Open Sesame

At a time when our days grow darker, our life force ever more constricted by economic, political and social woes, it is left to sport to inject a rare glimmer of the candlelight of excitement and happiness.

This week four extraordinary days of golf were played out on the Kent cost, culminating in a victory by one of the most deserving men we have come to know over the years through the medium of the small screen.

Platitiudes abound when such heroes are born, but truly there was not a dry eye in the house when the Irishman sank that final putt.

Our acquaintance with him may be based on no more than what we read and what we see, but his gentlemanly deportment, his cheerful demeanour and his wild weather golf par excellence make him a man of immense popularity. His endurance too of extraordinary personal hardship, his resilience to the fickles fates of golf and his unsportsmanlike fondness for fags, booze and a burger or two do nothing to diminish his appeal.

You sensed that even his closest rivals over the final 18 holes were glad to see him win.

His victory speech too showed his tactful grace. Many expected an emotional dedication to his beloved Heather, so cruelly taken from him 6 years ago, yet with new fiancee Allison looking on this would have been decidely difficult. One suspects he will, in an alltogether more private moment, have a much more enduring and endearing conversation with she who is lost too him.

It was golf at times at it's most brutal, on a course which embodies the purity of the game once played by its founding fathers. It reminded one of a particularly hard fought Grand National, one in which so many fell by the wayside, reputations left in tatters in the open ditches.

After leaving the winners enclosure he was seen pulling his mobile phone from his pocket. It is in a way sad that due to recent upheavals we may never know what he was saying, or to whom. Sic transit gloria mundi and all that.