The Calcutta Cup was played on 5 February when Scotland won at Twickenham for the first time since our fixture against the SUGS started back in 1988. Our LUGS SUGS game, scheduled for the day before, was cancelled because of Covid restrictions. Twenty or so of the players came together on a zoom call instead – and stayed there telling tales for more than 3 hours! Set out below is the introductory speech.
Although we can’t play our fixture tomorrow, I thought I should, at least, be in situ to welcome you all. So, although it’s now dark outside, I hope you can all just about make out the flag on the 18th at Sandwich behind me.
On behalf of the virtual LUGS, a very warm welcome to the SUGS and to our virtual match. I hope you and your families are all well and coping with whatever challenges you have. My children are delighted to be post school age and so not being home schooled by me. Others aren’t quite so lucky – I gather from Nicola that Jonny finds it hard to concentrate in class and generally ‘could do better’.
Much has changed since that early February day in 2020 when we last saw you at Muirfield. And much will change again before we see you in the rearranged fixture we all look forward to in October. Hopefully, Sandwich will provide the true test of golf that Muirfield failed to give us last year. There is, after all, no other way to explain an 11-1 defeat…..
I am very sorry to have to start on a rather sombre note about the demise of a central character in the LUGS SUGS story. In a way, I suppose it was inevitable – if you spend so many years neglecting your health, your very fabric, and living a bohemian lifestyle, you can’t expect to go on forever.
And so it is with the Mallard Hotel which is now no more. Gone is the last black and white television; there is nowhere in Scotland to get egg mayonnaise as a starter or black forest gateaux. May what has become an institution to all travelling LUGS ‘rest in peace’. [Thankfully, it is the Mallard and not Rudder that’s resting in peace.]
Like so many of those ‘confined to barracks’ I’ve been looking for things to do with my time. In fact, seeking inspiration a few months ago, I emailed some of my chums to ask what they’d been up to in lockdown. I have some of the replies here:
I start the day with 300 press ups, star jumps and squat thrusts. Then a 30 minute run; 30 minutes on the rowing machine; Alpe D’Huez on my Peleton bike. An hour of chipping and putting; kick ass for the day in the private equity world; kale and pomegranate juice throughout – purges the impurities. And you? All the best AJ
Have enjoyed travelling a bit, but confined to Scotland. Started in Islay, then Aberlour, Glenfarclas, Glenfinnan and Glenfiddich. Lovely spots but all very tiring. Yours, Sandy
What lockdown? Love Porky
The next one’s all in block capitals. Next year I will beat him; I will; he’s just been lucky; I’ll get him; you can tell him that. I will win – no one beats me eight times in a row and gets away with it. David ‘I’m not bitter’ Greenshields
Dear Neil – Sales of my last book, ‘The Worst Golf Course Ever’ are going well. My agent wants me to write a series called the ‘worst things in golf’. Coincidentally, would be very interested to talk to you and a number of long time LUGS. All the best, Mike
I’m leading Jonny 148 to 131 in our chipping competition. Skirting boards in flat need repainting. ‘Boys’ job, I reckon. Nicola
All very helpful – and thank you for all contributions.
While we may all be rather bored by the current Covid restrictions, we should bear in mind that exactly 100 years ago, we were also coping with the aftermath of a huge medical emergency, the Spanish flu. So might there be value in looking at what happened in the 1920s to work out what we might be in for in this decade?
I can report that England v Scotland clashes continued. The 1921 Calcutta Cup was won by England (rather handsomely) – but in 1925 Scotland moved to Murrayfield and the tables were turned. The 1921 Open was at St Andrews and a 36 hole play off was required to separate Fifer Jock Hutchinson from the Englishman Roger Wethered. So English was he that it took the committee some hours to convince him to stay and play rather than attend the old boys’ cricket match he had committed to play in. As it turned out, Jock won comfortably and Roger should have played cricket.
There were scandals throughout the twenties. The famous Chicago White Sox rocked baseball by being found to have thrown the World Series (thus spawning the expression ‘say it ain’t so Joe’ as shoeless Joe Jackson went to court); Lloyd George was found to have been selling peerages; there was even a story about a young Edinburgh graduate being thrown out of the SUGS for conceding a putt. The basis of his defence apparently was that ‘it’s only a game!’ Hmmm….can’t see him getting very far with that in front of the Shields and Crawfords of his day.
And yet – and yet – in spite of all of that, the 1920s turned into the Roaring Twenties of invention, innovation and hedonistic partying. There was the mass production of the motorcars; the Jazz age; Fitzgerald and Hemingway; great medical breakthroughs including Fleming’s penicillin (you see what Scotsmen get up to if they don’t play golf); the first flight across the Atlantic by Charles Lindbergh.
So that all bodes pretty well and, until a massive stock market crash in October 2029, we should all get out there and enjoy ourselves as soon as we can. And so, in conclusion, let me raise a glass to all of you, wish you well ,and hope to see you on the golf course for lots of mediocre golf later this year!
Cheers and here’s to the SUGS!
London University Golfing Society 