Time to end Masters pathetic boys only rule

Last week I turned up to play golf at a small club outside Nelson (on the top of New Zealand’s South Island for all overseas readers!).

Turns out it was ladies day at the nine-hole Tasman Golf Club, which is situated on the cliffs above the glorious Tasman Bay. 
I was the only male among a dozen or so women gathered in the carpark and when I asked if it was possible to play, rather than tell me to go away or wait until they’d all teed off, these women had a quick discussion and decided that if I went off the fourth tee I’d not run into any of them and we could all get on with our day.

Afterwards, one committee member took the time to ask me how I’d enjoyed the course and made me a cup of tea and ham sandwich! Their welcome was remarkable … especially in light of what is going at this year’s Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/masters-chairman-sidesteps-questions-about-female-members-at-augusta-national/2012/04/04/gIQA5OHOvS_story.html

Augusta’s male-only members cannot handle the problem presented by tournament sponsor IBM having a female chief executive. And they certainly cannot handle the ever-pressing demands to allow female members.

Why on earth the world’s most prestigious golf club needs to remain male-only is beyond comprehension. What do they do there that is so secret … walk around naked all day? In the 21^st century there is no need   for anything to be male-only. For those wealthy and prominent enough to be members of Augusta that’s even more the case – these men are already in an exclusive club achieved through wealth and social status and hardly need another glorified man-cave to call their own.

It’s time these stuffy old cocks loosened their ties and relaxed the rules on female membership – after all their club is primarily about golf and last time I looked golf was played by men and women.

What I’d love to see is one of the world’s leading players decline to play next year’s Masters in protest at the male-only rule. Imagine if Rory McIlroy, or god forbid that great lover of women Tiger Woods, decided to stand up for a principle.

Guys like that don’t really need any more money or status and you can bet it would work for their sponsors if they’re seen to be doing something positive rather than going along with status quo because of all that bullshit tradition that goes with the Masters.

Go on, be real men and stand up for something you believe in. I dare you.

For my part, if I was ever lucky enough to get an invite to play at Augusta – I’m telling you now I’d turn it down on principle. I’d rather play golf with the ladies at Tasman Golf Club where everyone gets treated equally.

By the book

MICHAEL DONALDSON

I GET asked a lot if I have a favourite beer. It’s such a hard question to answer because it depends on what I feel like drinking.
There are days I want a huge guava and passionfruit smash that comes from a New Zealand pale ale – if I had a last request for a beer, it would be for an Aotearoa Pale Ale from Tuatara or an Armageddon from Epic. But I am not sure they would count as my favourite beers on a day-in, dayout basis, because I don’t want them all the time.
Other days I want something smoky, and then there are days when a coffee-infused stout is the only thing I can think about.
So I flip around the first question. What if I could drink only one beer ever again?
I am thinking here of the beer equivalent of your favourite armchair, which you would keep at the expense of other furniture, or the food you most like to cook in winter. A beer you can depend on, that will never let you down. A beer that is your friend.
I cast my mind back to what I’ve been drinking in the past year and
I soon realised there was a go-to beer I favoured over all others: Emerson’s Bookbinder.
In the past year I’ve had a Bookbinder:
with the famous shellfish hotpot at Fleur’s Place in Oamaru.
with a steak and chips in Dunedin.
with a quick-fire Chinese takeout.
at the Refreshment Room in Titirangi with a ravioli dish.
with nachos.
just on its own after a round of golf.
as a pre-dinner drink.
And on each occasion it has never been a wrong choice.
Bookbinder is a classic English ale, powered by malt but fine-tuned with just the right hop additions as to leave your mouth dry enough to want more.
It never overpowers nor is it lost in the background. It’s rich and flavoursome but totally balanced.
A friend once described it as charmingly inoffensive – you could take that as insult if you were brewer Richard Emerson, but it’s not derogatory because it captures the essence of this beer. It will never offend, it
will always charm – it’s what it does. And at just 3.7 per cent alcohol, it’s very drinkable.
For some reason, Bookie conjures up images of a loyal, friendly dog. And I love the name, which Emerson came up with when he created Bookbinder as a one-off brew for the 1996 Victorian Fete in Oamaru. It was named for a couple of bookbinders he knew – Michael O’Brien and David Stedman.
In this digital age, where I imagine the craft of bookbinding is going the way of coopers and blacksmiths, a little element of romance doesn’t hurt.
But there’s one time of the year when Bookbinder has to take a back seat to another Emerson’s beer, and that’s right now, when the limited release Taieri George comes out.

