All cisterns go for proud Sir Terry - Michael Pearlman's Wales Open diary (From South Wales Argus)

All cisterns go for proud Sir Terry - Michael Pearlman's Wales Open diary

1:20pm Monday 8th June 2009

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SIR Terry Matthews, what a boy! While the rest of the Press men were huddled in the Media Centre on Saturday, sheltering from the stormy weather, Sir Terry was giving one well- known BBC presenter a guided tour of his resort.

So excited was he to show off the tiles that his grandchildren had picked out, the multi-millionaire insisted that said presenter joined him in the men’s toilets.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, my mother proudly displays the bathrooms in her home, but what you should probably know is that the BBC’s reporter is female!

Not to be outdone after the latrine stop, Sir Terry then went into the kitchens of the clubhouse, told off the staff for being too messy and then invited the BBC crew in as if nothing had happened.

And he would have got away with it, if it wasn’t for that pesky microphone attached to his lapel.

I’ll tell you, this media lark isn’t all that it is cracked up to be, just ask the Press corps who were holed up in the media centre until 11pm on Saturday.

They had been delayed by the rain and were then given the news that overnight leader Richie Ramsay was potentially facing a two-stroke penalty for an infringement of one of the 27,467 billion golf rules.

However, imagine the annoyance when no decision was forthcoming, the 15-hour day for the national golf writers ending up being entirely pointless!

Still, we don’t work hard, not compared to Colin Montgomerie anyway.

While the typical week off for an Argus sports journalist involves sleeping in, watching This Morning, visiting Tesco and making every possible endeavour to stay in touch with Robin Davey’s column, Monty has a somewhat different schedule (though I am sure he still reads Davey Says...).

Here is a Monty week off in his own words. He explained: “I’ve got two company days to do, one at Loch Lomond and one at Turnberry.”

OK. So far not so bad. He does live in Scotland.

“Then I leave for Morocco to open a golf course with King Hassan; then I am going to the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.”

That sounds enough, frankly. Getting hectic now.

“Then I am going to fly to Geneva and speak on behalf of the Olympic Committee to do with trying to get golf into the Olympics. And then I am going to France, to Paris, to speak in the Vivendi Trophy because I am the overall captain of that.”

It’s quite a week, isn’t it?

And finally, there was to be no media car parking for the Argus on Sunday with car park number six turning into a mud bath, but a trip to car park two really was an educational experience.

Because not only are you picked up by a shuttle bus to get to the Twenty Ten course, but you are given plenty of information on Newport, much like when you do one of those open-top bus tours around a big city.

Did you know? David Tennant has played golf at the Celtic Manor. FACT!

Did you know? Filming of such high-quality programming as Casualty and Torchwood boosts the local economy by over £1 million a year? You do now! Fun facts!

The idea was to get people to the City of Newport stand in the tented village. As I wrote on Saturday, it didn’t work...

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