Look like a prize fool
QUESTION What is the silliest trophy in world sport? Is it the urn supposedly containing The Ashes? THE Ashes face stiff competition from the golf world, which has lots of silly trophies.
Everyone knows that the winner of The Masters receives a green jacket, but few are aware that he also wins a replica of the Augusta clubhouse — which looks like an oversized Monopoly piece.
One of the most ridiculous is the Seve Trophy, awarded to the winner of a team golf competition between Britain and Ireland, and Continental Europe.
On top of the plinth is a character, supposedly the great Seve Ballesteros himself, punching the air. It looks nothing like him — just a generic golfer with an enormous head and legs like twigs. He’s more like the figure on a wedding cake.
And he’s the wrong size for the base, too. The figure needs to be larger, so he’s the entire focus, or smaller on a more impressive base.
Other offenders are the Qatar Masters trophy, which is a giant oyster; Mexico’s Mayakoba Golf Classic trophy, a chameleon on a plinth; the Volvo World Match Play Championship trophy, a giant wastepaper basket; and the Dubai Desert Classic, a giant genie’s lamp.
Winners of the annual PGA Disney tournament at Walt Disney World Resort, once called the Funai Classic and now the Children’s Miracle Network Classic, receive a trophy featuring Goofy, Donald Duck and a young man playing golf — t hough t he $ 846,000 winner’s cheque probably softens the blow of such a daft cup.
Perhaps worst of all is the Tiger Trophy, awarded to the winner of the Chevron World Challenge Golf Tournament, hosted by Tiger Woods: it’s a rather naff-looking tiger with its paw on a golf ball.
Wilf Killick, Perth. THE member of Horsforth and District Motor Club who is highest placed in the annual Ilkley Time Trial for motorcyclists is presented with a trophy incorporating the area’s original U1 numberplate.
Horsforth i s near Leeds, and when registration codes were allocated to local authorities in 1903, Leeds was given the code U. The first numberplate issued by the city was U1.
Leeds motor dealer Rowland Winn presented it to the City of Leeds, and since then it has been used on the city’s mayoral car.
But one of the original U1 plates was donated to the Horsforth Club and made into a trophy. Wouldn’t it have been better to present someone with a trophy saying ‘You won’ rather than ‘U1’?
John Harrison, Horsforth. QUESTION Which province has produced the most Presidents of Ireland? THREE provinces, Connacht, Leinster and Munster, have each produced two Presidents.
In the case of Connacht, the first President, Douglas Hyde, was born in 1860 at Castlerea, Co. Roscommon. His father was a Church of Ireland rector in Co. Sligo, but his mother was on a short visit to Castlerea when she gave birth to the future President. However, in 1867 his father got a new parish in Co. Roscommon and the family moved to Frenchpark in that county.
The other President to come from Connacht was Mary Robinson. Her parents were both doctors in Ballina, Co. Mayo, where she was born on May 21, 1944. She came to Dublin to do her secondary education, at Mount Anville, then went on to study at Trinity College Dublin and Harvard in the US.
Leinster produced two Presidents. The second, Seán T. O’Kelly, who served two terms from 1945 until 1959, was born at Wellington Street in Dublin’s north inner city.
The fifth President, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was born in Bray, Co. Wicklow on February 12, 1911. His father was a shopkeeper in the town. Cearbhall had a distinguished legal career, becoming Chief Justice, before his short tenure as President ended. He died in 1978, aged 67.
Munster has also produced two Presidents. Dr Patrick Hillery, who was President for two terms from 1976 to 1990, was born at Spanish Point, Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare, on May 2, 1923. His father was a doctor, while his mother was a nurse.
President Michael D. Higgins always proclaims that Galway city is his home city, since he lived there for so long. But in fact, he was born, on April 18, 1941, in Limerick city, in Munster. His family was very poor and so, when Michael was five, he was sent off with his four-year- old brother to live on the farm of an uncle and aunt at Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co. Clare, also in Munster.
His predecessor, Mary McAleese, is from Ulster, born in the Ardoyne district of Belfast in 1951. The family were forced by the sectarian violence of the early Seventies and moved to Rostrevor, Co. Down. She became the first female President in the world to succeed another female President and served two terms.
Two other Presidents were born outside Ireland, Éamon de Valera in New York i n 1882 and Erskine Childers in London in 1905. David Griffin, Dublin 2.
QUESTION Was US president Abraham Lincoln a top wrestler? FURTHER to the earlier answer, Lincoln and Washington weren’t the only wrestling presidents. Wrestling was also practised by Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Chester A. Arthur, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge.
Roosevelt was particularly tough. During his political career, he subjected himself to sparring sessions with championship-calibre fighters. As governor of New York, he invited a middleweight wrestling champion to spar with him three times a week, and had a wrestling mat installed in his workout room.
In a 1904 letter to his son, he wrote: ‘I am very glad I have been doing this Japanese wrestling, but my right ankle and left wrist and one thumb and both great toes are swollen sufficiently to more or less impair their usefulness, and I am well mottled with bruises elsewhere.
‘Still, I have made good progress, and since you left they have taught me three new throws that are perfect corkers.’
James Crowne, Milton Keynes.