Like Bookbinder, there’s romance in the name. It stems from a mistake made on the certificate the Dunedin City Council made out to Richard Emerson’s father George for his work on the Taieri Gorge railway.
The certificate thanks Emerson senior for his work on the ‘‘Taieri
George’’ railway. The mistake was noted only after George Emerson
passed away and the beer is a perfect tribute from son to father.
This spiced ale is released every autumn and is marketed as a hot
cross bun in a bottle. To be honest, that’s about the
best description you can get. With hints of cinnamon, nutmeg and
allspice, there’s a dash of raisiny fruit on a warm and soft malt
cushion.
Last year, Taieri George sold out pretty quickly so if you see it on
the shelf over Easter, grab one. And because it’s a living beer, or
bottle-conditioned, it will change in time, so it’s worth buying four
or five and trying one a month during the winter to see how it
evolves.
Having got to this point, I realise that the true answer to the
question I get asked so often is anything made by Emerson.

A beer a day ...

Picture thanks to @epicbeer

I'M NOT much good with authority. It's something to do with my upbringing  my father was in the military and all the yessir-nosir-three bags full sir carry on was a bit much. Uniforms and saluting brought on a rebellious streak.  It carried on to boarding school where I was a smart-mouthed little brat, I'm sure.  So when someone says do something, my natural inclination is to not.
I was like that when people started talking about FebFast  where you're supposed to be all holier than thou and take a month off alcohol.
I tried that once before, going without alcohol for a wellbeing story that appeared in the Sunday Star-Times. I can forgive you for forgetting all about it  it was, in fact, a forgettable exercise. Nothing happened, that I could tell. No tangible benefits.
So when various PR people started wittering on about FebFast, which must be for some cause I cannot be bothered looking up, my anti-establishment genes kicked in and I vowed to make February the opposite of FebFast. I'll call it FebFun and drink a different beer every day, including the bonus day of the 29th.
Not that I drink much. One beer a night will do me fine, two or three if it's a Friday night. Not that I'm a big ``everything in moderation'' fan  it just seems to suit me to have a little bit on a regular basis.
February 1 started with a Golden Rye Ale from Kaimai Brewing in Tauranga. It's unusual this, because, as the label suggests it is made with malted rye as well as malted barley. Rye was a common brewing ingredient,  especially in Bavaria, until 1516 when the Germans came up with their ``purity law'' and declared beer could only be made  with malted barley, hops, water and yeast.  It's said rye went out of favour because it was an unreliable crop and the German purity law was one way of saying, ``stuff this carry on with rye, let's lock down barley instead''.
Rye gives a grainier texture to beer and the Kaimai golden ale was very smooth  a light and slippery sensation. I had another Kaimai rye beer on the 3rd  this time the Porter  but sadly it was infected. It's a shame because I'm told the Kaimai Rye Porter is a spectacular drop.
Most commercial beers will never be infected because they are sterile filtered and pasteurised, but in a bottle-conditioned beer like those made by Kaimai, the living yeast continues to ferment sugars after the bottle has been capped. The risk is that a  rogue bacteria or yeast can get in to the bottle and cause a mouth-puckering sour taste.    
Now sour is not always bad when it comes to beer. Between my contrasting Kaimai experiences I was lucky enough to be sitting around a table with Epic Brewery pair Luke Nicholas and Kelly Ryan when Nicholas cracked the top off an Oude Gueze  a Belgian lambic beer where fermentation is sparked by wild yeast.
In this case the brewery, Drie Fonteinen, blends one, two and three-year-old beer. It's the only brewery in Belgium still practising this ancient technique of blending.  The distinctive lemony sourness of Geuze is coupled with an underlying cidery taste and a fizz in your mouth like sherbet.  If you didn't know to expect such a  sour starburst you'd wonder what was going on, but once you get your head around the taste it becomes more alluring with every mouthful.
FebFun continued after work on Saturday night with an Emerson's Pilsner in downtown Auckland and Sunday's beer was a delightful gift from my wife who'd gone to Matakana on Saturday and returned with an Annah Stretton dress and bottle of beer from the Leigh Sawmill Brewery  a dopplebock known as the The  Doctor. This dark ale with its toffee and chocolate undertones went perfectly with some barbecue lamb.
Waitangi Day concluded with an India Pale Ale from the Twisted Hop brewery in Christchurch  a whoppingly hopped  beer that lashes your taste buds with a bitter orange lushness. Some weighty malt, it delivers a pillowy padding to absorb the bitter kick, making it one of the most well-balanced and complex IPAs I've had this summer.
February 7 concluded, after golf, with an interesting little bottle of Wild Plum Ale from Three Boys in Christchurch. Brewer Ralph Bungard likes doing his seasonal brews and this one is an off-pink, delightfully dry, tart and refreshing beer with only the tiniest hint of plum.
A great end of a sunny day drop. 
A week into my FebFun and I've been through an array of  spectacular beers that only reinforces the silliness of going without for a month  life is just too short to have 29 days without drinking beer.

10 beers of the summer

Everyone does top-10s and I’m no exception, so with 1/12^th of 2012 behind us, here’s my 10 beers of the Kiwi summer to date.

