Though one golfer after another is getting banned at the moment, it is probably safe to say that Neil Coles, at 87, is in no danger of being held to account for a couple of conversations he had during the 2001 Senior Open at Royal County Down. The first was with the then 61-year-old Jack Nicklaus, and the second with a Canadian whose name he cannot remember.
It was Nicklaus, now 82, who started their on-course chat with a pained, “My body wishes it wasn’t here, but the rest of me couldn’t be happier.”
Coles replied with a brief report on his own state of health: “It’s my sciatica that’s getting to me.”
“What do you take for it?” queried Nicklaus.
“I take one of my wife’s arthritis pills. In fact, I have one at the start of every tournament week,” replied Coles, an honorary life member of the DP World Tour. As he spelt out the tablet’s name, Nicklaus pricked up his ears: “I don’t think I’ve tried one of those.”
Coles would doubtless have given him one had he asked.
As for the circumstances in which he went out of his way to help the tournament’s Canadian visitor, it started when the fellow confided that his back was so stiff and sore that he was struggling to bend down and pick the balls out of the hole on the practice putting green. “I think I’m going to have to pull out,” he said. “The pain’s just too much.”
“Don’t do that just yet,” said Coles, taking his wife’s pills from his bag. “Have one of these.”
The Canadian accepted, and the following day, when their paths crossed, he asked Coles what on earth was in that tablet. “When I stood on the first tee,” he marvelled, “I felt as free as a bird.”
In an era in which tournament players can be drug-tested at random, you cannot so much as get an aspirin in a professional’s shop, at least in the UK.
Had he sought Coles’ help the following year, the Canadian would have been disappointed. So strong were those arthritis pills that the medical men had crossed them from the list of acceptable drugs on the grounds that they played havoc with a person’s stomach.
That neither of the above scenarios would have interested the tabloids one whit is altogether different from how such things are viewed today.
In an era in which tournament players can be drug-tested at random, you cannot so much as get an aspirin in a professional’s shop, at least in the UK. Though a friend might be prevailed upon to slip you one – it probably would need to happen surreptitiously – you would otherwise have to choose between a visit to a first-aid tent or the tournament doctor.
In the case of the first-aid tent, the player would be asked for his name, address and a couple of phone numbers before answering a litany of medical questions which, in normal circumstances, would be enough in themselves to prompt a headache. To give a few examples: “Where is the pain? Have you had it before? Is it dull, or is it shooting? What other pills do you take? Do you have any allergies? If so, what?” And so on.
No more would a visit to the tournament doctor for the said aspirin be a good idea. Imagine the guilt factor attached to interrupting someone who could be tending a broken leg or, alternatively, enjoying his lunch.
Probably the best course of action for our aspirin-seeker would be to take a positive view of his state of health and put himself in the shoes of one of those sickly individuals who so often had the beating of the English-born American poet Edgar A. Guest (1881-1959).
Lewine Mair
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