The week in golf: Eddie Pepperell, Sergio Garcia and Dame Laura Davies

A bit about Eddie Pepperell

'Who is your favourite golfer?'

It's a question I get asked from time to time, usually at weddings after the hope and fear that I might meet someone who has heard of me dissipates. Having settled for someone who likes golf enough to ask polite questions without knowing Benjamin Hebert from Lucas Herbert, I have to think.

To reply 'Tiger Woods' would be to say 'can we talk about something else, please?' when the last thing I want to do is talk about something else. At least, it'd end my lead role in the conversation and, while in another life I'd have happily put 'good listener' on Tinder (do they have a bit for words or is it just photos?), I do prefer to talk.

Lee Westwood? Not any more, not since he hit the 'unfollow' button. Why didn't he just mute me, mum? Like all first loves, Westwood will always hold a special place in my heart, what's left of it at least, but as he nudges towards semi-retirement and an inevitable graduation to Ryder Cup captain, he's just not the one. Not anymore.

I don't want to bore this poor sod with tales of Anthony Kim's incognito hi-jinks in Dallas, I'm not sure he'll believe me when I say that Thomas Pieters' deadpan interviews are TV gold, and he's probably the sort of bozo who thinks Rory McIlroy is overrated. And that Andy Murray is miserable and uninteresting. Perhaps we'll get to that after the speeches but for now, I need more.

Enter Eddie Pepperell, winner of the British Masters last Sunday.

I realise that it's painfully de rigueur to be sweet on the introspective Englishman, but sometimes the thing that everyone likes is brilliant, even if your default setting is contrarian. The fact of the matter is Grease is a riot, Taylor Swift writes absolute bangers and Piers Morgan is a tool. It's acceptable to go along with the crowd.

Pepperell, then. The charm isn't that he's very good at golf, the fact he's not built like Brooks Koepka, even that he's willing to say what he thinks without being a daft racist. To me it's that he's relatable, if not by way of profession or talent then by his willingness to see beyond sport and achievement and to something altogether bigger.

While we await the latest blog entry following his front-running success at Walton Heath, this point can be underlined by his reaction to winning in Qatar earlier this year, a breakthrough victory on the European Tour.

Pepperell did talk about the event itself and admitted to being surprised by the satisfaction winning a golf tournament had provided, some turnaround from the man who once wrote: "I don't really care about winning on the European Tour, or any tour for that matter. I wish I did in many ways, but for whatever reason, I don't."

He also confessed to having won despite not having his best golf, again a stark contrast to the words he'd written after the King's Cup in Thailand two years ago, when a chance to win slipped through the net. "For me to win, I need to build a game that is so good that winning happens because I'm simply just better than the rest that week," he said. And there can be no doubt he meant it.

Little more than two years on, Pepperell has now won twice and it's questionable whether he's had to be at his absolute best on either occasion. Both of them went down to the wire. Both, presumably, meant more than he could've imagined. Yet neither, you suspect, will fundamentally change the man. That's evidenced by the fact he saved the most important words for last when reflecting on that Qatar triumph.

"There’s lots more I could say I guess, but that can wait. Above all though, I’m just so happy for my family and girlfriend, all of whom deserve the credit for constantly reminding me who I am. Christ, if I ever get above my station, my sister will put me right. She has a knack for four letter curses and pinpoint truth telling.

"Time for a nice dog walk."

Yes, I think I'll say Eddie Pepperell next time.

A bit about Sergio Garcia

Or maybe I'll say Sergio Garcia.

Earlier this week, I ran a twitter poll (I know, I know. I promise not to do one again this year.) It asked whether Garcia or Justin Thomas represented the better bet this week as both went out in defence of titles, Garcia at 9/2 and Thomas at 6/1.

I was amazed by the result. Upwards of 80 per cent of over a thousand respondents answered Thomas, for whom the positives were obvious: arguably the world's best player, certainly the world's best winner, playing an event he won last year having finished well in the CIMB Classic.

What really surprised me was the strength of the swing towards Thomas and the nature of the opposition to Garcia. Several people told me that he just couldn't be trusted; that he had let too many chances pass; that he was an under-achiever. One told me that he ought to have won 'five or six' times a year, something Phil Mickelson has never done. This ahead of a tournament he won last year and at a course where his worst result in 13 visits is 34th, the next being seventh.

