Struggling to cut the mustard in hot dog group

Martin Johnson , The Telegraph, 26 September 2003

Just up the coast road from St Andrews, but with about 600 years less history than the Old Course, Kingsbarns is already one of Scotland's gems, ranked in the world's top 50 golf courses. And if you've got to spend the thick end of six hours playing golf, then it might as well be here as anywhere.

There was an American amateur in our group, who could have flown to New York by the time we walked off the final green. When they were building the golf course five years ago, they excavated a number of skeletons on what is now the 12th fairway, and while DNA testing suggested they dated back to the Bronze Age, any future finds may be identified as late starters in a Dunhill pro-am.

My professional partner was Kenneth Ferrie, a genial 18st Geordie from Bobby Charlton's home town of Ashington (Charlton was biffing it around at St Andrews yesterday) and Ferrie had a equally large caddie named Guy. If you put those two on the door at a Scottish nightclub, you certainly wouldn't get many fights.

Ferrie, despite having won the Spanish Open earlier this summer, is not quite as big a name as he is a person, neither has the other professional in our group, Rolf Muntz, ever missed a tournament through tendinitis brought on by signing autographs.

In a regular tournament they'd be what's known in America as a hot dog group. "Hey, who are these guys coming through now?" "It's Ferrie and Muntz." "Okay, let's go grab a hot dog."

One benefit of this, however, when the main object of the exercise is not to make a complete fool of yourself in public, is that there is no public.

The only time a gallery remotely threatened to gather was on the 16th tee (we started at the 10th in blissful isolation) when two middle-aged ladies came up and asked which one was Martin Johnson. It wasn't hard to guess that they'd been expecting to see a very large rugby player, but were polite enough not to express their disappointment upon the discovery that it wasn't the England captain.

The girl on the players and officials entrance certainly didn't mistake me for anyone famous when I arrived carrying a golf bag - "Caddies over here!" she helpfully pointed out - but I soon found a proper caddie, who did his best with what little raw material he had to work with.

Dean had an early taste of what he was up against when he handed me a sand wedge for a 70-yard approach, and watched in stunned amazement as his man sent it scuttling all along the ground, at about 100mph, into a back bunker.

Two holes later, though, I managed to get an almost identical shot airborne for what transpired to be a pleasing birdie (the only one) and mentioned to Dean that I'd managed to get that particular sand wedge a bit higher than the first one.

Caddies have a language all of their own, most of it unprintable, and Dean did not disappoint when he replied: "A snail's arse would be higher than your first one."

For a man who had caddied for the US PGA champion Shaun Micheel in a practice round here on Sunday, he bore this marginally less prestigious appointment pretty stoically, and even pointed out that some of his employers were not very good at all.

"I had an American here a few weeks ago who said to me on the 18th green: "That's the worst round of golf I've ever played." Well, I was hoping for a tip, otherwise I'd have said: "Oh. So you've played before?"

"Ferrie was an extremely pleasant chap to play with, although during one of many long waits on a tee, took time out to be rather less than personable about Arsene Wenger. A Manchester United supporter, his overall view of the Arsenal manager would appear to be that the last bloke to run a London team that violent was Reggie Kray.

That's the thing about pro-ams. When you're out there that long, you're keen to talk about almost anything but golf.