Good Friends

Before we meet up, there's the little matter of the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai to be resolved. Henrik Stenson goes there as the first European winner of the FedEx Cup in America, and the hottest player in world golf by some margin. The likeable and funny Swede, who loves a practical joke, has all the skill and shots needed to win in Dubai and seal a unique double that may stay unique for quite some time. The four previous winners of the Championship have one thing in common; apart from being top class players, they hit the ball a long way. Luke Donald's impressive record of two third places and a ninth shows that length is not everything, but the Greg Norman-designed Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates is a beast and if you can carry the ball 300 yards plus, straight down the middle, it is a huge advantage. Lee Westwood, Robert Karlsson, Alvaro Quiros and Rory McIlroy were all able to do that. So too can Stenson who has climbed the peaks and ploughed the troughs in a stuttering career that might have caused lesser men to implode. There is surely not a man on Tour who would begrudge him success there this time. He will need some stamina though as he has committed to all four tournaments in the new ‘Final Series’. From Dubai he goes straight to the lovely Glendower Club on the outskirts of Johannesburg to defend the South African Open, the title he won a year ago that gave notice that he was on his way back to the top. Incidentally it is a title that Denis Hutchinson won as an amateur way back in 1959, beating 13-time champion Gary Player in the process.

Among the many things that will be decided in the coming weeks is the Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year Award. American Peter Uihlein is the standout candidate after a brilliant season in which he has leapt from the Challenge Tour to the European Tour with a dual ranking win in Madeira, and at the time of writing is 10th in The Race to Dubai. But bad luck, Peter: the rules state that the winner must be a European. Who is next in line then? Thailand's outstanding young Kiradech Aphibarnrat, currently 33rd? Sorry – not European! The winner will likely be someone a long way down the rankings, who probably has not even qualified for the Tour Championship; only the top 60 do. It is an obsolete rule that surely needs changing.

Whilst enjoying a cool glass of non-alcoholic refreshment on Fanling's famous verandah the other day, a distinguished former captain of what was then The Royal Hong Kong Golf Club, lamented how disappointing and disrespectful it was to Seve Ballesteros that so few of the top players had deigned to show up for the Trophy he inaugurated. The sad fact is that the Seve Trophy has never "flown", and my understanding is that this year's will almost certainly have been the last. The Tour could have made a rule that required the qualified players to play – if they wished to feature in the next Ryder Cup. But the Tour is run by the players for the players, and one suspects that would have met with violent opposition from the powerful top end. How sad then, that yet another memory of the great player who did more than anyone to create the modern Tour that has given so much to these young men is to be discarded on the scrap heap. Denis, I know, will hate it. Alf will accept it, learn from it, and focus on new horizons, whatever they may be.