An 82 – The best round of my life. With handicap that was a net 61.

Next, break 80.

I won the Gleneagle Men’s Club Match Play Championship this week.

I also shot my best round ever – an 88. I think my handicap is going down.

I watched Tom Watson make his penultimate putt on the 72nd hole of the British Open. If it goes in he wins and it is the Ultimate putt. Oh, the heartache.

I had been watching Tom play the previous day and as he sat there at the top of the leader board, the TV cameras captured his image and it was an image of joie de vivre. As some of the commentators remarked, he had spirit. And I saw it today, as well. Here was a man playing the game of his life and loving it. He knew he could win and he would win. But that penultimate putt veered away from the hole and ultimate putt put him into a playoff. You could see that the spirit had left him at that point and that he had conceded the playoff; he was just going through the motions. And when the cameras focused on his face during the playoff you could see that the spirit had been replaced by a dull heartache. It was such a vivid heartache I felt it myself.

Thanks, Tom, for a great tournament and I hope you make the ultimate putt next year at St Andrews.

I was reading a golf article about Davis Love appreciating his 20th tour victory, which he picked up at the end of last year. Once you get the 20th victory and have 15 years on the tour, you get a lifetime exemption from qualifying and that really does take a lot of stress off a player. Only two players under fifty qualify for the lifetime exemption along with Love, Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson, both with 34 career wins. A pretty elite group. Tiger Woods, with his 65 career victories, doesn’t qualify to join this group for another two years.