‘GOLF HAS NEVER SEEMED QUITE SO FAR AWAY AS IT DOES NOW’
Iwas considering simply putting the test card up here this month. Or even the interlude film of the Potter’s Wheel. Now, I’m confident that most of the readers will know what those things are but, just for fun, try and explain to anybody under the age of about 30 that there was a time when television only existed for part of the day. Add the fact that it used to shut down with a rendition of the national anthem and watch those same heads explode.
But the reason why I bring up this possible page-filler is that – and I can barely mention the sacrilege in these pages – I currently find myself bereft of golfing inspiration.
Of course there is news occurring in golf and there are plenty of interesting things we could discuss – big tournaments taking place, golfers swearing in an inappropriate fashion, a former Masters champion being arrested in Brazil (spoiler – not Larry Mize), and even Donald Trump wandering round his Florida course looking both sad and vengeful, but none of it is resonating with me.
I am observing it all with a far more detached gaze.
Golf was once part of my very being. I golfed, therefore I was. I played it most of the time and thought about it the rest. But golf has never seemed quite so far away as it does now and it’s a strange feeling.
Of course a lot of this will be due to the current state of the world and the strictures imposed upon us. As I write, golf is still off-limits in England, which is a maddening state of affairs.
I’m really not sure what I would be doing if I were still the uber-keen teenager – one who went several years without either missing a single day’s play or kissing a girl (two things which may not be unrelated). What are those same youngsters doing at the moment in England or Wales, with no access to courses or to driving ranges?
Hitting illicit balls in fields or on a beach? Or perhaps trying to sneak across the border to Scotland and getting stopped attempting to clamber over the barbed wire at Gretna with a 7-iron and a bag of refurbished lake balls? I think some of my own cooling ardour for the game also comes down to the fact that I haven’t been able to play much in recent years.
Long before the fun of a pandemic swept around the world, a dodgy hip meant that I was struggling with the physical requirements of hitting the ball in a consistently wrong direction. Playing golf was rather uncomfortable, so I put my clubs into a cupboard and shut the door.
Now, of course, the game seems doubly locked away. I do make the occasional foray to my local course, but only to jog up and down empty fairways, past a clubhouse which sits there, shuttered and dark.
I know this is a temporary feeling – a combination of winter blues with everything else and therefore my love affair with the game is only going through a rocky patch.
The season will change and no doubt my mood with it. What’s more, the world will start to turn properly again and golf, like so many other things, will come back to life.
Courses filled with the sound of swipes and swearing, clubhouses busy and bustling once more.
People getting together to hit a ball about and have a chat. People just… getting together.
Like all of the activities which we are denied at the moment, I wish it were available.
Even if I haven’t been out on the fairways much myself, I miss it just existing as a possibility – as a sign that the world is doing normal things. Feeling that I could, if I so desired, dig into that cupboard and go and hit some balls.
So I know I will play golf again. And even if I can’t, I recognise that my love for the game is still there – only hibernating until the weather warms and the grass grows and the vaccines work.
There is simply too much to look forward to: people filtering back to tournaments, all the Major championships, a Ryder Cup. Crowds… noise… excitement.
But for now I’m going to take a break. Not with a grand farewell – the kind of thing you might see from some social media don who tweets out a major pronouncement as if putting on a hat and cape and sweeping to the door, with the secret hope that somebody will beg them to stay.
I’ll only say that I have thoroughly enjoyed writing monthly golfing rambles in this magazine, as I hope you might have enjoyed reading them. And I’m sure that I will be back to write, talk or play golf somewhere very soon.
This is, after all, a game for life. No matter how strange or testing life might be.