Miguel Angel Jimenez might have to put out his cigar
if he wants a chance to compete in the 2016 Olympics.
PERTHSHIRE, SCOTLAND |
During the
course of last week’s Johnnie Walker
Championship, news emerged that
Darren Clarke
and
Miguel Angel
Jimenez
might at some point have to lay
down their cigars if they want a chance
to compete in the 2016 Olympics. At
the latest of the World Amateur Doping
Agency conferences,
Olivier Rabine
, the
scientific director on the WADA, said
that nicotine was a substance which was
discussed on a regular basis.
“A certain amount of nicotine is akin
to using a stimulant,” said Rabine. “It’s
not our objective to catch athletes who
smoke but those who use nicotine as a
means of enhancing their performance.
It’s something we’re looking into ... and
we can’t be certain but it may lead to a
proposal to include nicotine on the list
of banned substances.”
Clarke was smoking cigarettes dur-
ing his final round at Royal St George’s.
Plenty of people enjoyed the fact that he
was an Open champion who was not just
overweight but a smoker. Others were
critical, although seemingly less so of
the fact that he was smoking than that
he was leaving his cigarette ends on the
hallowed Open Championship turf.
Paul Lawrie
, the 1999 Open cham-
pion, did not mind saying that he
believes that GB&I do not have their 10
strongest players going into this year’s
Walker Cup. He was surprised when
he first heard that
David Law
, who has
come up via his Paul Lawrie Founda-
tion, had not been given a place in the
team in spite of having won two
Scottish Amateur championships out of
the last three.
Surprise turned to shock when he
learned that Law was as many as 121
places on the world amateur rankings
above someone who had been chosen.
David Williams
, a former player
turned European Tour official, had a se-
lection story in much the same league.
His daughter,
Lucy
, won this year’s
English Women’s Amateur champion-
ship but has been given nothing more
than a reserve berth for the forthcom-
ing Home Internationals at Hillside.
Colin Montgomerie
’s team for Celtic
Manor, continues to describe that per-
formance as the best of his golfing life.
“There’s nothing harder than to win
when you have to win,” he said.
He added that the reason he had been
able to handle that level of pressure was
down to his time on the Challenge Tour.
“To my mind,” he said, “the Challenge
Tour is a better starting point than the
main Tour. Out there, you have more of a
chance to practice the art of winning.”
Vis-à-vis Molinari’s last-minute
Ryder Cup wildcard of 2010, Monty has
warned that those Europeans who base
themselves in America cannot afford to
be complacent.
“If you base yourself in America, you
are lessening your chance of getting in
the team,” said the Scot. “Some people
don’t realise the importance of making
the top 10. You can’t rely on a pick. You
are at risk.”
Gleneagles, a Turnberry or a Skibo
Castle.
laid out on the practice putting green,
with the professionals seemingly no less
eager to sort out a favourite belt and
buckle than they were to experiment
with the latest in demonstration putters.
Edoardo Molinari
, who finished with
three birdies in a row to win the 2010
Johnnie Walker and with it a place in
Taymouth Castle, which boasts its
own
James Braid
course, is undergo-
ing a £70 million refurbishment and is
set to become much the same kind of
magnet to overseas visitors as a
Simon Hurd
, a director of DRUH
belts and buckles, was telling how he
started his business in the days when
he and
Ian Poulter
shared a room and
neither could find belts to go with their
William Hunt
clothing.
“Ian started buying £500 belts from
the States and I looked at a cheaper
alternative,” he explained.
At Gleneagles, Hurd’s products were
Wasps, boasting the same yellow
and black regalia as the sponsors, were
giving the players the run-around on the
first day of the Johnnie Walker.
Martin
Foster
, who returned an opening 66,
eventually gave up on backing off his
putts and, at the 10th, holed a 12-foot
birdie putt in spite of making his stroke
with a wasp still sitting on the ball.
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