50 years of golf writing, as told by John Hopkins

“What a way to end a day writing about competitors in The Open, Troon’s 10th and my 55th,” I thought to myself. “What would I give to be able to go and hit some balls now?”

Golf, one of my three sporting loves, grabbed me early. I may not look or sound it but I am as Welsh as one of my grandmother’s Welshcakes and so rugby was bred in the bone. I would come to love squash for the way that game revealed a player’s character more clearly than his DNA. But I started golf before I was ten and remain in thrall to the infuriatingly wonderful or wonderfully infuriating game. It has pleased and annoyed, charmed and exasperated, delighted and disappointed me for seven decades.

I enjoy professional golf, whether men’s or women’s. I love amateur golf, whether men’s or women’s. Walking down un-roped fairways where you can get close enough to see the colour of a player’s eyes, can listen in to a player’s pre-shot discussion with their caddie, can go into a clubhouse and study that club’s internal history from its honours boards, where you can even park nearby. What could be better? Without amateur golf and amateurs would there be professional golf and professionals?

Team golf is exciting, the Ryder Cup enthralling. Watching players who are individuals for 51 weeks of the year come together in the 52nd week and try and gel as a team is fascinating. European teams, bonded by a similar sense of humour, and a travelling kinship, handle Ryder Cups in Europe with notable success. Europe’s last loss in one of these was in 1993. In that same time, Europe have won away matches in 1995, 2004 and 2014. Why? Dare I say it but it’s like Hertz and Avis. Europe try harder.

My most exciting moments in team golf? Watching Annika Sorenstam in late afternoon gloom in the 2003 Solheim Cup in her native Sweden; seeing Jim Milligan recover from two down with three to play against Jay Sigel to win and thus contribute to GB & I’s narrow victory in the 1989 Walker Cup in the US; understanding Philip Price’s giddiness when he, ranked117th in the world, had beaten Phil Mickelson, ranked 2nd, in the 2002 Ryder Cup; and standing by Robert Macintyre’s proud-as-punch parents as their son, undefeated on his Ryder Cup debut, last year, fell into their arms.

My first Open as a reporter was in 1970 and, after having driven my car into a wire fence on the way to St Andrews without much damage, (more to the fence than my battered Ford) I stood behind the wire fence at the back of the 18th green – no stands there then – and watched Doug Sanders jerk a short putt wide of the 72nd hole at St Andrews. “Oh,” said the great Henry Longhurst commentating on television after an appropriate pause that would seem to be an age today. “There but for the grace of God…”

I had written to Longhurst as a schoolboy and asked how I, a golf-mad teenager with some aptitude for English but little else, could become a golf writer? “Dear Hopkins,” he replied. “Just write.” How lucky can you be. In time I followed him as a golf correspondent of The Sunday Times and had the honour of introducing him when he was posthumously inducted into the World Golf hall of Fame in 2017.

At St Andrews in1970, I recall banging out my copy on an old Olivetti steel-framed portable typewriter. Clack, clack, clack it went as I thumped its keys imagining myself to be like a foreign correspondent reporting from a dangerous war zone.

Underfoot in the media centre at that time was matting resting on top of grass. One’s passage resembled walking over a series of hillocks, up down, and up down, occasionally broken by tripping up. Landlines were installed on request, often including a semi-circular sound proofed hood into which you put your head to hear and be heard more clearly on the other end of the line. A massive drum containing hot water stood nearby as did sachets of tea and coffee. All that was cutting edge then; now it is antediluvian.

I am writing this in the press tent at Troon, one that has carpet laid on a timber base, is sound-proofed and has more plugs and sockets than in a pilot’s cockpit, and comfortable hydraulic chairs that go up and down. A cafeteria, opening at 0600 and closing at 23 00, is no more than a decent putt from my desk and certainly a lot nearer than the car park I am ordered to use. All the information I could possibly need is available either on the computer on which I am writing or my phone. If only I knew how to work them.

Read more:

• The Open at Royal Troon: How to watch the Scottish golf event
• Scottish amateur Calum Scott relishing his Open debut

I have been privileged to have been present at the entire arc of Tiger Woods’s career, from the day as an amateur he gave a press conference while representing the US in the Eisenhower Trophy in Paris in 1994 to his press conference at Troon on Tuesday. He is a master at fully explaining any technicality of a golf swing because at that he is unchallenged yet giving only as much as is necessary on most other subjects. One word answers by Woods are neither rude nor unusual.

Woods is on the committee of players and businessmen representing players and officials on the PGA Tour in negotiations with representatives of the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. On Tuesday I asked him whether he saw light at the end of the tunnel in these negotiations and if he was happy at the way they were going. To the first he answered yes, explaining how impressed he was at the breadth and commitment of some of the other people on this important committee. To my second question his answer was just one word: “yes.”

Woods is not the greatest of all time in my book. I have huge admiration for the amateur Bobby Jones and his clean sweep of what were then the four great championships in one dizzy spell in the summer of 1930. My GOAT , if you and he will pardon the expression, is Jack Nicklaus for his 18 victories and 28 second or third places in major championships and for winning his 16th and 17th major championship when he was 40 and his18th and last at the grand old age of 46.

Woods, however, is perhaps the greatest competitor.

As to my personal golfing hero of the past half century, I will say this. You can have Ben Hogan or Gary Player or Nick Faldo or Arnold Palmer or even Nicklaus but I cleave to Severiano Ballesteros whose shot with a 3 wood from a bunker in the 1983 Ryder Cup in the US is without doubt the greatest golf shot I have ever seen. So captivated by him was I that at times in a round of golf when facing a tricky shot from a dangerous lie I would not wonder what would Nicklaus do from here but what would Seve do? How love-torn is that?

Seve had trouble pronouncing the letter 'h' so to him I was not John but Hon. I didn’t mind that at all. To me that was a badge of honour even when he mockingly scolded me for having written something with which he disagreed Then he would wave a forefinger and say: “you a bad man, Hon.” But whether Jack Nicklaus came to terms with being described as Hack Nicklaus remains another matter.

Could golf be improved? The speed of play is a source of frustration. Growing up and playing in occasional club matches, I was taught that 2 ½ to 3 hours for singles or foursomes was acceptable. Rounds at Pinehurst in last month’s U.S. Open sometimes took twice as long.

For amateurs, Ready golf is to be admired. Picking up your ball when out of a hole is to be admired. Conceding putts is to be admired. Pencil-thin golf bags with a few clubs are to be admired. Most of us can’t play much better with a full set than with a half set. Slow play on the other hand is a curse on the modern game. As I have got older I have not so much become inured to it as infuriated by it.

Sad to say that the professional game is divided at present, sundered by a civil war started by LIV Golf two years ago. But MY golf and that of my fellow amateurs? No. I love it as much as ever. The words of AA Milne were as accurate as a Rory McIlroy drive. “Golf is the best game in the world at which to be bad.”