Scottish Open: Water, water everywhere ...

Oh yes, oh yes! There was always going to be someone who decided to play golf in Loch Lomond rather than at Loch Lomond, but two of them - and at once! Despite having nothing against either Westwood (top of the leader board at the time) or Thomas Bjorn, it definitely made my day to get in from a mediocre round (fifteen holes actually, thanks to a traffic jam on my way to the course) and see the two of them rolling up their trousers and paddling in a manner to more than rival our old and much-derided friend Jean Van der Veld.
Boys, boys, what were you thinking of? Presumably a place in the history books more than a sensible score, since Thomas whipped his water ball across the green and Lee splashed onto the bank, but only just. Neither made par, though Peter Aliss and the rest of us enjoyed it no end and you can already view the entire episode courtesy of the Beeb.
I'll leave you with a quote that may never before have been used in the context of tour golf:
'I grow old ...I grow old
I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled.'
(T.S. Eliot, just in case you didn't know).
Happy viewing.

Great Golfing Moments

Looking for stuff about Carnoustie did remind me of its most famous failure, Jean Van De Velde, the handsome but hapless Frenchman who was leading on the final day and went AWOL on the eighteenth, ending up by taking off his socks and shoes and paddling in the burn, demonstrating that special grand folie of golf that leads us to follow a sudden loss of form with an even more spectacular loss of judgement, aka the ‘I’m-damned-if-I’m-taking-a-drop’ mindset. (Trust me on this, you’re damned if you don’t.)
To give him credit, our Jean did see the light and take the drop, but still lost his grip on the Claret Jug. This picture of the culprit burn (and the one in the last post) is from the press page of the Carnoustie Golf links site, and the sock moment is immortalised passim. There’s also a clip on Youtube of someone trying the exact shot that Jean passed up.
Note for ladies: - One Ian Baker-Finch in a similar situation once took off his pants - ? Whew, that’s actually American English for trousers. He still had his boxers on. Better luck next time, girls.
Note for book (rather than blog) readers: – a truly riotous round of golf including a shot from the water is recounted in Tim Lott’s White City Blue. (It’s near the end, p224 in the Penguin edition.) Okay it’s fiction, but it’s funny, and that goes for the whole book.