Farewell ‘Scoop’ – the waspish wit with a flair for English failure
Hmartin Johnson, who has died aged 71, was one of a kind with his wry observations on sport for The Daily Telegraph Angus Fraser’s run-up ‘looked like a man who had got his braces caught on the sightscreen’
The last time I spoke to Martin Johnson over the phone, I found myself crying with laughter on the train into London. It was a familiar experience for those lucky enough to know the ultimate raconteur of British sport – a man who was even funnier in person than he was in print.
Johnson, who has died at the age of 71, wrote for The Daily Telegraph
between 1995 and 2008. It was the centrepiece of a magnificent career that began at the Leicester Mercury
in the 1970s and included sizeable stints at the Independent and latterly at The Sunday Times.
Even amid the eccentricities of the press box, Johnson was one of a kind: a correspondent who could skewer the shortcomings of a team or athlete as accurately as any news reporter, yet do it while simultaneously triggering a belly laugh. He had so many great moments, but the stand-outs tend to involve England cricket tours.
In the winter of 1986-87, as Mike Gatting’s Ashes tourists stumbled through their warm-up matches, Johnson famously wrote that “there are only three things wrong with this England team: they can’t bat, they can’t bowl and they can’t field”.
When I rang him in 2017, while preparing a historical piece on Gatting’s Ashes, he expressed wonderment at the way his quip had lived on. “It’s extraordinary how it survives, like finding somebody’s teeth in a pile of ashes,” said Johnson, who was used to being asked to wheel out his memories of the tour. “It must be like being an impressionist, like Alistair Mcgowan, and being asked to do your Harold Wilson every time you go to dinner.”
The other central story from his days on the cricket trail was from the 1996-97 tour of Zimbabwe, where his questioning provoked the thenengland coach, David “Bumble” Lloyd, into a notorious outburst.
“England had just drawn with Zimbabwe with scores level,” recalled Peter Hayter, a great friend of Johnson’s who was then covering cricket for the Mail on Sunday. “The mood at the post-match press conference was prickly. Mike Atherton [then England captain] was eyeballing Martin, and Bumble suddenly burst out saying, ‘We flippin’ murdered ’em, everybody knows that’. Martin had the last laugh, as ever. He wrote that ‘when you’re murdering a person, it’s advisable to make sure they’re no longer breathing’.”
As it happened, Atherton knocked on Johnson’s door that evening with a bottle of wine, which they shared in a mood of reconciliation. Neither was he the only England captain to make up with Johnson in this way after reacting angrily to one of his barbs. David Gower, a man so easygoing that he would sometimes be viewed as a dilettante, was once moved to threaten litigation over the suggestion that his leadership might be improved by a frontal lobotomy.
“Even I, having known him so long, took exception,” recalled Gower, whose apprenticeship at Leicestershire had coincided with Johnson’s days on the county beat. “We got a lawyer to write a letter to the sports editor of the Independent
threatening to close them down if an apology wasn’t made.
“Martin rang me, and said, ‘What’s going on?’ I said: ‘I want a bottle of champagne, make it a magnum. I want you to deliver it to my home, then we can drink it.’ It was an amicable settlement out of court, and didn’t cloud our friendship.”
Gower added: “Martin was a writer of great skill, and he wrote primarily to entertain himself. He was also fiercely independent and wasn’t afraid to put the boot in.
“Mike Turner [Leicestershire’s chief executive] would look enviously at Leicester City Football Club and note that when they lost 6-0, the report would say they were unlucky, because the football reporter was almost a PR man on the club staff.
“Turner once asked me to speak to Martin about it, but as soon as we got to the bar for a chat, he turned to me and said, ‘Quiet word – if it’s about what I am writing for the Mercury, don’t bother’.”
Johnson was not famed as a newsgetter – indeed, within the press box he was known ironically as “Scoop”. He could be accident-prone, as when the Telegraph sent him to cover a heavyweight boxing bout between Lennox Lewis and Ray Mercer. Having arrived at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in search of his ringside seat, Johnson was told that he was at the wrong venue, and the fight was way out east. “East side of town?” he replied. “No, sir, east as in East Coast.” It was actually being staged in New York.
Yet he was much more than just a gags man. He was an astute observer of sport in general, and an enthusiastic participant – particularly on the golf course, where his Sid Jamesish cackle would ring out whenever a shot went astray.
