underway

Loved this from the BBC website's Ryder Cup coverage :

"The European fans are in good voice on the 1st tee, singing such classics as 'Walking in a Faldo wonderland' and 'Where's your Tiger gone?'. The US can only reply with 'USA, USA'." Read the full report on the 1st tee Ryder Cup banter here

Now I know earlier I alluded that the Ryder Cup is a the only time Golf is interesting but this Guardian article on Maurice Flitcroft gives lie to that


The 37th Ryder Cup starts today in Kentucky, and last week, as the world's top golfers made their final preparations, the personal effects of one of the game's most singular talents were briefly on display in Carlisle. At Home With the Flitcrofts told the surreal life story of the late Maurice Flitcroft, self-styled "Golfer Extraordinary", and while it is a shame that the show passed completely under the radar before it closed, this somehow seems apt. For Maurice was the golfer who went undetected by officials at the 1976 Open championship, competing in golf's grandest tournament despite never having played a round in his life.

Maurice became headline news that day, carding a round of 121, the worst in Open history. His story didn't end there. For the next 14 years, he would engage in a farcical game of cat-and-mouse with Keith Mackenzie, secretary of the R&A, golf's governing body, and a man whose constitution appears to have been 10% flesh, 10% blood and 80% rulebook. The humourless Mackenzie felt humiliated by Flitcroft's antics in 1976 and banned him sine die - so Maurice simply entered again and again, employing ludicrous pseudonyms such as Gerald Hoppy, James Beau Jolly, Count Manfred von Hofmannstal and Gene Paychecki. Usually the denouement would feature Flitcroft being chased from the course, but by the time that happened the battle had already been won.

Flitcroft's tale would be amazing as it stands, yet At Home With the Flitcrofts somehow managed to embellish it further by covering the antics of his twin sons, Gene van Flitcroft and James Harlequin Flitcroft, whose scrapes include caddying for Lee Trevino, winning the 1984 World Disco Dancing championship, and becoming proud recipients of the UK's first-ever anti-social behaviour injunction. For swordfighting. Each other. Whatever unfolds at Valhalla this weekend, it will have nothing on this.