomaly keenly felt by the Welsh, who can feel anomalies keenly, that their country has not. Now at least, Wales has staged a Women’s Open.
Last Friday morning, John Edwards, the secretary of Royal Porthcawl Golf Club, sat in his office adjoining and overlooking the first and 18th holes. Tall, slim, achingly polite and well-informed, Edwards, 38, has been at the epicentre of plans for the Agored Merched for years.
“This is a true R&A event,” Edwards said as Korean players Dasom Ma and Narin An accompanied by fellow competitor Chiari Tamburlini of Switzerland passed by a few feet away walking from the first green to the second tee. “They are the experts and goodness are they good at it. Our job is to get the course right, organise the volunteers (1,200 applied, 400 were turned away), look after the members and make the whole experience as good as it could be. There is a real sense of pride here. Having this Open is great for Wales.”
These days provided confirmation that the club, founded 134 years ago, is capable of holding events such as the Women’s Open.
Edwards mentioned the success of the 17 autonomous mowers that cut the greens, once, twice, three, and sometimes four times daily. This is believed to be the first major championship male or female to use these machines, which go about their business often at the dead of night like silent assassins. “These surely are massive for small golf clubs in future,” Edwards said.
Thursday and Friday were sun-blessed days for seaside golf. A frisky light wind, strong enough to slap your face yet not so strong as to blow off your hat, caressed a links set in a curve of land sometimes, and perhaps a little hyperbolically, likened to the Bay of Naples.
These days provided confirmation that the club, founded 134 years ago, is capable of holding events such as the Women’s Open, but not, as its course is currently configured, a men’s Open. This is not because the course is not good enough, because it certainly is, but because there isn’t enough space in its 160 acres for significant numbers of spectators to move freely between holes.
Fifteen thousand spectators attended the pro-am and first day’s play at the Women’s Open, and the target of 50,000 for the week was well within range. But more than 280,000 attended the Royal Portrush Open last month. Enough said.
At lunchtime on Thursday, Lottie Woad, the hero of the moment after winning her first event as a professional four days earlier, took to the first tee to rousing cheers. In England at present, women’s sport is the flavour of the moment, her Lionesses soccer squad having won the European Championship in Switzerland on the same day that Woad, as English as they come, was triumphing in the Women’s Scottish Open.
Among the jostling spectators, chattering cheerfully as they trailed Woad, was Nigel Edwards, the former Walker Cup player and captain and now performance director for England Golf who had seen Woad rise through the ranks. Edwards, a member of Royal Porthcawl (as I am), had guided Woad through a practice round at the course six weeks ago, beating her on the 18th somewhat to her chagrin.
“Lottie has a great attitude, an unbelievable work ethic and both challenges and leads,” Edwards said. “When we played she asked me for the line from the fourth tee. I pointed to Sker House (a yellow landmark) in the distance. That’s your line. If you hit too far left your ball will kick down from the slope into the left rough. If you go too far right the ball will end in the right rough.
“She looked at me and said: ‘Do you mean the left of Sker House, the middle of it or the right?’
“That’s what I mean when I say she challenges. She is exceptional.”
Suddenly a roar arose from the first green. “She’s bloody holed it for a birdie,” Edwards said with a smile, knowing it was the first hole of Woad’s first major championship as a professional.
“Lottie and Scottie [Scheffler] are like twins in their composure on a golf course,” Andrew Murray, a former DP World Tour player, said as the Woad group swept towards the fourth green “They are like brother and sister,” Mark Mouland, another former DP World Tour player, added as the trio reached the fifth tee.
Woad is a very good example of the modern female professional, one who has an average driving distance of 260 yards. “I think generally speaking that women pros are more risk averse than men,” Edwards said. “Lottie isn’t. She’ll go for anything.”
He addressed the notion, often held and expounded by men, that women’s short games are not as good as they should be. “It might have been once but it’s not now,” Edwards said. “It tells you something when our men [in the England training squads] turn out to watch Lottie for her short-game skills.”
Golf has provided those of us who write and watch the game with numerous choices these past weeks. You might like parkland, moorland, downland, inland golf courses. I adore links courses.
Last month there was the Open at magnificent Royal Portrush, which has fairways more rumpled than eiderdowns, and may be the best combination of aesthetic beauty and stomach-churning difficulty among the courses on which the Open is played.
Then came the Agored Merched at glorious Royal Porthcawl and its wooden clubhouse containing two bars that were once known to members as Trap One and Trap Two, its view of the Bristol Channel from every hole, its three opening holes each skirting the channel, its glorious sunsets and its changes of elevation.
Nor is one forgetting the U.S. Open in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, played at Oakmont Country Club, that golf course with a heart of steel in a city founded on steel and its 5-inch high rough and greens rolling at 14.5 on a Stimpmeter.
At the risk of sounding like an FWT (fan with typewriter), I will say this. It has been a privilege to attend such venues and watch golf of such quality.
Diolch yn fawr (thank you) and hwyl am y tro (goodbye for now).
E-MAIL JOHN
Top: The view from the clubhouse at Royal Porthcawl.
David Cannon, R&A via Getty Images