There were so many great lines to choose from. Johnson was particularly good on run-ups. Of Merv Hughes, he wrote that “his mincing run-up resembles someone in high heels and a panty girdle chasing after a bus”, while Angus Fraser “looked like a man who had got his braces caught on the sightscreen”.
Another favourite target was golfer Colin Montgomerie, who, at the height of the 1990 panic over bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was described as having “a virulent case of Boiling Scotsman Eruptus”.
I can only encourage lovers of Johnson’s prose to search out his books – there are collections of his rugby and cricket writing available second-hand, while a more recent compendium, Can I Carry Your Bags? – The Life of a Sports Hack Abroad, was published in 2015.
Johnson died at the weekend after a long illness. Few men in our business have brought so much joy to so many.
Form
Lee Westwood is back in the world’s top 20 for the first time in almost eight years. The $1.635 million (£1.17million) he collected in Sawgrass was the largest cheque he has picked up at a single tournament, and took his earnings for the fortnight to nearly $2.7million.
However, what will really stand out to Westwood is the accumulation of Ryder Cup points. He has moved up to fourth on Europe’s “world” points list and is all but guaranteed a return to the arena which has defined his career perhaps more than any other. Having missed out for the first time in 21 years in 2018, Westwood is set to equal Sir Nick Faldo’s blue-and-gold record of 11 appearances. In this form, Padraig Harrington would look to him as his on-course leader at Whistling Straits.
At 33-1, Westwood is considered by the bookmakers to be alongside Tyrrell Hatton as England’s best shout of a first Green Jacket since Danny Willett in 2016. Those might be generous odds. Only six players have accumulated more world ranking points so far in 2021.
Short game
It was the weakness in his game, even when he was world No1. But his chipping has been transformed.
Westwood formerly masked his perennial bugbear with his remarkable tee-to-green stats. A brilliant driver and a precise iron player, he has spent the majority of his career in the upper reaches of the greensin-regulation charts. But nobody can ever hit them all. After telling reporters in 2013, “If I’d had a good short game, I would probably have been stood here with five majors”, he now feels he finally has it cracked under the tutelage of Robert Rock and Liam James. “There’s not a shot I’m now uncomfortable with out there,” he said.
His putting has always been underrated, but it is getting back to its best. Since being persuaded by putting coach Phil Kenyon to employ “the claw” putting grip in late 2019, he has not looked back.
Mental attitude
His critics will point to his wobbles on the final round as evidence that his competitive psyche still contains holes at the business end, but Westwood was struggling with his game from the second on Sunday.
Dig deeper, and it is obvious his happy-go-lucky approach has been instrumental in fashioning the resurgence. His work with Ben Davies, a protege of Dr Steve Peters, the “inner chimp” guru, has allowed him to be carefree, or as close to that golfing nirvana as possible. “It’s amazing how well you can play if you don’t care about the outcome,” Westwood says. It is a philosophy that is also golden when it comes to dealing with the disappointment of brushes with glory. Once again on Sunday, his “losing” speech was held up as a model of graciousness.
“I do enjoy the game more,” he said. “I take it for what it is: a game. We’re just trying to get a little white ball into a little white hole. It gets treated far too seriously occasionally.
“With what’s going on in the world, it’s fun to be doing a job that I love and that I’ve done for 28 years, and I’m still doing it. I didn’t deserve to win today because I didn’t hit the ball well enough.”
With his fiancee, Helen Storey, as caddie, Westwood cuts a relaxed figure on the fairways.
Physical strength
Westwood claimed on Sunday that “age finally caught up with me”, when he “felt like my legs were just starting to get a bit tired and weak”.
And perhaps that it was inevitable after two weeks of being in contention against players 20 years younger. But his fitness is a positive, certainly not a negative. It helps that Storey is a fitness consultant and they work out together, but the reemployment of Steve Mcgregor, Rory Mcilroy’s former physical instructor, should not be underestimated. Mcgregor, who was in Westwood’s corner when he topped the rankings in 2010, understands his client better than any other.
Masters experience
Westwood has finished in the top three at Augusta three times and twice been runner-up. The most recent of these was in 2016, when only Willett was between him and that title many believe he deserves.
Westwood is playing far better now than five years ago. In fact, he is nearing the levels of excellence that characterised his run-up to the 2010 event in which he was eventually humbled by Phil Mickelson’s greenside magic. That is an enthralling thought.