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Golf Still A Teacher
Amid Winter’s Dread
Sitting at my desk last week, I lifted my eyes from my computer screen and looked around. I noted the bookshelf to my right, the photographs threatening to fall off the wall and the wastepaper basket on the floor. There was an old computer, long since past its usefulness, resting on a window ledge. I could see some sodden and bedraggled leaves on the paving stones outside the window. It was a grey day, as grey as gunmetal, as so many days in Britain have been these past few months.
And then my eyes fell on a coffee mug on my desk, between the wheel of Sellotape, the stapler and a book of postage stamps, and I smiled. On the side of the mug were the words: “I would rather be playing golf.” How often have I said that this winter, which, even by British standards, seems to have been more dreary and stormy than usual. My golf clubs are by the front door, waiting as a dog might place his head on his front paws, eyes beseeching his owner to take him for a walk. They have been hardly used since the turn of the year.
I am trying to make adjustments to my swing, thus proving two facts that golfers know well: The first that it is a sport at which the desire to improve remains the same, no matter the age. Indeed, perhaps it increases with age. The second is that there is no fool like an old fool.
I have played this game for more than 60 years. It has pleased, disappointed, infuriated, annoyed, delighted me in a way that few sports can. Can I really improve? I can – but first I have to be able to get out onto a golf course to practice, to groove the move that I believe will transform my game from that of a 16-handicapper.
I have had enough of using a wooden cooking spoon as an imaginary golf club, taking it back to the top of my backswing and looking at my reflection in a kitchen window. Is my left wrist the way I want it to be? Where is the clubhead pointing? Is my posture better? Enough of that. Enough of the wooden spoon. I want to be able to use the real thing, the golf clubs parked by the front door.
Am I obsessed by golf? No. But I have played it since I was 8, written about it since I was 25. Do I love it? No. I love my children and for most of the time when I had them, I loved my wives. But golf? Can you love something so fickle, so dependent on weather, which costs me thousands of pounds each year in subscriptions, which you can play only occasionally and then often very badly? Adore it to the point of obsession? No. At least, I can’t.
But regard the game in another way, as a friend, someone or something that can uplift you as easily as it can cast you down, a sport that teaches you the values of life, gives you a passport and permission to visit many places and meet interesting people? What is not to like about that?
These past few months I have wanted little more than to be able to get out on a golf course, to hit some balls on the practice ground, to sharpen up my chipping, practice my putting, but I haven’t been able to.
Weather in Britain is a constant source of conversation, rather as Brexit was for years, and sex, money and gossip remain so. Britain has been battered, pummelled, drowned, doused, soaked, drenched, flooded by week after week of foul weather. High winds or heavy rain have turned many golf courses into a series of ponds, sometimes lakes. Snow leaves a white carpet. Ice, biting deep into the ground, gleams on the surface. Parts of the country are under water. Storm Ciara, with winds of 80 mph or more, hit Britain 10 days ago. Last weekend Storm Dennis was due to arrive.
We have followed the American habit of naming storms. As said, Ciara was the last but one, Dennis the last. Many names were rejected, among them Vader, Voldemort, Baldrick and Noddy. The best to have been rejected however was Inateacup. Storm in a teacup. Geddit?
Henry Longhurst, the great Henry Longhurst, was a predecessor of mine as golf correspondent of The Sunday Times. He wrote a weekly column in that paper for 25 years without missing a week. Whenever he went off on holiday his editors would say to him: “Leave us a few columns, Henry.”
To complete this weekly task, every Friday morning after breakfast he would head into his study in his house in the two windmills in Hassocks, near Brighton, and set to. Generally, he would have written 800 words by mid-morning and his custom was to celebrate by opening a half bottle of champagne.
As I concluded the writing of this column mid-morning on Friday, I didn’t open a half bottle of champagne. I looked out of the window of my study, past the mug with the words “I would rather be playing golf” on it and noted that the light was encouraging. The sky was not muddy grey and the clouds weren’t plump with rain. There was even a sighting of a pale and limp sun.
And then, what should come on the radio but that Rolling Stones song You Can’t Always Get What You Want. How timely I thought. These past few months I have wanted little more than to be able to get out on a golf course, to hit some balls on the practice ground, to sharpen up my chipping, practice my putting, but I haven’t been able to.
Golf had, as it so often has in all the years I have been playing it, taught me a lesson for life. You can’t always get what you want. Indeed you can’t.
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