Top day out with mum at Windsor

Ihad a fantastic day at Windsor Castle being presented with my MBE and OBE. My mum came down with me and we were joined afterwards by my uncle and aunt who live in Southampton.

Everything about it was perfect – the weather, the setting and meeting other people getting awards and hearing their stories.

I didn’t actually know until the day before that I was going to receive both medals!

They phoned me up to give me the choice of waiting until next year for the OBE, but I definitely made the right decision.

Staff were saying they’d never seen someone get two at the same time before, so that made it extra special.

Prince Charles has got a great knowledge about Perthshire and he wasn’t too bad with his curling either!

Loads of other people said they watched the Olympic final, which was really nice too.

I’m definitely getting more looks and comments on my trips to England than I used to!

It won’t be long until I’m coming back for the middle Saturday of Wimbledon.

I’m really looking forward to that one.

In an ideal world it would be great if Andy Murray is still going strong in the tournament at that point and I get to see him play on Centre Court.

That would just cap off a brilliant sporting year for me. He looks like he’s building up nicely on the grass, so fingers crossed.

If anything, there might be a better chance of watching Andy than Rafa Nadal.

The video on social

media of him limping around when he was doing the photoshoot in Paris after yet another French Open triumph was hard to watch.

It’s no secret that he’s pushing his body to the absolute limit to try to squeeze another couple of grand slams out of his career and you do wonder if he’d still be going if the head-to-head with Novak Djokovic wasn’t so tight.

You also worry about the repercussions in later life.

I always think that injuries and discomfort come with the territory if you’re going to be at the top of your sport for a long time.

If you haven’t got a long list of them, you’ve probably not maxed out!

I obviously had my hip operation and the good one has had injections since then – probably because I was over-compensating after the surgery.

I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to manage things pretty well over the last couple of years, but I’d like to think I’d know when the cost to my body outweighs the rewards of keeping going.

Nadal may soon come to the conclusion ‘enough is enough’.

It’s not often in sport that the pre-event media conferences are a more

compelling watch than the actual event. But that may well be the case when we look back on the first tournament of the LIV Golf Invitational Series.

Wherever you stand on the rights and wrongs of the new tour, for the likes of Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter it’s been a reputation car crash.

Credit to the people who asked questions – like would they be willing to play a tournament in Putin’s Russia if the money was too good to turn down?

But surely the golfers should have been better prepared with their answers. The awkward silences spoke volumes.

QUEEN OF THE CASTLE: Eve with her OBE and MBE gongs at Windsor.