OH to be at Ganton for this weekend's Walker Cup. Ten miles south-west of Scarborough, it's considered the finest inland golf course in Britain and has bunkers so deep there are ladders to clamber out of them.

Great Britain and Ireland have won the trophy six times in its 82-year history but are going for an unprecedented hat-trick in an event which is starting to register in the public consciousness in the slipstream of the massively-hyped Ryder Cup.

This one's for the amateurs, but NCB are covering both days in the States for the first time and demand for tickets has been very high.

Most of the players are in their early 20s, but both teams include one veteran and one teenager, with 19-year-old Teessider Michael Skelton carrying local hopes.

Last year's European Boys champion is a livewire who I'm tipping to become the first North-East golfer to become a big name. Here's hoping that's not the kiss of death in his tussles with the Yanks this weekend.

OUR two best golfing prospects of recent years, Lee Westwood and Justin Rose, emerged from the doldrums this week. After slumping from fourth to 246th in the world rankings, Westwood won the BMW International, while Rose finished third in the Deutsch Bank Championship in Boston, Masachusetts.

Westwood recalls how his dad once took him to a pithead in Worksop and told him that his burgeoning talent was the envy of all the men down below.

Thanks to Maggie Thatcher, this motivational tactic is not available any more. Perhaps we should encourage call centres to open up their doors to fathers with talented offspring.

Apologies to those who work in such places, but how they must envy professional sportsmen, most of whom give the impression they are oblivious to their good fortune.

They have a worse record of absenteeism than Newcastle fans on recent Monday mornings and generally make a mockery of the phrase "when the going gets tough the tough get going."

Time was when it would have been a formality for the England football team to beat Macedonia, but going there with half a team is fraught with danger.

Sir Bobby Robson didn't like it when a newspaper suggested the knives were out at Newcastle, but the tabloid press will be wielding machetes if Beckham's boys lose and our cricketers continue to be humbled by South Africa.

Following the gold-free haul of our depleted athletics team at the World Championships it is a good time to ask serious questions about the benefits of big financial incentives backed by the support of so-called experts in every field from diet to diuretics.

Former Yorkshire and England captain Brian Close used to say: "They don't need a coach, they just need their backsides kicking." So let's clear out all the experts and employ someone with a large boot, who as well as kicking posteriors can kick down the doors of call centres and bellow: "You could end up in here."

ROUGHLY a quarter of the summer signings by Premiership clubs were on loan, culminating with the ludicrous situation of Chelsea farming out Russia's captain Alex Smertin to Portsmouth two days after lashing out £3.45m for him.

Bolton used this route to maintain Premiership status, and in last Saturday's Middlesbrough v Leeds match it seemed both teams were treading the same short-term path.

Peter Reid can blame a financial situation not of his own making for six of his seven signings being on loan, but what will all this do for the gradual development of home-bred talent?

If this is allowed to continue unchecked the logical conclusion is that England will soon be represented by a team of amateurs, which might be no bad thing as they would at least perform with pride and passion.

AS someone who is utterly bemused by mobile mania, I find this business about jockeys and their phones highly amusing. The British Horseracing Board has backed the Jockey Club in their clampdown, casting dreadful aspersions that the little fellows were using their mobiles to pass on last-minute information.

This is an understandable reaction following allegations of corruption within the sport, but the jockeys have got the bit between their teeth. One of them, Philip Robinson, said: "We can't do without a mobile and the sooner they realise that the better."

Lester Piggot, Sir Gordon Richards and Scobie Breasley seemed to manage quite nicely without one, but then didn't we all. To quote Monty Python: "Try telling that to the youth of today - they won't believe you."