Food for thought

While the green jackets at the champions dinner were enjoying their surf'n turf meal set by defending champion Zach Johnson in the Augusta National clubhouse on Tuesday night, it was a case of anything you can do I can do better at the less celebrated neighbouring Augusta Country Club where journalists were being entertained by the European Tour.

There the menu was heart of fillet steak accompanied by lobster tails. In other words, surf'n turf, and who should drop in fresh from the champions dinner but a replete three-time winner Nick Faldo, the European Ryder Cup captain, who was allegedly described in a Sunday newspaper by Paul Azinger, his opposite number in the US, as "a pr***".

Faldo, in need of support in the face of the war of words which could well continue until September, mingled happily with golf writers, a far cry from his 1992 Open victory at Muirfield where, in his victory speech, he thanked the press "from the heart of my bottom".

Like the fillet steak that, surely, would have been another fine cut.

Colin Montgomerie continues to be notable by his absence.

Billy Payne, the Augusta National chairman, was asked yesterday whether the club would reconsider their invitation policies following the Scot's remark that he would have had a better chance of making the field if he was a Chinaman in the wake of the invitations to three lower-ranked Asians to boost television coverage in the Far East.

Payne replied: "Colin Montgomerie is a great man, a great competitor and a great representative of the UK. We wish him the best of luck. We think he'll be back here soon and hope he plays well here. That's really all I have to say about it."

In other words, no.

Terminology can be alarmingly different in the US. At Augusta, backside, for example, does not mean a prime piece of rump, but holes 10 to 18, as opposed to 1 to 9 which are frontside.

A favourite example of nations divided by a common language is the British golf fan making a mistake while registering at his hotel and asking the pretty receptionist: "Do you have a rubber?" She summoned the manager.

"Jesus Christ," he blasphemed when told the story. "You mean an eraser!"