AMONGST all the recent debate about whether players should be paid for playing in the Ryder Cup (mostly from the other side of the Atlantic I may say), I read in one of the Sunday broadsheets recently that in the two weeks preceding the Open Championship Tiger Woods, Mark O'Meara and Payne Stewart played golf in Ireland, all expenses paid, by a business associate of theirs.
During the Open, they were put up at the Old Course Hotel, St Andrews, with transport to and from Carnoustie, again all expenses paid by a business friend. To cap it all, one of the charities that Mr O'Meara has designated to receive any money that may be paid is actually a private school that his daughter is attending.
With young Mr Woods collecting $1m for winning the NEC Invitational in Ohio last weekend, the word greedy doesn't readily come to mind, does it?
I am sure Samuel Ryder is turning in his grave as I write.
Bill Rutherford,
30 Halliburton Place,
Galashiels.
ANDY Dow's booking on Saturday for celebrating Aberdeen's special goal reminded me of Paul Gascoigne's booking for jokingly presenting a referee with a yellow card.
Are referees nowadays forbidden to have a sense of humour?
Hugh Fulton
28 Blackwood Avenue,
Kilmarnock.
I am delighted that Iain Cameron, of the Glasgow Shinty Development Committee, has confirmed that Glasgow Mid Argyll chose to go to Ireland on September 11, instead of the Marine Harvest Inter District Championships.
I am, however, bemused by his accusation that I ''blamed'' GMA for the failure of a team from the Central Region to appear at the championships. In view of this, I am at a loss to understand what is ''inaccurate'' or ''unbalanced'' about what I wrote.
It is well known that at least one South area club would not take part because Mid Argyll were not attending the championships. Also that there was disquiet in Glasgow and within the association about the decision to go to Ireland. That is not to say that there was not a lamentable collective failure in the Central District not to have fielded a team. GMA are the strongest in the city area. However, a representative team could surely still have been fielded.
With regard to being ''in touch'', I am more ''in touch'' than Mr Cameron imagines. ''Communication'' is a two-way process, and GMA are amongst the shinty clubs who do little or nothing to keep the media informed of their activities, results, developments, etc. And by making this point, as a supporter and advocate of the continued exchanges with Ireland I am in no way denigrating their useful and long-standing relationship with an Irish club.
It is therefore, to use Mr Cameron's own words, ''grossly unfair'' to find that I have been accused of something I did not do.
Hugh Dan MacLennan
Herald Shinty
Correspondent
MIKA Hakkinen will not thank Hugh Hunston for calling him a Scandinavian in today's (18/9/99) Commentator.
The Finns, along with the Hungarians, are of Finno-Ugrian descent and stem from somewhere north of China. Their language, like Hungarian, is non-Indo-European and has no connection with the Indo-European Nordic languages to the west of Finland.
The Finns dislike being called Scandinavian about as much as Scots dislike being called English.
Andrew Lockhart Walker,
South Katrine,
7 Lovers' Loan,
Dollar.
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