Allow me to introduce a key component in my life as a golf writer living in the United Kingdom. It is a bag. A golf bag. I sling it over my shoulder as I tee off and there it rests for most of the next few hours.
My bag is made of a canvas-like material. It is white and grey with black edging and an occasional flash of red and it has two wonky metal legs that sometimes spring out when I put the bag down and sometimes don’t. It is prone to tipping over on uneven terrain. Though it has two carrying straps, I use one more than both. It is typical of the golf bags that you carry rather than place on a trolley. (Trolley? We’re talking in English here.)
If a golf bag could talk to its owner it might say: “Why on earth are you using a 7-iron here? You clearly need a 5.” Or: “Do you have to leave me in the boot of your car for so long? It’s cold and dark. If you really loved me you’d take me into the house sometimes.”
Like a dog, a golf bag accompanies its owner from start to finish of a round though unlike a dog it doesn’t hare off down the second hole when its owner is playing the first nor race into that greenside bunker on the eighth and start scratching at the sand. Unlike a dog it gets picked up and carried for a distance before being thrown down onto the ground. It does not require bowls of water during a round and is often mistreated, slung cavalierly into the boot (English, remember?) of my car and left there for weeks.
Golf bags big enough to conceal a corpse attract attention. Aren’t their owners saying “look at me. I’m rich and can afford a big bag.” Big bags can smack of big cars, big bank balances and big egos.
Just as many of us golfers eat too much, so we carry more stuff than we need in a golf bag. How often has the Rules of Golf booklet been used? Do you need 14 ball markers, 60 tees and 19 golf balls? And the packet of Anadin and Elastoplast and the occasional Mars bar wrapping paper (English remember) that you put in your bag last autumn and forgot about?
Coming out of the clubhouse at my golf club recently I was surprised to see my golf bag standing on its wonky legs across the car park. It looked forlorn. I had forgotten I had put it there an hour earlier but just like a faithful dog, it had waited for its master, uncomplaining.
E-MAIL JOHN
John Hopkins