Editor’s Letter
Unadulterated joy KENT GRAY kent.gray@motivate.ae • Twitter: @KentGrayGolf / @GolfDigestME
BOUT THIS TIME every other year I reach for my little black book. While it’s well-thumbed and fiercely-guarded, it’s not your clichéd journal full of secrets, rather a dossier of treasured memories from the summer of 2014. Instead of phone numbers that might raise the hackles of the wife, there’s specific yardages that would only excite a golf geek, along with detailed observations of outrageous shots and magic moments that shook and shushed the entire golfing world at the time. What a summer it was looping Royal Liverpool and the Centenary course at Gleneagles. Finding a fresh angle that will survive the test of time (in this instance a magazine feature a month after the fact) is never easy and the theme for my maiden major as a journalist didn’t strike me until I’d negotiated security on the first morn-
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ing of the 143rd Open at Hoylake. Why not pick childhood heroes and walk a full round with each of them, cataloguing the unique sights and sounds along the way? Tom Watson, Sir Nick Faldo, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, with plenty of bonus Sergio Garcia and Rickie Fowler thrown in during that stirring final round. Four glorious days as legends at different stages of their careers wowed the Wirral. The Open is hard to top for theatre but arriving in Scotland for the 40th Ryder Cup matches two months later didn’t so much hint at an event on another level, but scream it. I’ve never seen so many scribes and snappers, radio and TV pundits in one media centre and I’ve worked some big, global sports events. It was intimidating and hugely exciting, a bucket-list tick and I hadn’t even reached the first tee amphitheatre yet. I arrived extra early on the Friday morning to ensure a premium space in the
stand looking directly down the par-4 1st at Gleneagles to ensure a ringside seat to the good-natured banter and clever canting. If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to witness a Ryder Cup in the flesh, you’ll know the hair-raising joy well. Getting club face on dimple is a feat in of itself in that rarefied atmosphere so imagine when Bubba Watson doubled-down by rousing the mostly enemy gallery to be anything but “Quiet Please” as he prepared for his first fourball examination in tandem with Webb Simpson. Pity for America that they’d been pitted against Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson who would go on to produce a leading narrative in Europe’s eventual 16½-11½ victory. My little book triggers so many memories. Rose’s incredible week-long putting, Graeme McDowell’s mentorship of Victor Dubuisson and Ian Poulter’s chip-in late on Saturday as Paul McGinley’s Europeans again responded to Team USA’s morning fourball glory with their now traditional afternoon foursomes retort. The Ryder Cup just isn’t the Ryder Cup without the Postman delivering one of his iconic double fist-pump celebrations and it proved contagious as Martin Kaymer did his own, pivotal impersonation in the singles,
