TALES FROM THE TOUR

THE ROCKY START

“I once put a big rock in my golf bag on the 2nd tee at the Scottish Open. It must have been a good couple of hours until Wayne, my caddie, realised. The following year, on exactly the same tee in the pro-am, I wandered onto the beach and snuck another rock into the bag. As we walked off that tee, Wayne turned round to me and said, ‘Hey Lynny, do you remember this hole last year? You got that big rock in my bag, didn’t you? You’ll never get that past me again.”

THE FAKE PROFILE

“Wayne kept going on about this dating app and he was annoying me a little bit because he kept saying how all these women fancied him. We were playing at Torrey Pines in San Diego and we both had an apartment.

I went round to his and set up a fake profile while I was talking to him. The hardest thing was keeping a straight face every time his phone was pinging. We did exchange a few messages but I did feel bad. I let the cat out of the bag later that evening when I went back to my apartment. When I saw him the following morning he just had a massive beaming smile on his face because he knew he’d been done.”

THE TREE REMOVAL

“About 20 years ago, I was playing in Germany and there was a massive plant/tree in the reception of the hotel Mark Roe and I were staying in. It was in the days when you didn’t have digital keys, so you can just ask reception and get a card for Roe-ey’s room, which I did. I then got a luggage trolley and three of the lads out of the bar to take this tree up to his room. It just fitted through his door, but it covered the whole entrance. He didn’t get back until late and he had to call reception to get somebody to give him a hand so he could get this tree out of his room.”

THE DODGY NUMBER PLATES

“When Ian Poulter won the Wales Open (in 2003), he had this Ferrari and he would park it in the lobby every night, making it known to everyone that he had this fancy car. On the Saturday night, me and Roe-ey drove down to the underground car park and for once Poulter had parked his car in there. Roe-ey and I got a marker pen and changed his registration, which read ‘Ian P’. It took us a few minutes, but if you write down 14NP on a piece of paper, it’s so easy to change to ‘Tampax’. It looked monumental. We were telling everyone the following day and one of the players told him. Poulter says to this day that he wishes he hadn’t been told because Sky asked him to drive off in his car for the finishing set. If he hadn’t known, Tampax would have still been on there.”