As the weather has been so delightful recently, I’ve been doing a lot of pottering about in the garden.
To tell you the truth, though, I wouldn’t know my, ahem, Aster from my elbow. My occasionally misguided attempts at gardening remind me of the old Two Ronnies line about the hapless horticulturist who tried to cross-pollinate a red-hot poker with a forget-me-not and ended up with a painful reminder.
In some ways, my approach to this tranquil, therapeutic pastime mirrors the way I play golf.
There’s plenty of enthusiastic endeavour but I’m still not quite sure what the hell I’m doing at times. Come to think of it, that sounds just like the way I tackle writing a column too.
There may not be many prize blooms in this correspondent’s back yard but at least we get to write about the best in show on golf’s grandest stages.
Step forward Scottie Scheffler. Again. Major number three is in the bag after his latest victory in the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.
On the face of it, a five-shot success would seem like a procession to a coronation. It was far from it, of course.
A slightly ragged outward-half – Scheffler hit only four greens in regulation on the front nine – coupled with Jon Rahm’s purposeful assault certainly made things interesting as the Spaniard briefly drew level.
The bold Scottie is made of stern stuff, though. As Rahm wilted like one of this scribe’s dehydrated flooers on the run-in, Scheffler’s unyielding mental fortitude and clinical execution in the decisive moments thrust him to victory. It was another trademark triumph.
In the build-up to the championship, giddy observers were drooling at the prospect of a free-flowing, unburdened Rory McIlroy sweeping into his happy hunting ground of Quail Hollow, winning again after his historic Masters conquest and teeing-up an assault on the same-season grand slam.
With that notion gone for a Burton, we’ve now swiftly moved along to the idea of Scheffler joining McIlroy in a rarefied pantheon by completing the career grand slam. “I don’t focus on that kind of stuff,” Scheffler said to temper the frenzy. Sensible man.
From a breakthrough PGA Tour win in 2022, Scheffler has packed 15 wins into a three-and-bit-year spell.
In the 20 majors he has contested over the past five years, Scheffler has won three times, posted 11 other top-10s, missed only one cut and finished outside the leading-20 just three times.
He's such a hardy perennial, they could stock him at a Dobbies Garden Centre.
The 107th PGA Championship was a bit of a curious affair, wasn’t it? After all the hype, hysteria and hoopla that was generated by McIlroy’s win at Augusta in April, the second men’s major of the season had a hard act to follow.
There were times, particularly on the opening couple of days, when proceedings in North Carolina felt as flat as a half-slurped bottle of Prosecco that had been sitting on the kitchen worktop for a few days.
Quail Hollow is an annual stop on the PGA Tour. This sense of familiarity made a major feel somewhat routine while the course set-up was largely indistinguishable from your regular tour event.
“I thought it was going to feel different just because it was a major championship, it felt no different,” suggested McIlroy, who had won four times at Quail Hollow down the years but was never in the reckoning last week.
“The rough is maybe a little juicier. But fairways are still the same cut lines and same visuals.”
McIlroy certainly wasn’t criticising, but his observation was far from complimentary. There was plenty of criticism and cursing, meanwhile, when play got going.
Tyrrell Hatton grabbed some headlines for his usual bonfire of the profanities while a seething Shane Lowry thumped a club into the turf after a chunked approach and growled, “f*** this place.” It wasn’t quite the erudite analysis of Henry Longhurst.
The grumblings had been growing due to various instances of mud balls and the PGA of America’s decision not to have preferred lies in operation after heavy rain saturated the course in the build-up.
It even riled mild-mannered Scheffler. Having blamed his double-bogey on the 16th during round one on the effects of mud on the ball, he felt this element of chance created by a dirty dollop on a dimpled sphere was unbefitting of a major championship.
“You spend your whole life trying to learn how to control a golf ball and due to a rules decision, all of a sudden you have absolutely no control over where that golf ball goes,” lamented Scheffler. “But I don’t make the rules. I just have to deal with the consequences of those rules.”
Boo hoo, eh?
The opposing and time-honoured sentiment, of course, is that you play the ball as it lies. “Golf,” as Jack Nicklaus said, “is not and never has been a fair game.”
The rub of the green, which can account for various fluctuating fortunes and the good and bad that happens during a round, is par for the course in this fickle old pursuit of inherent imperfections.
Give it a week and those muttering about the bad break of a mud ball may be quietly thanking their lucky stars when a wayward shot rattles around in the trees and bounces back into the fairway.
You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to tend to my herbaceous border.
