I am not caddying this week and am enjoying lazy days and a few drinks while catching up with some old friends and meeting new.
We wandered down to The Old Course last Sunday and somehow found ourselves in Ham’s Hame which is the new pub next to the eighteenth green. I ordered a Dalwhinnie of the double variety. I was informed by the barman that I would not have to pay for it as some lovely American chap, having lunch with his two sons, had covered it! And I will say that was very nice of him.
It was a lovely evening and we strolled down the 18th and had something to eat, while sitting outside, at The One Under Pub and watched the end of the practice round. Got talking to lovely Elaine Stewart from Glasgow and an American lady whose son, Oliver Sniederjans, is an amateur playing in The Open and was just coming in. We had the privilege of meeting the lovely young man and wished him well for the week. He actually started The Open like a rocket and got four under after eight which was a bit of a dream.
Anyway on the way back and feeling a tad on the merry side, I got interviewed by the Callaway Golf crew and was somehow able to have a degree of verbal coherence. This surprised me. And more surprising was the fact that they later described me as a gem.
Decided to get in touch with my pal Kate McKeag who works for the Beeb and is up for the week. We had a chat on the phone and it turns out she works alongside another old friend Peter who I have known since a kid. Small small world.
Anyway we met up last night at their lodgings in town where I met producer Steve and Maureen who does the on course commentary. Steve made a superb meal and we downed a few glasses of wine and had a very interesting and entertaining evening. Peter still can’t get his head round my floral interests and I can’t get my head round the fact that he works with Kate, and that he forgot about the time he had to retrieve a hot roast potato from a woman’s cleavage that summer when we were students working as silver service waiters.
And there were lots of other questions left open about bed sharing in Royal County Down and the toilet habits of crane camera operators and a marvellous unanswerable quiz question. What did Sevvy do in winning his last Open that will never be done again?
And I think I know the answer. But Maureen has the gift of the blarney.