Tuatara APA

The highlight of the summer. Bursting with tropical fruit hops, this is the Kiwi cousin of Tuatara's ephemeral American Pale Ale, but made with New Zealand hops instead of American varieties, which proved too hard to get because of a US shortage. The relatively new Wai-iti hop strain adds a softer, sweeter citrus flavour than you find in many American pale ales  with more mandarin than grapefruit  which gives the punch-bowl flavour a tangy subtlety. It makes you feel like filling the swimming pool with beer and diving in.

Mussel Inn Captain Cooker

From this extraordinary brew pub in the middle of nowhere comes the definitive New Zealand beer. It tweaks the recipe that Captain Cook used  Leg 1 when he brewed the first beer in New Zealand, using tree bark and leaves from rimu and manuka, at Dusky Sound in 1773. The modern Captain Cooker uses manuka flowers, which give a beautiful turkish delight twist. It's an incredible beer.

Pink Elephant Mammoth

Blenheim brewer Roger Pink is a cult figure in the New Zealand brewing scene, making eccentric beers to match his quirky personality. Mammoth is a perfect holiday treat. It's got Christmas-cake aromas of dried fruit and nuts, but with a fragrant earthy sourness hiding behind a caramel malt curtain. I had mine with some leftover cold ham that had been glazed with my home-brewed old ale and marmalade.

Epic Larger

No it's not a typo. It's a lager, but a larger lager. In fact, it's an imperial lager, in the sense that imperial just means bigger. The higher alcohol level (8.5 per cent  be warned one 500ml bottle is 3.4 standard drinks) makes it an ideal food match. I had one with an array of Mexican barbecue food and it was a perfect match, strong enough to compete with the spice, yet still offer a change of pace on your palate.

Three Boys Golden Ale

Deirdre loves Ralph Bungard's summery Golden Ale, so every time she saw me pulling a distinctive Three Boys bottle out of the fridge, she would ask: ``Is that one of mine?'' I managed to sneak the odd glass for myself and what a lovely butterfly of a beer. Light and bright with gently fluttering floral hop aromas, it's a perfect summer drop.

Invercargill Smokin Bishop

Smoked beers were all the rage last year, and this is the best of them. This is what beer could have tasted like centuries ago when the only way to dry malt was over an open fire. The smoke is neither overpowering nor subtle. It's perfectly pitched and a stunning example of a classic style.

Epic Coffee and Fig Oatmeal Stout

Yep, those guys from Epic, again  this time with the commercial realisation of a brew they made with Victoria Wells from Dish magazine for the media contest at Beervana (where they trounced my Hop Off The Press collaboration with Emerson's). I shared this on New Year's Eve with some friends because you couldn't drink a whole 750ml bottle of this (well, you could, but it wouldn't be that sociable). Up front, there's chocolate-coated coffee bean that is softened by the oatmeal. It has the texture of sleek black cat.

Yeastie Boys Digital IPA

Yeastie Boys has decided this is an open-source beer and has put the recipe online for home brewers to try to replicate. I'll be giving it a go just because it's worth having many, many bottles of this citrus and tropical fruit  explosion. You could hop, skip and jump your way through three or four of these in no time flat.

Harrington's Anvil Dry Hop

Harrington's are starting to do more high-end, higher-alcohol brews and this is a fine example of their premium craft styles. A strong New Zealand pilsner, it is juicy and full-bodied, but splashed through with summery cut-grass aromas. It's refreshing and drinkable in the extreme.

Stoke Biscuit Lager

Another in the Stoke “Bomber” line, this lives up to its name with a chewy toffee character that reminds you of mum's baking. The hoppiness provides the icing on the cake.

Turning tortoises into hares

Rory Sabbatini got a bad rap a few years back when he left Ben Crane in his fuming wake because Crane was moving with the speed of sleepy sloth.

And slow play in golf came to the fore the other week when Jonathan Byrd did anything but fly around the course in the final round of a PGA Tour's opening event.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/Slow+play+killing+golf+game/5974978/story.html

But slow golf amongst the pros is one thing - it's slow golf on your local course that can do your head in and create Sabbatini-esque explosions which include deliberately hitting up on the group ahead, yelling abuse and generally getting so wound up your round turns to custard.

I recently watched a group spend at least 10 minutes looking for a lost ball out of bounds before one of the group ran back to the tee to play a third shot. The net result: two furious groups backed up on the fourth tee.

I've always maintained amateurs need to play by different rules to pros and this was a case in point. If you can't find your ball out of bounds, just play it like a lateral hazard, take a drop and get on with it.

Everyone rabbits on about golf being gentleman's game and how honouring the rules and self-regulation are critical to its integrity. Bollocks (unless you're playing for money or a trophy). If golf is going to continue to attract new players in the 21st century it needs to battle a far greater enemy - lack of time.

