PORTHCAWL, WALES | Robots would seem to be intruding on our game in a big way. First, we heard that Scottie Scheffler had suggested to his coach that he was aiming at “playing like a robot.” And last week we learned that the R&A are going down the robotic route – and that they joined forces with the global robotics leader, Husqvarna, to have its autonomous mowers taking charge of the greens at Royal Porthcawl last week.
“A team of Husqvarna experts will be on hand to support the championship in the deployment of 15 Husqvarna CEORA 546 EPOS and two automower 580L EPOS,” said the company’s press release.
There have been positive comments from Richard Windows, the assistant director of sustainable agronomy at the R&A and plenty of others, but there would seem to be a mixed bag of feelings.
In an article asking if robot mowers are threatening the jobs of greenkeepers in the British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association’s magazine Your Course, Neil McLoughlin, the Deeside Golf Club course manager and master greenkeeper, had a complaint which sounds entirely understandable: “I’d happily let a robot take care of all the paper work and allow me more time to be out on the course.”
Which, of course, is why he – and so many others – went into greenkeeping in the first place.
So far, the robots haven’t been given a say.
There were two sets of “active” sisters in the AIG Women’s Open at Royal Porthcawl this year – identical twins Akie and Chisato Iwai from Japan, and Moriya and Ariya Jutanugarn from Thailand. Where the Iwais are in their rookie seasons on the LPGA, both Jutanugarns have been full time there for more than a decade and Ariya won the 2016 AIG Women’s Open at Woburn.
Moriya has also won an Open – the R&A’s 2008 Junior Open (for under 16-year-olds), which takes place every second year in the same week as the men’s.
It is a mixed event and, at Hesketh, England, 17 years ago, the then 13-year-old Moriya defeated Jordan Spieth who, to his credit, took the result well. To date, Moriya is the only girl to have won that event.
Meanwhile, another pair of twins, Morgane and Kim Metraux from Switzerland, came close to joining the other sisters in the Porthcawl field. Morgane progressed from final qualifying at Pyle & Kenfig but Kim did so only as a first reserve and had the bad luck that no-one dropped out.
Moriya was the only one of the professional sisters in the field to miss the cut.
The R&A’s communications department asked the Welsh Golf Union if they could arrange a surprise visit from Lydia Ko for a group of juniors from the Llantrisant and Pontyclun Golf Club.
The club in question had just been given Junior Club of the Year status for the very good reason that they now boast 180 junior members where, 10 years ago, they had only four or five. Ko was happy to be a party to such a surprise and, according to John McDonald and Joe Francis, the professionals who have given so much time to these youngsters, the occasion could not have gone down better.
McDonald said there was one Ko comment that had kept the youngest members of the group running around the club for the rest of the week. Namely, when she told them, “You’ve got a better swing than I had at your age!”
What a compliment! At 7, Ko was playing in the New Zealand Amateur championship and, at 12, she had a handicap of +2.1. Had she been a member of Llantrisant and Pontyclun Golf Club, she would have had free membership while under the age of 13. Which helps to explain why parents see that category as making the best of sense.
Nelly Korda and her caddie, Jason McDede, came well prepared for this Open after what happened on the Sunday at St Andrews last year. With the weather cold, wet and wind-tossed, you could almost hear Korda’s teeth chattering over her last few holes on the Old Course.
“We’ve had a talk about it,” said McDede a week or so ago. “She’ll have more pants on her this time.”
The word “pants” does not have the same meaning over here. Where, in America, it means trousers, or layers thereof, over here it means nothing more than a pair of flimsy underpants which are hardly calculated to keep anyone warm.
Minjee Lee would seem to have prepared for cooler climes by convincing herself that she likes cold weather and wearing a sweater, while another Australian, Grace Kim, the winner of last month’s Amundi Evian Championship, was advising people that it was pointless to look at a forecast in the U.K. “because it’s always wrong … I just expect the worst and hope for the best.”
She would have got some of both last week.
Here’s another of Lottie Woad’s many virtues. She is better than most at looking on the bright side. Level par on the first day and 5-under for the first 15 holes of her second round, she hit her drive into impenetrable rough on the 16th, with the help of the wind, and ended up with a triple-bogey 7. “Over the day, I did a lot more good things than bad,” came her cheerful summation.
That Darcey Harry, the 22-year-old Welsh girl who is a member of Royal Porthcawl, had opening rounds of 70 and 72 to be 2-under par, was the talk of the town. She plays all her golf at the club with her father and brother and, when asked if she had been involved in the women members’ medals and matches before she turned professional at the start of the year, she explained that university studies, along with practice sessions and the amateur circuit, hadn’t left her with any time.
If inadvertently, she has done as such as Laura Davies, Charley Hull and Lexi Thompson in playing most of her golf with men – and what a difference that makes.
At other clubs, the women might have pestered Darcey to play in this and that, but at Royal Porthcawl they’re just happy to lend support to this very talented youngster.
There’s a title in the women’s game that is growing in stature every year because it is one that every girl would want on her CV. It’s the Rose Ladies Open and this year will be played from 5-7 September at Hanbury Manor in England.
It began as part of the Rose Series, the run of tournaments that Justin Rose and his wife, Kate, sponsored when Europe’s women golfers needed competitive golf during COVID, and has since been elevated to Ladies European Tour Access Series status.
Chiara Tamburlini from Switzerland, who was among those tied for third through 36 holes of the AIG Women’s Open last week, won the tournament in 2023 and how much happier she must be to have her name etched on that trophy than, say, the men’s WM Phoenix Open, which Belgium's Thomas Detry won this year.
I’m sure the Waste Management company does a grand job and I’m sure that Detry was delighted with his feat. It’s just that “Waste Management” wouldn’t have been an obvious choice for someone winning what was his first victory on either the DP World or PGA tours.
Lewine Mair