Best week ever for the region's golfers

North-Easterners who have won on the European Tour can still be counted on one hand, so it's quite an achievement for Ashington's Kenneth Ferrie to do it for a second time, and to have Hartlepool's Graeme Storm in joint second place was amazing.

Both are in the Open, and on his current brilliant form they might well be joined by Barnard Castle amateur Rob Dinwiddie, whose course record 65 in the pre-qualifier at Alwoodley was five strokes better than his nearest challenger.

His wins in the Scottish and Welsh Amateur Opens catapulted him from outside the Walker Cup squad into the team for next month's match in Chicago, and he now faces the 36-hole final Open qualifying in Scotland this weekend.

He will be aware of the need to capitalise fully on his good form, which can hide in strange places. Middlesbrough's Michael Skelton, who played in the last Walker Cup at 19, was not in this year's squad and failed to make it through Open pre-qualifying at Silloth.

Ferry, who has slimmed down from 20st to 16st, is piling on the pounds in the monetary sense. He had already qualified for the Open by holing a 40-foot putt in a five-man play-off for the last spot in the qualifier at Sunningdale. But even he could scarcely believe that a 70 was good enough to bring him through from seven shots behind at the start of the final round in the European Open at the K Club.

STEVEN Gerrard will never walk alone. Like any other top footballer he is a cash cow who will be milked for all he is worth by an agent. It would have been a desperately sad situation had a passionate Scouser deserted Merseyside for Chelsea, even if it had enabled him to add a Premiership medal to the others he has won with Liverpool.

If that was his prime motivation for considering the move perhaps he should not have been pilloried, but the real reasons for his disenchantment remain a mystery. Perhaps he doesn't care for the growing Spanish influence, which may have helped to lift the Champions Trophy but had so little impact in the Premier League that Liverpool have to start their European title defence by facing a Welsh village club next week.

Surely, at a time when everyone is being made painfully aware of world poverty, even the most blinkered footballer would not create waves for an extra £20,000 when he has already been promised £100,000 a week.

That's not to say, however, that Gerrard's agent wasn't after as big a slice as possible for himself. That's generally the main motivation for this parasitic breed, and I detect its ugly hand in Stewart Downing's rocking of the Boro boat.

Such are the corrupting influences within the game that any young star can easily get too big for his boots, especially when his agent is wearing the boots at this time of year.

NOT THAT football shuts down for long. With pre-season training underway, the cricketers are still messing around with one-day stuff and we face the ludicrous situation of a full Ashes series competing for attention with football.

Cricket is facing extinction on terrestrial television and the resulting loss of interest will not find sufficient compensation through the surfeit of one-day nonsense we have to endure at the height of summer.

It's bad enough that Twenty20 has taken over the county scene in the last two weeks, but the three-match NatWest Challenge which began yesterday between England and Australia is one-day overkill.

A tie provided a marvellous climax to the triangular series, in which the presence of Bangladesh, thankfully, did have some relevance. Whether it was the right result in the end even technology seems unable to tell us. The last two runs were credited to Ashley Giles, even though it looked unlikely that he had got a nick on to his pad, in which case he should probably have been given out lbw.

EVEN though I initially ridiculed the London Olympic bid - when an American businesswoman was in charge - I don't think I need to eat as much humble pie as Jacques Chirac. Without his recent faux pas Paris might still have shaded it, but now he must be choking on his frogs legs. He should go into training for the fencing competition so he can fall on his sword.

Within a couple of hours of the decision I was e-mailed a picture of a French market stall holder surrounded by Paris 2012 T-shirts with a sign saying "half price."

It's clear that, in the North at least, we take greater delight in stuffing it up the French than in actually being awarded the Olympics, which we suspect is a reward for talking a good Games.

Whether we can deliver without a Wembley-style shambles is another matter.

Published: 08/07/2005