Conventional Swing

Believe the hyperbole if you want; Rory has usurped Tiger, this is the second golden age of European golf and a total eclipse of the Americans for a sixth Major in a row. It isn’t called the Open for nothing and few venues have a more deserved reputation for throwing up the most unlikely results. The field at Sandwich is spread wide-open and like all true xenophobes I shall be cheering for a home-grown winner or possibly a European victory or at any cost not an American; I am getting too much pleasure from watching them squirm. I thought Congressional would be a wide-open affair and it was a coronation. While I don’t exactly expect an abdication, this will be an egalitarian event with possibly an everyman winner. Sandwich hadn’t figured on the roster for 32 years when in 1981 Bill Rogers’pudding-bowl haircut appeared from nowhere during an era dominated by Tom Watson’s and the emerging Seve. Rogers was no mug but he was not in their class, his win was a real ...

At around 14/1 the field, this week’s US Open golf promises to be a bookmakers’ bonanza. Don’t be a brass monkey for them, gird your loins and wait; contenders and punters alike will need balls of steel on Sunday. The US Open is the toughest test in golf. Sunday afternoon at Congressional will be a magnitude tougher. Recent history is littered with last day collapses among the leaders and the winner is the last man standing, a man with real bottle. Numbers don’t lie, since 2005 winners have been 200/1, 100/1, 150/1, 225/1 and 80/1. You’d have struggled to find any of those pre-tournament and they weren’t all obvious winners overnight Saturday. The exception of course was one E.T.Woods (7/2) who outstayed Rocco Mediate (400/1) with a broken leg, Tiger’s ability to win from the front has been peerless but there’s no such candidate this year. So don’t get drawn in early, wait, see whose hovering around the final groups and be happy to have ...

The Masters golf’s Greatest Show on Earth starts Thursday with a field of 99 and the top two in the betting are a couple of flakes well worth avoiding. While all the coverage still targets Woods and Mickelson, neither justifies support especially at the prices on offer. Woods is an almost unbelievable 12/1. Unbelievable because he isn’t favourite and on all known form he should be twice that price. By his own admission his putting stroke, a gift from the Gods until now, has deserted him. Perhaps a return to his father’s principles will resurrect his form but on these greens nothing but his A-game will do. Until last weekend, Mickelson was equally fragile perhaps even worse. After two remarkably ordinary rounds in Houston, Phil suddenly found some magic. He has been dreadful, now he is 13/2 favourite to retain his title. Do you believe that all those 4, 5, 6 footers he has missing like clock-work are going to go in on the marble stair cases that are Augusta’s greens ...

The FA Cup takes 9 months, the ICC World Cup 7 weeks, Wimbledon a fortnight and most of the games are hopeless mismatches, golf’s Accenture World Match Play takes 5 days and every match is a full-on contest. It’s a knock-out in every sense. This is a straight shoot out between the best 64 golfers in the World. Over 18-holes anyone can beat any other and with the final now over the minimum distance too, this promises to be the best one-on-one of the year anywhere. Of course there is the strong possibility that the top names will get eliminated early and the fickle media will lose interest (last year’s final went almost unnoticed and unattended by the Yanks) but believe me this will not detract from the competitive nature of the event. For the money involved in reaching each next round, the intense but friendly rivalry and the pride attached to demonstrating their World Ranking, there will be no slacking, no chucking matches and no cheats. All the runners are trying, betting ...

BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year used to be the highlight of the sporting year, a culmination of all that is good in sport before sport was live 24/7. Now it is a bet rigging jamboree and an opportunity for even sports’ authorities to indulge in some light hearted skulduggery. In fact cheating and vote trading is so common place; it should be sponsored by FIFA. So many factions are bigging up one candidate or another and mobilising their forces to swamp the voting lines, it will probably be the fairest bet of the year! There are some split loyalties that should tighten up the result but at the end of the day, there will be a truly worthy winner, although he will probably get fewer votes than Matt Cardle. Fittingly this is a FIFA and football free zone. Last year the last British footballing icon, Ryan Giggs was a cop-out SPOTY. Now there are no British footballers, or at least one with a reputation intact, to support. Did you know that The Voice and Zoo included Didier Drogba ...

