In the wake of this hullabaloo, Ken Schofield, the Tour’s executive director, reacted as any politician who had been in his job for 21 years would – he launched an inquiry.The Tour reached new heights last winter when Schofield unveiled a packed tournament schedule for 1996 with prize money which would exceed pounds 30m, an increase of around 16 per cent. Following the ludicrously easy set-up at Nippenburg (another joint Tour and IMG layout) for the previous week’s Volvo German Open, Ballesteros, who will captain Europe in their Ryder Cup defence next year, feared for the quality of his team at Valderrama. Cue much howling from superstars and journeymen as three-foot putts bobbled manically in every direction but the one in which they were aimed.Leaving aside the possibility that the course’s preparation was not vetted as rigorously as it might have been, what made official faces go really red was the fact that Collingtree Park is jointly owned by the Tour itself and the event’s promoters, International Management Group.As usual, the leading players on site – Seve Ballesteros, Ian Woosnam and Colin Montgomerie – were soon on the record. But even more unusual was the acute embarrassment of watching the players grapple for four days with greens (or greys as one writer described them) which were rougher than the nearby hard shoulder on the M1.
Then along came Collingtree Park, a young course designed by Johnny Miller beside an upmarket housing estate on the outskirts of Northampton, and venue of the One 2 One British Masters.Unusually, the tournament, one of the more prestigious on Tour, finished on a Saturday to accommodate Sky’s busy sports schedule last Sunday. It had the best possible launchpad, of course, with that historic and heroic Ryder Cup triumph at Oak Hill in Uncle Sam’s backyard 12 months ago followed by Nick Faldo’s third Masters victory at Augusta in April.Inevitably, the game took a back seat during a summer dominated by Euro 96 and the Olympics – perhaps first-time (American) winners in the other three majors didn’t help – but all in all things were running pretty smoothly. Tour thoughts by Seve Ballesteros
It always seems to happen. Just when the PGA European Tour begins to feel pleased with itself, something unexpectedly spiky appears and punctures the euphoria.
On the face of it, the last year has been a great success for professional golf on this side of the Atlantic. “You don’t spit at human beings,” he ranted in the Daily Mirror. “I was up early on Wednesday morning rounding up cows on my farm.
They behaved better than Anderton.”I doubt if this evidence is admissable. If I was member of the Vinnie Jones herd the prospect of getting kicked would put all thoughts of spitting at him out of my mind Cows are not that mad.. The offence which made him a founder member of the dirty dozen club was a wild tackle on Darren Anderton of Spurs.Jones complained afterwards that his famed self-control slipped from him after Anderton had spat at him. Was it the realisation that if the most fiercely patriotic of Englishmen could find no room for his countrymen in such a team, there were no grounds for the RFU commandeering the bulk of Sky’s pounds 87m for the Five Nations? I put it forward as no more than a theory.AT THE stroke of the 12th sending off of Wimbledon’s Vinnie Jones last Wednesday night began a delicious little cameo that has kept the tabloids amused for days.
