“Peter Alliss had a great voice, a great sense of humour and a great mind”
Happy new year to you all! I hope it makes up for a pretty terrible 2020. In fitting style, I rounded out my season in Dubai but didn’t play very well – it was very much a reflection of my year as a whole. The first week, the Golf in Dubai Championship, was just a putting contest, really, as the course was very easy, and in the DP World Tour Championship I had a really poor first day. I hit a number of bad shots and didn’t putt very well, and you’re not going to shoot a good score when there’s not a single part of your game that’s working!
I played better from the Friday, but at that point it was too late. I was able to watch the winners come in, though, and hats off to Matt Fitzpatrick, who’s clearly on top of things and has shown good consistency for a while. He’s a very good iron player and an exceptional putter, and if you do those things well you’re going to compete on any golf course.
It was also an amazing season for Lee Westwood, culminating in his third Race to Dubai title. He’s been a model of consistency and rock solid for so long and he’s exemplary in the way he goes about things. It was great to see. He’s also been quite vocal in support of the European Tour this year and played some of the smaller events. For someone who’s had as much success as he’s had to still be putting so much time and energy into tournaments that I suspect wouldn’t ignite that much excitement is very commendable. He clearly still loves golf and is a great supporter of the European Tour.
Out in Dubai, we unfortunately received the sad news of the passing of Peter Alliss. I actually never met him, but much like everyone else, I spent many, many hours listening to him on the BBC. I spoke to Ken Brown about Peter and he told me some great stories and about how everyone who worked with him loved and admired him. There was also a recognition that people like him aren’t going to feature on TV anymore because, frankly, he was too funny. He will be sorely missed, but it was almost as if he’d already been missed for the last five years or so because of the lack of golf on the BBC.
He was an iconic commentator and that’s how he’ll be remembered – as one of the very best ever. I remember watching loads of Opens from the age of about ten to 20 and I’d have it on all day, listening to Alliss describing the action and going off on all sorts of entertaining tangents. Very few people are capable of pulling that sort of style off, and I think that ultimately plays a big part in bringing so many people to watching and listening to sport. He had a great voice, a great sense of humour and a great mind, which is rare in the commentary box.
With regards to my own game, I’ve got a couple of things I need to work on in the off-season and the good news is they aren’t that complicated – they just require a bit of repetition. I worked on those prechristmas and will continue to do so before heading back to the Middle East to start my season at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.
Keith Pelley, the European Tour’s chief executive, seems positive about what the future holds, so that’s encouraging. There’s been some good progress made with the schedule and I think Keith is optimistic that, moving forward, the involvement of the PGA Tour will provide more financial support.
It’ll be fascinating to see how this new strategic alliance between the tours will play out. When I look at other industries, mergers and acquisitions don’t tend to lead to greater dispersion of wealth. I’ll be curious to see if that happens in golf – even though it’s an alliance between the tours, not a merger. It might, and I hope it does, because on the whole I think that’s a good thing. But anyhow, this is all speculation. Keith is the executive and I think players need to place some trust in the board. That’s what I’m doing and what will be will be.