This hurts but…well done HSBC. Congratulations for prising a so-called World Golf Championship event away from the monopoly that is American golf. For the second year running a golf tournament designated ‘World’ is not taking place in the USA. Don’t ignore the delicious irony; a behemoth, tier 1 global bank, which is finally investing some dollars to wrestle away a WGC event from the clutches of another group of greedy, fat-cat autocrats known as the PGA Tour to invest on a show in the antithesis of the “land of the free, the home of the brave…” aka People's Republic of China. Yes folks, a WGC golf tournament that is not in America, is not dominated by PGA Tour players, is not an advertising bonanza for corporate America and absolutely best of all, we armchair golf-watchers do not have to suffer the super-sized, over-hyped, commercialised cliché-ridden coverage of the all powerful, dictatorial US television networks over here! Shame ...

In May, I wailed: “ My heart bleeds…as this international cricketing summer approaches and is reduced to a sad, sporting side-show.” Turns out I was wrong. I n very murky conditions the News of the World took a light-meter reading and decided that the light was too bad for the game to continue without them turning the floodlights on. The cricket really has been very poor this summer desperately lacking quality or news worthiness so somebody at News International decided their odious rag should prompt a betting scandal. While the jury is out on their motives, the media has instigated a kangaroo court, convicted and executed the accused in a most public and unsporting manner. I do not share the common view about the spot fixing allegations. Firstly these are merely allegations, nothing has been proven, although the players position is untenable until proof is offered one way or the other. The allegations are by the media. The authorities are merely investigating, with Scotland ...

Have you noticed that no sporting event is a contest in its own right anymore? The media has just turned every event into preparation for the next ‘ultimate challenge’! The only way to actually enjoy an event for its own sake is to have a bet. Win or lose the outcome is final, absolute, not a preliminary, not a prequalification, no dress rehearsal for anything but a heart-thumping, breath-taking, edge-of-the-seat moment in time, who needs the Ashes, a place in Europe or 2012, enjoy the ‘now’? A Test Match starts on Friday. Is anyone interested in this as a contest? The Pakistanis were pathetic at Trent Bridge. The British media has written the current series off as ‘no contest’ and resorted to upping the ante with ‘preparation for the Ashes’. I’m more interested in seeing if KP can break out of his slough. Everybody enjoy the European athletics last week? Nahhh, ‘no Americans’, ‘wouldn’t have stood a chance against ...

Are you weary of simulating prima donnas, ball tampering, ‘claret’ spurting Harlequins, blood transfusing cyclists, frame-throwing potters and injury feigning rackets? There are a number of reasons why it is called the Open Championship; one of them is because you won’t see cheating at St Andrews this week! The No. 1 in the game may be guilty of cheating on his wife but you can be absolutely sure that none of the 156 competitors would ever commit the cardinal sin of cheating on the game of golf. It is open, fair and honest…honest. A few miscreants break the rules but unlike other lily-livered sporting authorities, golf is ruthless. Minor misdemeanours mean penalties, for more serious offences disqualification is automatic and heaven forbid, anyone caught deliberately cheating is black-balled and excluded permanently from the game. I can’t think of a single professional, who has incurred such treatment but suffice to say Bill Clinton was nearly impeached for ...

What a country we live in! Our summer sports have rarely faired better; 3-0 up against our arch enemies in cricket’s one-day international series, Andy Murray on the brink of Wimbledon immortality and our golfers winning all over the World. Yet, the only topic of conversation is those overpaid louts, who have apparently shamed the nation and their beseiged Italian manager. Is football really the only game in town? More than ever before it seems that the nation is obsessed with the ‘beautiful game’. Well folks, headline news; this World Cup has been absolute pants! A miserable excuse for a major sporting event, it is not ‘beautiful', it is repetitive, unerringly dreary and a non-spectacle. I hope the readers of these pages have won a few bob because the marketing people, who said: “it’s more fun when your money’s on it” were almost right. There’s no fun at all unless you’ve got money on this rubbish! Let’s all cheer up ...