Greatgolfholidays - we love golf.

Captain Nick Faldo set the tone for the Ryder Cup during his opening speech on Thursday night at Valhalla. Not in terms of golf you understand, but in terms of how incredibly dull the man is. What should have been an inspirational, motivational speech was in fact mind numbingly boring and far too long, half of which was dedicated to his family!! You’d think with all the time he’d had to prepare for this moment in time, he might have at least got his facts right. But oh no, when it (finally) came to talking about his team, the embarrassing ambassador introduced Soren Hansen as Soren Stenson and asked Graeme McDowell, “Are you from Ireland or Northern Ireland?” Ignorance is no excuse at this level – this was pure cringe and extremely awkward! His incessant attempts to make jokes all week also hit the upper echelons of cringe worthiness!

Throughout the whole weekend, Faldo kept going on about how much ‘fun’ he and the team were having – Really?? With the limited coverage available (see below Ref; Sky Sports) I am not sure I witnessed any of this. I did see the Americans having fun….. and lots of it! To see Jim Furyk smiling & passionate on one hand, and Sergio Garcia dour & desolate on the other, speaks volumes about the disposition of each team. And as for Lee Westwoods out of character comments after his singles defeat about the ‘shameful Valhalla crowd’, and how ‘he wished he was on a flight at 9pm Sunday night instead of 9am Monday morning’, please…… grow up, admit defeat graciously and move on!

I am not going to make comment on Faldo’s selections over the 3 days, which have taken up far too much press, as I personally believe this is more luck than judgement. After all, they are all brilliant golfers with the ability to out play each other at any time. As long as there is cohesion in the pairings and steely determination in the singles, the rest of it is down to motivation and belief – and the Americans had bucket loads of these!

The way that Sky Sports pussyfooted around Faldo’s inadequacies was pathetic, as was their overall coverage! There was simply not enough ‘golf’ shown! The ridiculous amount of adverts aside, we had to endure the scoreboard every 2 minutes; or the picture of the 18th; or the graphics showing the pairings – you know the graphics I am talking about; where each player walks up to the camera, smiles and folds their arms – awful, awful, awful!!! How many times did we see the last 6 pairings actually playing golf on the last day? And the first group had got to about the 5th hole before we got coverage of each afternoons fourballs whilst the commentators had their ‘break’. Add to this the dull, condescending, conceited tones of Ewen Murray and you have a full house of utter sh*t. To learn that the BBC also sent a full contingent of commentators to Valhalla for both TV, in order to bring us a ‘highlights’ programme, and for the Radio 5 ‘Football Channel’, also beggars belief – what a complete waste of our licence money… especially with Gary Linekar, once again, getting a free ride on TV!

Enough of the shortcomings, lets talk about the highlights, of which there were many.

My top 3 highlights were as follows:

- In third place – seeing JB Holmes hit a driver and a 6 iron into the green on the 594 yards par 5 tenth. We all like to hit the ball a long way but this guy is ridiculous!!
- In second place – Ian Poulter. He was sublime all week and to this end, one has to applaud Faldo for his wildcard pick. I would also like to mention Graeme McDowell and Robert Karlsson who both performed with aplomb.
- In first place – it has to go to Boo Weekley who single handedly got the crowd behind Team USA. Who will ever forget his antics on the 1st on Sunday as he gave a good impression of the Kentucky Derby as he ran up the fairway riding his driver like a horse and pretending to whip his backside – pure genius!! And my ribs are sore from laughter just thinking about it now. And as for some of his quotes, like this one - “The adrenalin, I feel like a dog that somebody done stuck a needle to and it juiced me up like I’ve been running around a greyhound track chasing one of them bunnies.” The man is a breath of fresh air who puts our sport in perspective.

Simply put, this was sport at its best! The Ryder Cup is the ultimate golf competition and, I, for one, am glad the USA won as it will only further enhance the spectacle and reputation of this great competition and our great sport. I shall be trying to get tickets to the Ryder Cup in Wales in 2010 and I just hope that Mr Boo Weekley is a member of the USA team that year.

The Zigsters blog has been a bit of a non-event over the past 10 months. Indeed, if there is anyone out there who actually reads this then my apologies! If not, then I suppose my time has been better spent.

Last Wednesday, I played Littlestone with some mates having bid for the opportunity in a charity auction earlier in the year. If you like Links golf, and I do, then this is a gem – pure and simple! It has heritage too and will be a Final Qualifying Course for The Open in 2011.

After a long and miserable summer, I was looking forward to this day with some trepidation – links courses are not the best place to be when its p**sing down with rain! However, we were lucky; the sun was shining and it was warm enough to wear shorts (more about this later). What looked like a fairly innocuous start from the 1st tee directly in front of the club house soon turned into a real challenge. Whilst the fairways are wide enough, the rough is penal and if you stray into this, it will certainly ruin your card. This combined with the wind; make it a course that you need to play with all your faculties! The par 4 16th is probably the pick of the holes. At 469 yards off the whites, and into a strong wind, it is one of the toughest holes I have ever played. A good drive and a good 3 wood still found me well short of the green and I ended up with a 6 that felt like an achievement! My par, par finish, and the fact that I did not lose a ball all round, left me feeling elated after what can only be described as a thoroughly enjoyable round of golf.

And so, back to the ‘shorts’…. I do not want to make criticism of Littlestone but I’m afraid I have too. You see, the club is guilty of enforcing one of the most ridiculous ‘club rules’ in golf – I am talking about the ‘long sock’ rule whereby if you wear shorts, you have to wear long socks. We arrived at the club and a member asked us if we had long socks as we would have to wear them with shorts. Ordering a drink in the bar, the barman asked us the same question. Checking in, the assistant secretary asked us the same question. Teeing off on the second, a member came across from the 1st and said we really ought to ‘pull our socks up’ and a similar incident happened as we were coming down the 18th. For goodness sake, what is the point and why be so formal about it??

Golf has a bad enough ‘fashion reputation’ as it is and rules like this only enhance this reputation further, in a negative way. Honestly, if you had seen the 4 of us on the course that day, dressed the way we were, with long white socks (all that was available in the pro shop for £8.50!!), you might have wanted to shoot us to put us out of our misery!! Golf should be about respecting the course and rules like this are simply an unrelated irritant.

Having said that, everyone we met was extremely friendly and I would go back and play Littlestone tomorrow. After our round, I bumped into the General Manager and the Pro who were having a meeting in the bar (my kinda people!). We will be putting together a 2night/3round Itinerary which will include Littlestone, Princes & Royal Cinque Ports. Whilst there might be a bit of driving involved to get to the courses, this will add to our portfolio of great golf so….. watch this space!