Unless you're retired, you're probably time poor and I for one don't want to spend over four and a half hours playing 18 holes when I know I could get round in a threesome in less than three and a half hours if there was no wannbe PhilMickleson in front of us.

You can't do much about idiots who phaff around over three-foot putts and take 20 practice swings but you can make your own round go faster by taking a more relaxed approach to the restrictive rules of golf.

I've always maintained all amateurs should be allowed to place the ball to avoid hitting out of someone's divot, or from an unraked footprint in the bunker - the game is hard enough without having your round ruined by someone else's selfishness and laziness. If an 18-handicapper moves the ball a few feet what does it matter? It will hardly alter the score and can make things run more smoothly and stress-free.

So imagine how rapt I was to see the venerable Golf Digest website echo my thoughts. Because they have much better technology than me, I'll let them take up the story.

http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-instruction/2011-10/photos-reasonable-rules

So next time you're out playing, go easy on yourself and have fun - after all the game is not meant to turn you into a mental wreck.

A Crafty XV

I would have loved to call this team the Thirst XV but the clever Kelly Ryan at Epic Brewery has already claimed that name for his fantasy team of Kiwi brewers, so I'm going with Crafty Buggers, a team of taste and style.

Tighthead prop: Substance is the key. Three Boys Oyster Stout, brewed with real bluff oysters, is smooth and silky with a hint of brine and a touch of smoke.

Hooker:In the Sean Fitzpatrick mode, rugged, uncompromising, with a never-say-die attitude is Twisted Hop's Red Zone Enigma. This barley wine, with its overtures of cherry and vanilla, has survived the Canterbury earthquake which destroyed Martin Bennett's brewery.

Loosehead prop: Emerson's Bookbinder  solid, dependable, no-fuss English bitter, beautifully balanced, well capable of holding its own in any clash.

Locks: Harrington's Big John Special Reserve is the Brad Thorn of New Zealand craft brews. Conditioned in bourbon-laced oak barrels it has the oomph you want. His partner is 8-wired's Tally Poppy, a crazy alignment of an Irish Red Ale and a hop-driven American IPA.

Blindside flanker: Jerome Kaino is the model here; a great defender, but with go-forward on attack and a range of skills including the responsibility for taking kick-offs. So joining his 8-wired clubmate in the pack is iStout and its robust, complex dance of flavours.

Openside flanker: Is there a Richie  McCaw of beers? An everyman with the requisite humility, rugged charm and daring talent? It has to be Mash Up, the collaborative effort of nearly all our craft brewers   a hoppy New Zealand-style Pale Ale that represents the best parts of our craft industry.

No 8: You can't beat size and experience in the back row, so it was a no-brainer to include Pink Elephant Brewery's cult beer Mammoth, an English brown ale with layers of coffee, chocolate and licorice.

Halfback: Aussie battler George Gregan is the epitome of what you want in a halfback  clever, cheeky, daring, skilful with a polarising personality. Step up, please, the beer that thinks it's a whisky  Rex Attitude, Yeastie Boys' creation made from 100% peated malt.

First five:A confident, smart performer with vision, experience and an ability to lead others. Dependability and class are the keys  Emeron's Pilsner.

Second five: The crash-bang-wallop style of Ma'a Nonu means there's only one brewery in contention for producing the line-breaker we need in the midfield  Epic. Hop Zombie implies staggering in a straight line, but the taste is all about footwork, distribution and creativity, with 8.5% alcohol for punch.

Centre: Elegance and balance in the form of Tuatara APA  whether it be the American Pale Ale, or its upcoming replacement Aotearoa Pale Ale, which uses New Zealand hops instead of the hard-to-get American hops.

Wings: Using Sonny Bill Williams as a model, there's only one newcomer with the requisite hype to call itself the SBW of brewing, Moa. With a tonne of marketing and fanfare but with substance to match, The Blenheim brewery has to be represented by their Olympic-sponsoring St Joseph Tripel. On the other side of the field we want a Cory Jane-style figure  lippy, super agile, refreshingly daring; so I'm opting for one of my personal favourites, Hallertau Luxe (No 1).

Fullback:Israel Dagg, as the more footloose version of John Gallagher, is beer-ified by Invercargill Brewery's light-on-its-feet B-Man. Snappy bright and modern and because it's designed to hold its own with a curry, it can do the same on the field.

Note: Just like the All Blacks, there were a couple of notable contenders unavailable for selection: We couldn't go into a world cup with a goalkicker called Harrington's Wobbly Boot. Also out injured are Twisted Hop's Twisted Ankle and Liberty Brewing's Debilitated Defender!

Hankook's High-Tech Golf Ball-Inspired Tyre | Stuff.co.nz

Hankook's High-Tech Golf Ball-Inspired Tyre | Stuff.co.nz:

'via Blog this'