I know – for one brief joyous moment you thought there would be no more from Kneesup.
No, I will probably take a break for a couple of weeks, after I give you my thoughts on the second Major of the year, The US PGA; but meanwhile my “Never” refers to the new exciting world of Never Events which I discovered today. Never Events are things so serious they should never happen, or if you prefer, life-threatening mistakes, for which there can never be an excuse. In 2017, these included in NHS terms, Patients falling out of windows and people having the wrong hip done, from a list of 424 never events in 2016-17 which included 18 operations on the wrong knee and cases where oral medicine was administered intravenously. Luckily for the world of pre-pandemic medicine, there was a spokesman for NHS Improvement, which oversees hospitals, who could say sincerely: “We are seeing increased awareness and transparency among staff about the need to report patient safety incidents to support learning and drive improvement. Organisations are expected to investigate and learn from mistakes, and the fact that more and more NHS staff take the time to report incidents is good evidence that this learning is happening locally.” Huzzah!
That was five years ago, and today I read how that figure had improved by 17 (the number, not per cent) with a mere 407 Never Events being recorded in the NHS in England from April 2021 until March 2022. That was a year – and I am guessing here – when we were probably operating far less than at any time over the previous five years. Sadly, a spokesperson was unavailable to tell us how well the reporting/learning exercise was going.
Meanwhile, over at Mount Everest a different type of Never was taking place this week. This was the exclaimed “Never!” uttered when someone has done something so mind-boggling that you have to sit down for a rest. This “Never” relates to a 68-year-old grandfather, Graham Keene, who became the oldest British climber to scale Everest, beating Ran Fiennes’s previous record, who did it when he was 65 in 2009. He acclimatised in a hypoxic tent in his garden, to get his lungs used to the lack of oxygen and trained on the hills around Devon. Well, I never did, as Nanny used to say.
Talking of things so serious they should never happen, but did in The first major of the year, The Masters, here are my thoughts on the US PGA Championship….
Phil Mickelson won’t be here to defend his Championship and there is a great deal of acrimony and self-righteous toys and prams parting company, over the Saudi Tour deal. At the end of the day, every athlete in the world has a career choice to make every day of their life. That includes, how they train, with whom and for how long. It includes discussing their playing options with their management and their coaches and their agents, and it includes, perhaps a recognition of the likely longevity left in their career. Were I “Lefty” and someone offered me a guaranteed $4m a year for 3 years, knowing my iron and clothing sponsors were all cool, I think I would. Young Fitzpatrick the No 7 amateur in the world and aged zip, did turn it down, and he too was probably right to do so, because he has another forty plus years on the circuit ahead of him with luck and he doesn’t need the aggro at this stage in his soon-to-be-professional career. Enough said.
Southern Hills is a 7,556 yards Par 70 course, after being redesigned in 2018 and big hitters should do well – however, the secret will be a strong approach game. The PGA metrics I’ve looked at are Strokes Gained: Off the Tee (SG:OTT) – Strokes Gained: Approaching the Green (SG:APR). They can all be found here: CLICK ME
The next thing is to double-check with whom you bet. Bet365 are offering 8 places – SkyBet and Paddy Power are offering 10. Make sure you know.
These are my picks and current B365 odds. I shall personally dutch them all on Betfair Exchange and hope to Green up on Sunday. On Our tip sheet scoreboard, I shall mark them as 2 pts win below 30/1 and 1 pt e/w above.
- JUSTIN THOMAS 14
- PATRICK CANTLAY 18
- CAM SMITH 22
- VICTOR HOVLAND 28
- MATT FITZPATRICK 45
- CAMERON YOUNG 75
- KEITH MITCHELL 200
Good luck