YOU don’t get much for your money just now. The other day, for instance, I flung £30 worth of unleaded into the car at the petrol station and by the time I’d made the tiny journey to that bit of the forecourt where you blow up your tyres, I had to return to the pump to fill the bloomin’ thing up again.
Goodness knows how much it’s going to cost me to drive from Glasgow to East Lothian for this week’s Genesis Scottish Open in an auld jalopy that rattles, creaks and clatters like the marching skeleton army in Jason and the Argonauts.
By the time I get to the Longniddry Bents, the amount I’ll have spent on fuel will be broadly equivalent to the entire prize fund of the domestic showpiece. For the record, that sum is a mighty £6.5 million. Imagine that figure appearing on a crumpled Esso receipt alongside a can of juice and a packet of Soor Plooms?
Fifty years after it appeared on the first official schedule of the newly formed European Tour – now the DP World Tour - the Scottish Open is now one of golf’s biggest occasions. That 14 of the world’s top 15, and all four current major champions, are playing at The Renaissance this week underlines its stature.
Back in 1937, the fledgling Scottish Open, scheduled to take place the week before The Open of that season at Carnoustie, was cancelled. It had been played in 1935 and 1936 but wouldn’t reappear on the scene again until 1972.
“I was told that the Royal & Ancient club would not allow the tournament to be played just before The Open in the same neighbourhood,” said the Scottish Open organiser A E Penfold, the heid honcho of that ye olde ball manufacturing company, in a report scribbled in The Glasgow Herald at the time.
These days, of course, the prized slot in the schedule the week before The Open is so cherished it’s just about protected by the National Trust for Scotland. That date in the diary remains very much the Scottish Open’s domain but, a decade ago, we all wondered if that would be lost.
When Barclays ended its long-running sponsorship, there were genuine fears that the national championship, not for the first time in its history, would wither on the vine. The intervention of the Scottish Government and Aberdeen Asset Management, the company that would go on to back it until 2021, essentially saved the event.
And look at it now? Here in 2022, the Scottish Open, co-sanctioned between the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour in an historic alliance, is in spectacularly fine fettle even if it will be played out against the on-going din of discontent.
There continues to be a heck of a lot to digest in golf these days. In fact, I’ve just given myself a touch of heartburn simply typing that last sentence.
The crash, bang, wallop between the established tours and the Saudi-bankrolled LIV Golf Series, which is akin to three rutting stags vying for supremacy only marginally less civilised, continues to generate hoopla, headlines, rancour and rumour.
There were explosive revelations that the likes of Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter were set to unleash their lawyers in a last-gasp bid to have a ban from this week’s Scottish Open overturned.
Reports the other day, meanwhile, about a locker-room tirade by LIV Golf defector Sergio Garcia only added to the general fever. After hearing the rebels would be barred from the Scottish Open, the fiery – many would say childlike – Spaniard hurled the toys out the pram and allegedly roared, “you’re all f***ed” to anybody in earshot who wasn’t signing up with the Saudis. Funnily enough, I’m sure a petrol station cashier shouted something similarly foul-mouthed to those of us gazing forlornly at the £2 per litre sign.
It's all happening isn’t it? And the more that happens, the more there is to be flabbergasted about. Talor Gooch, for example, compared last weekend’s second LIV Golf event, and the team element that is part of these 54-hole shoot-outs, to a Ryder Cup. "I haven't played a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup, but I can't imagine there's a whole hell of a lot of difference," he said in a quite extraordinary comparison which must have provoked great guffaws of spluttering astonishment.
Amazingly, Gooch’s sweeping statement about the emotional enormity of a series that is just over a month old was backed up by Ryder Cup player Patrick Reed as he nodded along like the Churchill Insurance dog while Gooch gushed. Remarkable stuff.
Meanwhile, Pat Perez, who cobbled together an 80 in the final round but still pocketed $750,000 as part of the winning team on top of the $153,000 he earned for a share of 29th in the individual standings, claimed that the whole LIV experience was, “the greatest thing I’ve ever been part of.”
The sycophantic declarations really do beggar belief and the level of relentless toadying from the players, as well as the hurrah for everything servility from those doing the live-stream commentary, is excruciatingly dreadful.
When you’re getting paid a jaw-dropping fortune, though, you can probably afford to sacrifice your self-respect. And on that note, I’d better away and fill up the ruddy car again.
