Gareth Bale is the greatest-ever Welsh footballer as well as one of the finest-ever in the world game.
He starred for the national team, in the Premiership for Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur, and also in the Champions League for Real Madrid.
In fact, he scored what was one of, if not the best, Champions League Final goals when an overhead kick flew into the net and helped his team defeat Liverpool in the 2018 final
But golf has always had a soft spot in his heart.
His love of the game prompted him to build a practice facility in his back garden and when Wales qualified for Euro 2020 he unfurled a banner reading: “Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order.”
Two years ago he played in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am alongside Joseph Bramlett, finishing T16 in the amateur team section.
But this Tuesday he made his debut in the historic Sunningdale Foursomes.
First played on the famous Old and New Courses at the famous Surrey club in 1934 it is widely viewed as one of the sport’s most loved – and almost secret – events.
Open to professionals and amateurs, males and females, young and old, it has perhaps the most wide-ranging set of entrants in all of sport.
In this year’s field alone there was the former R&A CEO Martin Slumbers and Solheim Cup and Curtis Cup winning captain Catriona Matthew playing 16-year-old England player Charlotte Naughton and her coach Paul Fiddes.
Elsewhere Charley Hull and Georgia Hall – a Solheim Cup duo just last year – played the teenage brother and sister combination of Daniel and Ella Buttriss (whose mum and dad were on the bag).
DP World Tour winners Robert Rock, Callum Shinkwin, Richard McEvoy and Simon Khan were also playing, as were Todd Clements and Sam Bairstow who both completed top 20 finishes in the Joburg Open two days earlier.
Bairstow was playing with the English amateur star Kris Kim who was the fifth-youngest player to make the cut in the PGA Tour event last May in the CJ Cup Byron Nelson.
TV commentator Iona Stephen teed it up, as did content creator Hannah Holden.
As we said: the field is very diverse.
Bale shows off his skills
And so back to Bale who was playing with his agent Matthew Wylie against the French pair of Hugo Rouillon and Louis Cohen Boyer (to maintain the tournament’s trend, the latter is a good friend of DP World Tour winner Antoine Rozner and caddied for him in December’s Mauritius Open).
There’s absolutely no doubt that Bale can play. At the tough 489-yard par-4 second he played this shot from a nasty lie, his ball running just through the green:
Then, from the tee at the 318-yard par-4 third he drove the green and was doubly unlucky in that the ball narrowly missed the flag before trickling off into a back bunker.
But what was most apparent was how much Bale enjoys his golf, talking golf with his opponents, and how comfortably he fitted into the tournament’s wide mix of players.
He and Wylie ultimately lost 1-down, but were clearly proud to have recovered from a shaky start.
READ MORE: British celebrities and athletes with surprisingly low handicaps