Huggy's New Year's Resolutions

Well, they are not his, but instead, what he hopes golf's greats are resolving for 2008. These caught my eye:

THE ROYAL & ANCIENT GOLF CLUB: "Knowing that it will make little or no difference to 99.999% of the planet's golfers, we will no longer be cowed by the threat of legal action from ball manufacturing companies and this year we will knock 50 yards off the distance the leading professionals can hit their drives. Overnight, classic courses across the globe will become, well, classic courses again."

WALLY UIHLEIN (boss of Titleist): "I am finally going to own up to the fact that, despite all the marketing hype we spew out each year, hardly any golfers swing the club fast enough to gain significant yardage from the ball we make now. So I am going to do the right thing for the game that allows me to earn enormous sums of money. I will publicly announce that a rollback of the golf ball is absolutely fine with me. Besides, my guess is that Titleist will still make the best ball and so rake in the biggest profits."

ST ANDREWS LINKS TRUST: "We will delay the opening of our new humpy-bumpy and brutally exposed Castle course until it is re-designed to the point where average players have a reasonable chance of breaking 100 on an averagely breezy day."

AUGUSTA NATIONAL GOLF CLUB: "Any and all trees planted over the last five years or so will be cut down. All of the rough – sorry, 'first-cut' – grown over the same period will be eliminated. Then we can have our golf course back, the one which Bobby Jones and Alister Mackenzie modelled on the Old Course at St Andrews rather than a generic American country club."

ANY R&A MEMBER (one is all it would take): "If only to drag golf's most high-profile club into the 20th century – never mind the 21st – I will propose a woman for membership. The positive effect on the game's still-stuffy image would be immeasurable. She'd have to wear a tie in the clubhouse though. And promise to vote Tory. Hey, we can't get rid of every stereotype immediately."

THE UNITED STATES GOLF ASSOCIATION: "In June, just to confirm that the world will not, in fact, shift off its axis or come to a premature end, we will resist the urge to cover Torrey Pines in pointless and tedious long grass. Hell, we might even enjoy a US Open that does not include the mindless hack-out, the hit-or-miss gouge and the sheer, stultifying boredom of watching the world's best and most versatile chippers reaching automatically for their 60-degree wedges, unable to take advantage of whatever talents and touch they possess.