Ian Wood: Even perfection has its blemishes

Published on Sunday 22 November 2009 23:17

DUE to the handy time difference, I was able to watch the conclusion of the Dubai World Championship and witness Lee Westwood outgolfing a field of considerable class. It's not often I get the chance to witness the big finishes these days, and I couldn't have picked a better one. Par seemed to have gone totally out of fashion and the main contenders were content to stick with birdies when they weren't bagging eagles.

Even amid this welter of perfection, however, mistakes occurred and eyes were turned to the skies in search of some sort of explanation. None was forthcoming, of course, for there isn't one. It's just that

perfection needs a blemish here and there to set it off and if a golfer happens to be chosen to provide the blemish then that's his or her bad luck.

Life isn't supposed to be a bed or roses – and careful observers will have noted that it isn't. When all is too smooth, credibility is lost. I recently watched a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in which the governor of California kills everybody except the wine waiter, and reflected on how far removed from reality the whole business had been. Entertaining enough, of course, but it doesn't happen like that.

When someone is punched on the nose it hurts. The eyes tend to water and a general feeling of misery sets in. Arnie was punched regularly, was shot at least once and was slashed by knives, but none of this seemed to faze him. With one arm out of action, he defeated the top baddie and emerged with his teeth gleaming and the merest droplet of tastefully applied blood adhering to parts of his person where it wouldn't mar the symmetry of the body beautiful. It's nice work if you can get it, but you rarely can.

Apart from Westwood, who appeared to be moving along a predestined path exclusively his own, the rest of the Dubai field stumbled from time to time, but their misfortunes, major or minor, merely underlined the general excellence of the golf being played. The tournament was a reminder of the staggering standards of golf at the top level. It isn't an easy game at any level, but somehow those at the top manage to make it look as if it is.

Great golf has always been admired and wondered at by those who are not particularly blessed in that department and it didn't come in with steel-headed clubs and orbiting golf balls. I was intrigued the other day, when given a slim volume, Golfers' Gallery, written by Frank Moran, the late, distinguished Golf Representative of The Scotsman. Let it be noted that they were representatives in those days, not just buckshee correspondents.

Recalling the exploits of JH Taylor, the sturdy Devon man who, in company with Harry Vardon and James Braid, formed golf's Great Triumvirate, Moran writes of the last of Taylor's five Open wins when the championship was played at Hoylake in 1913 in conditions which appear to have ranged from testing to impossible. Taylor was renowned for his ability to cope with bad weather, but even he was taxed on this occasion and the fact that he regarded his 77 in the third round as his greatest performance speaks volumes about what the weather must have been like.

Suffice it to say, he required three of his best shots with wood to get up at the first, but he stuck to his task and at the 17th, where the wind was at its most testing, struck a shot which has passed into championship lore. One of Taylor's great strengths was his play with the cleek, described by Moran as "storm proof," and he employed this expertise at the 17th where his second shot, fired into the teeth of the gale, was reported never to have risen higher than two yards from the ground in the course of its flight before finishing four yards from the pin. The par 4 was firmly secured.

Another passage from the past which would merit an accolade or two even today, concerns the American amateur, Francis Ouimet, who, at the age of 19, took on and defeated Vardon and his fellow Jerseyman, Ted Ray, in a play-off for the 1913 US Open. Ouimet was to become a fixture in the US Walker Cup team. At a crucial stage in the 1923 match at St Andrews, he met Britain's Roger Wethered, Amateur champion at the time, and found himself two down with three to play.

The last three holes at St Andrews do not appear, at first glance, the sort most likely to succumb readily and Wethered would almost certainly have accepted with gratitude the run of 4-4-4 which he duly reeled off had it been offered to him on the 16th tee. The match, however, was halved, Ouimet having polished off the finish in 3-4-3.

Returning briefly to the cleek front, James Braid was no slouch in that area. Horace Hutchinson, the great English amateur, in a reference to Braid's long-hitting cousin, Douglas Rolland, remarked to the Scot: "You can hit the ball as far as Rolland can." Braid, never one to muck about, replied: "Oh yes, I think I can do that, sir."