A rum do that has plenty of punch

Jun 12 2007 by Mark Thomas, Liverpool Daily Post

IT isn’t every day that one of the true greats of international golf walks past within a yard of you. So when former Ryder Cup captain and winner of three Majors Bernhard Langer came striding past me off the practice ground, it was a special moment.

It was the final day of the World Cup of Golf, at Sandy Lane Resort in Barbados, and Langer and his German team-mate Marcel Siem were in a cluster of teams just a couple of shots off the lead.

An unseasonal torrential downpour had just forced a 90-minute break in play and now, those famous steely eyes focused on the task at hand, Langer moved with the quiet determination of a born champion with his eye on victory as he headed back to the fairways.

But as he walked past he paused for just half a stride, and the mask of concentration slipped as he glanced in my direction, a flicker of a half smile playing across those stern lips.

I smiled back. Here it was, the great affinity that joins every one of us who revels in the marvellous game that is golf. In terms of ability, we might be a world apart, but that glance, that smile, had to be the simple acknowledgement of one golfer to another.

Then I looked down, at the luminous, bright pink golf umbrella I was clutching in one hand, and at the neat little Dolce and Gabanna handbag I was cradling in the other. The awful truth of what had provoked that smile dawned.

I wanted to rush after him and explain. “These aren’t mine, Bernhard. They belong to the PR girl. I’m just holding them while she’s in the loo.” But it was too late. He was gone.

I will never know what effect that moment had on him, but I do know that from that moment Langer never looked back. He and Siems worked their way steadily up the leaderboard, finally edging out Scotland’s Colin Montgomerie and Marc Warren on the first hole of a sudden death play-off to claim the top prize.

The tournament was fought out over Sandy Lane’s Tom Fazio-designed Country Club Course, a beautifully manicured course that befits the resort’s reputation as one of the most exclusive and expensive holiday hideaways in the world.

The resort boasts two other courses, a nine-holer and the new, ultra-exclusive (and ultra-expensive) Green Monkey Course. It is a millionaire’s playground, designed to the standards you might expect from such a place. It is a fairytale location for a golfer for whom money is no obstacle.

We were treated to a leisurely buffet lunch on the Thursday of the tournament in the Green Monkey Lounge, which opens up to a balcony with a spectacular view over the 18th hole, and the course stretching away down to the blue waters of the Caribbean.

Tiger Woods held his wedding reception there. It is that kind of place.