Clarke travel firm having last laugh
RYDER CUP captain Darren Clarke has been snubbed by the European Tour over their choice of official travel partners.
Despite Clarke’s unblemished high standing during two years as captain of the European team, the golf tour company he endorses lost out in a recent tender in which he was involved — although they have proved overwhelmingly more popular than the winning firm in ferrying UK fans to the Ryder Cup.
The European Tour selected Golfbreaks.com to sell packages for their tournaments instead of Your Golf Travel, who have Clarke as their lead ambassador.
And Your Golf Travel have brought 600 golf lovers to Hazeltine compared to the 38 fans travelling with Golfbreaks.
A European Tour spokesman said Golfbreaks had made the more impressive pitch. THE
FA’s promised probe into the multiple corruption allegations made against Premier League managers past and present will not be helped by their lead investigator leaving his job. Ian Ryder, football integrity and anti-corruption manager, is serving out three months’ notice. The FA, after the mass redundancy exercise orchestrated by former chairman Greg Dyke (above) and chief executive Martin Glenn, are now short of experienced football expertise at many levels. DANNY WILLETT is understood to have told schoolteacher brother Pete to lay off social media during the Ryder Cup. This follows the embarrassment Pete caused with his puerile National Club Golfer article, in which he called the Americans ‘pudgy, basement-dwelling irritants, stuffed on cookie dough and p**** beer, pausing between mouthfuls of hotdog so they can scream “Baba booey” until their jelly faces turn red’.
However, Danny has received remarkably little heckling from the Hazeltine crowd since the outburst. There was only a single cry of, ‘Do you want some jellied doughnuts?’ when he appeared on the practice range yesterday, while he escaped any barbs on the first tee as he was playing foursomes and didn’t drive off. FORMER
Leeds United managing director David Haigh has filed a legal complaint to the United Nations outlining his extreme suffering during 22 months in a Dubai prison. He details all the beatings, injuries and abuse he endured in a file served by human rights lawyer Melinda Taylor, who also represents WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Haigh’s evidence alleges the UK Government were aware of his plight but did nothing because of business interests in the Gulf. Meanwhile, Haigh is having treatment in the Priory hospital for post-traumatic stress disorder following his Dubai ordeal. He is also on suicide watch after attempts to take his own life.
You give Love a bad name
THE media battle between the Ryder Cup captains has been won so far by Darren Clarke, who has been far more upbeat than USA rival Davis Love in their daily press conferences.
Love, who has a ‘task force’ of senior assistants to keep involved, seems to be leaving a lot to his vice-captains, while Clarke’s attention to detail saw him start work in February on his speech for the opening ceremony.
Unlike Love, Clarke spoke without notes at the teams’ reception on Wednesday night, recalling the K Club in 2006, six weeks after the death of first wife Heather, and how Amy Mickelson linked arms with both husband Phil and the Northern Irishman in a show of Ryder Cup camaraderie.
Meanwhile Love, who gave his players the wacky present of a paddle board at Medinah in 2012, has been more conservative this time — giving them a silver, engraved golf ball. THE
media at the Ryder Cup used to be given advanced information on the first morning pairings under strict embargo until they were officially announced at the opening ceremony. This is no longer the case after Sky shamelessly broke the embargo at Celtic Manor in 2010 and Medinah two years later. A Sky spokesman said it was a technical mistake on both occasions but the Ryder Cup authorities are not risking a hat-trick of Sky misdemeanours.