Events at Sutton last week reminded Billy Feherty of an interesting transatlantic flight he made with Joe Carr in 1992, after watching his son David finish 52nd in the US Masters. Mind you, it's not the sort of tale to boost the airline business in these difficult times.

"Our flight home from New York had not reached the point of no return when a minor fault was discovered in one of the engines," wrote Billy. "We returned to Boston for repairs and some 10 or 12 hours later, Joe woke up, looked at his watch and exclaimed 'God, that was a long flight.' "He had slept through the entire episode while the rest of us were quietly sweating."

Another Carr tale suggests he might have something of a jinx on air travel. On the occasion of Sutton's centenary celebrations in 1990, I received a note from the late Richard Dodd of the Yorkshire Post, who recalled that in the early 1960s "Carr boasted to the then Yorkshire Union of Golf Clubs' secretary, Reg Alvin, that Sutton could field a team good enough to beat the best in Yorkshire."

Dodd concluded: "The challenge was accepted and the annual matches ended only when the expense of travelling became too great. A reunion match had been planned last August (1990), but again Yorkshire were prevented from travelling, this time because of the collapse of Capital Airline."