Latin America Amateur Championship: Notes From Buenos Aires, Saturday

I’m still in a state of mild euphoria this morning because of the wonderful opportunity I was presented with yesterday. The way the action panned out in the second round of the Latin America Amateur Championship (LAAC) facilitated the stuff of headline writers’ dreams. I am by no means a headline writer. In fact I’ve always been terrible at it, but even I couldn’t miss that open goal. If you’d like to know more then you’ll have to check out the Friday round-up article. Or I could just tell you now. I’m that pleased about it, I just might... The two overnight leaders were Justin Hastings of the Cayman Island and Patrick Sparks of Peru. “Sparks Flying and Hastings in Battle…” Back of the net!

I wish I was good at writing headlines, it’s such an art. The one that’s often remembered in Scottish sport is from when Celtic were dumped out of the Scottish Cup by Inverness Caledonian Thistle – Paul Hickson in the Sun wrote – “Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious.” He never claimed full credit because he remembered a headline from the 1960s. Liverpool striker Ian Callaghan scored three goals against QPR and the headline was along the lines of, “Super Calli Scores a Hat Trick, QPR Atrocious.” All art is borrowed from somewhere.

Aberdeen’s Press & Journal has always been amusing for a headline. There’s the headline that never was – “Aberdeen man lost at sea” – when the Titanic went down… I wish that had been real. I do remember one from what must have been a very slow news day.. “A90 Car Smash… None Hurt.”

My favourite though was, “Macduff Man Loses Bet.” The story was of Davie Bruce of Macduff Golf Club who had bet fellow drinkers in the clubhouse £2 that he could swim around the headland to Banff harbour - a pretty decent distance. He went for it in his Y-fronts but was picked up by the coastguard (much to his chagrin) after being spotted out at sea by a worried dog walker. I remember his picture – Teddy boy style hair do, stone washed jeans, ice white T-shirt. Two pound notes were splayed between his fingers. His quote was captioned below – “I could have f****ng made it.” Brilliant stuff.

I’ve mentioned in previous articles that a trip to the LAAC would make for an exceptional holiday for golf lovers and I’d like to expand on that because upon re-reading my earlier missives, I realised I'd actually said something for once that was completely true.

I really couldn’t recommend a trip to watch the LAAC highly enough. These are the reasons.

1 – It travels to some of the most incredible locations, places I certainly wouldn’t have visited otherwise – Mexico, Panama, Chile, Buenos Aires and next year – Peru! These are amazing destinations to visit. The people are extremely friendly and welcoming, the weather is superb (largely… more to come on that,) the food and wine is always of the highest quality at reasonable prices and the scenery, culture and history is always tremendous to experience.

2 – The golf is brilliant. The standard is very close to top-level pro tournaments. But the difference is, there’s nobody watching. You can walk the fairways with the players, see their shot-making, get involved in their dramas, success and failure.

3 – The golf is free. Just turn up and watch. You wouldn’t need to watch all four days, maybe just show up for the final round or bits of the action. You’ll enjoy it, however much you see.

4 – The buzz. Everyone is excited at the prizes on offer and that’s infectious. Everyone here is part of something and almost everyone knows almost everyone else. It’s like a big family. If you were to come to a few instalments of this event, you would become part of the family too. So my advice is – book your tickets for Peru next year. Do some travelling in South America and make the LAAC part of your itinerary.

Back to the weather. It’s a little up in the air at the moment. Well, I guess it always is… But what I mean is, we’re not too sure if thunderstorms might disrupt the play later today… They certainly look likely for tomorrow and we already had a bit of a delay at Pilar Golf Club yesterday.

It makes it difficult for tournament organisers and for the players who have to put the niggling thought to the back of their minds that play might be stopped at any point. There’s nothing more frustrating than being taken off the course when you’re on a great run of play.

I know that feeling. I remember the Banchory 36-hole Open of 2003. I’d played a mediocre first round but was flying in round two, four-under par through 11 holes. Then disaster struck… well, lightning struck, and we were taken off the course, the comp was reduced to one round and I was left to rue what might have been. I wouldn’t wish that sort of devastating blow on any of these young hopefuls. They could potentially miss out on a spot in three Majors. I, potentially, missed out on a £125 SGU voucher, so I could fully empathise.