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The Martin Vousden Column
May 18 2012 Posted in Golf News, Martin Vousden by GoKartThought for the Day:
If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain
We need to talk about Kevin
Those of you who watched Kevin Na’s extraordinary performance at the Players’ Championship will probably have one of two possible reactions – acute annoyance towards someone who needs to buck up, or deep sympathy for a soul in torment because he has developed a pre-shot routine that takes longer to complete than a Colin Montgomerie press conference. I find myself leaning towards the sympathetic end of the spectrum. For those who didn’t see him, a quick recap. At its worst, his routine consists of seven waggles (you can’t stop yourself from counting them), a full swing in which the clubhead swishes over the ball, a step back, step forward and re-address the ball (while the caddy moves in behind to check the player’s alignment), several more waggles and then the swing itself which, more often than not, sends the ball straight down the fairway. Watching all of this is like being allowed into an experimental psychiatric facility, where bizarre behaviour is encouraged in order to study it and hopefully find a cure. It is reminiscent of Sergio Garcia a few years ago when he gripped and re-gripped his club to such an extent that you feared he would develop a repetitive strain injury. Not surprisingly but with enormous disappointment I noticed that the reaction of some in the gallery was as wantonly cruel as it had been to Garcia. In his case they counted out loud as the number of re-grips escalated. With Na, they simply shouted things like ‘Hit the ball’ while he was still halfway through his tormented drill. Is this kind of malicious delight in someone else’s (more…)
Martin Vousden – lefties rule!
May 11 2012 Posted in Golf News, Martin Vousden by GoKartThought for the Day
Money isn’t everything – but it does make sure your children stay in touch
There’ll be another along in a minute
Left-handed major winners are like the apocryphal London buses – you wait ages for one to appear and then a whole bunch turn up together. We had to be patient for 103 years before anointing the first left-handed winner of a major championship, when Bob Charles took the 1963 Open, over a century after the first major championship was held in 1860. And for we golf writers with a limited memory and even more limited originality, he was always referred to as ‘the only left-handed major winner in history.’ Certain bits of information attach themselves to certain players and we’re never allowed to forget them because lazy scribes find the words flowing from their fingers unbidden, and once they’re on the page or computer screen it’s too late to take them back because we get paid by the word. Robert Lee, the Sky TV golf presenter once made the mistake, during an interview early in his career, of mentioning that when he was out for a social evening he liked to dance. For the remainder of his days as a touring pro golfer he was ‘disco-dancing Robert Lee.’ Similarly, Costantino Rocca would always remain ‘the man who beat Tiger Woods in Ryder Cup singles,’ and Nick Faldo would be forever labelled ‘miserable git.’
After Bob Charles’ breakthrough we had to wait a further 40 years before he was joined by a second lefty – Mike Weir who took the 2003 Masters. But then just 12 months later, Phil Mickelson won the first of his four majors and now Bubba Watson is (more…)
Add a comment TweetAnyone play in the rain yesterday?
May 10 2012 Posted in Euro, GoKart News, Golf News by GoKartOn with those waterproofs, we say. What’s a bit of wet? So if you were feeling a bit self-satisfied having ducked and draked it around your local yesterday – just calm that smugness down a bit. GoKart owner Steve Ackling played 90, yes 90 holes in it all. And that’s just the beginning…
Steve is Captain at Charnwood Forest where Harry Flude, a Charnwood member, managed to play 150 holes in 14 hours in 1913. So for Steve’s Captain’s charity this year he’s going to recreate Flude’s blister inducing day. Well with the aid of his trusty GoKart, of course.
According to records; ”Remarkably, Flude’s speed did not impact his scoring with 51 pars and nine birdies recorded with an average of gross 46 for each round of nine holes.”
Steve did send us a photo proving that he was still fit after 90, but strangely he didn’t say anything about his score….
Quick update – we’ve been reliably informed that yesterday Mr. A managed 36 pars and his average score for each 9 was 41 (1 over his h/cap). Not bad, not bad at all…
Add a comment 1 Comment TweetBiggest comeback of all time
Apr 23 2012 Posted in GoKart News, Golf News by GoKartAn interesting statistic has emerged from our latest poll. In answer to the question ‘will a Brit win a major in 2012′, more people have voted for Tony Jacklin than Graham McDowell or Ian Poulter. Worth a bet?
Martin on the Masters aftermath
Apr 18 2012 Posted in Golf News, Martin Vousden by GoKartThought for the Day:
Frustration is trying to find your glasses without your glasses
After the Lord Mayor’s Show
I always feel just a little sympathy for the golfers who win the week immediately after a Major, especially if it’s a Masters as dramatic as the one just taken by Blubber Watson. We’re still on a high from watching that magnificent golf course and the superb final round it so often produces. And most of the top names in the game don’t play in the immediate aftermath of a major because it takes so much out of them and they know in advance that they will be either celebrating victory or, more likely, licking their wounds. Yet despite the fact that the field for the Maybank Malaysian Open was not quite, how can we put this, stellar, big respect is owing to Louis Oosthuizen. The man with, in my mind at least, the perfect swing and a putting stroke to match, shrugged off the disappointment of missing out on a green jacket in a playoff by strolling to victory. Having travelled over 12,000 miles in just over two weeks, crossing 12 time zones in the process and having to play 26 holes on the final day, he nevertheless shot four sub-70 rounds to win by three. I don’t know what his fitness regime is but perhaps we all need to try it.
Let’s hear it for the big guy
Talking of fitness, one man who doesn’t have a permanent place in the mobile gym that’s an essential component of all tours nowadays is Carl Pettersson, the burly Swedish-born golfer who’s now a naturalised American. Like Ooosthuizen, the big fella cruised the final round, in his case to take the RBC Heritage title by five strokes over Zach Johnson. Pettersson couldn’t beat a fat man in a (more…)
Martin Vousden in Masters mode.
Apr 04 2012 Posted in Golf News, Martin Vousden by GoKartThought for the Day:
99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name
Praise the lord and pass the ammunition
If the glorious spring weather we have been enjoying hasn’t got you excited about the new golf season, then surely the prospect of this year’s Masters will get your heart beating faster than a Duracell bunny in a state of sexual anticipation. Partly this is because it’s the first major of the year after an eight-month drought and partly it’s the magnificence of the Augusta National golf course, with which we have become so familiar over the years. The people who run it may have a not very endearing history as racist good ‘ole boys, albeit very rich ones, but they do know how to run a golf tournament. And it has to be said, despite our natural affection for and loyalty to The Open, visually The Masters is the most sumptuous of the majors, especially if you only get to see it on television.
In the run-up to this year’s event, much attention has rightly been focused on Tiger’s victory in the Bay Hill International, and we have been reminded that each of the four previous times that a green jacket has been draped around his broad shoulders, it followed an earlier win on the US Tour – two of which were also at Bay Hill. But even more impressive than his victory at Arnold Palmer’s invitational was the manner in which it was achieved. He led the field in greens in regulation (57 out of 72), was 12-under for the par fives, drove much straighter and seemed to have confidence in his putter once again. And when he did miss a green, which wasn’t too often (at one stage over the weekend he gave himself 38 consecutive putts for birdie, albeit several of them were from a distance), he was equal first in getting up and down. It was very impressive but, (more…)
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