Go over that again - that's 52 rounds of golf, few of them worse than good, none of them disastrous, at one of the most devious courses on the continent. In 12 of his 13 visits to Valderrama, two of which were in top-class company and several against the very best the European Tour has to offer, Garcia has finished inside the top 10, and he's won twice. By any measure, that's the very definition of reliability.

There are some arguments that cannot be won, though, and one is to defend Garcia as some sort of teak-tough winning machine. I can't say that he is. Nor can I say that he ought to have achieved more, not with any certainty at least. The need to try to quantify what should and shouldn't be achieved by any person or any team in any sport, least of all this one, is something I will never understand.

What seems clear is that 28 wins in two decades is remarkable, not to mention the fact that he is now the leading scorer in Ryder Cup history. For an under-achiever, Garcia sure has achieved a lot.

Thomas is already a third of the way to Garcia's trophy tally, and on current trajectory he'll surpass it in five or six years. I like him a lot. He seems a grounded, affable, determined, immensely talented sportsman, perhaps too straight-edge to change the game but certainly capable of making his own history in it, even of becoming the best player of a generation packed with incredible ones.

Garcia, though, undoubtedly deserves his share credit, just as he surely deserved a greater share of the vote.

Because he's Spanish and because he burst on the scene as a teenager, Garcia's talent is upgraded and his work-rate downplayed. The truth is he's one of the most dedicated players on the circuit, which is why perhaps he's struggled a little since becoming a father. He's had to earn his success hitting hundreds of thousands of balls and all during the same period as arguably the greatest player in history. It's a wonder he's still standing. There are many others who are not.

Most of all, like Pepperell and perhaps unlike Tiger Woods, he's relatable. With Pepperell, it's because of what he says and what he writes as well as what he does. With Garcia, it's in the heart and in the eyes; in that refusal to let disappointment get the better of him, to let failure define him.

The determination he has shown in finding his own path has been extraordinary. In the end, that path took in acceptance, that perhaps he would never win a major, which in turn led him to completing that very goal. If Woods' was a straight path to greatness, Garcia's was an arc.

Golf is a strange and beautiful sport and its strangest, most beautiful characters are the ones to talk about if you ever see me at a wedding.

A bit about Dame Laura Davies

Sometimes I get asked for women's golf betting tips, and I tell people that I'm in no position to offer them. I would love to immerse myself in the women's side of the sport in the way I have the men's, but I don't have time and I'd be playing catch-up on some exceptional writers and analysts. It's why I seldom type a word on it.

So rather than bear with me as I lurch and splutter my way through a few paragraphs on someone who deserves better, here's Matt Cooper on Dame Laura Davies. You can follow Matt on twitter and read about his trip to Korea via the below link.

By Matt Cooper

Laura Davies has won a record 45 times on the Ladies European Tour, 20 times on the LPGA, has four major championships to her credit, two senior majors this year and owns a record number of points in the Solheim Cup.

Magnificent, imperious, jaw-dropping stuff and yet it barely scratches at what she has brought to the game of golf; there isn't another character like her.

Her hunger and love for playing the game is unique among the professional sport (she once won on five different tours in the same year). Hopping on a long haul plane to bash balls is almost like a compulsion for her and yet there's no drama about it. Instead, there's a down-to-earth nonchalance that is almost bizarre but is actually brilliant.

Practice rounds? Loathes them. "I've got better things to do than stand around watching someone else hit lots of chips and putts from 150 yards away."

Learnt anything from the modern day putting gizmos? "No, because I don't want to stand on a green for 15 hours a day."

Disappointed that a charge to win the LPGA Founders Cup earlier this year was foiled by injury? "Now people can stop asking me when I'm going to retire."

Interested in Solheim Cup captaincy? "The players lose the ability to function for one week every two years. It would drive me insane to be asked to get a banana and towels on the third green. I'm not interested in that or picking outfits."

Her fellow players? They adore her.

A Question of Sport? There's probably never been a contestant who loves it as much.

The best story? She played the final round of the 1996 Evian Masters watching the Euro 96 England-Spain quarter final on a mini-television her caddie was carrying. She suspected she would be fined by the tour and she was. But she didn't really mind: she won the tournament and England won on penalties.

There is nothing in golf like this Dame.

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