To golf or not to golf
When does being not very good stop being fun?
Does there come a time when you just give up?
When you just can’t do it anymore. You have the will. But you lack the way.
I got back into golf when I retired. I had learnt as a little lad with a second-hand set of clubs held together by century old twine and hope. Playing with used balls on a hilly public park with some flagpoles stuck in. No lessons. The only golf professionals who entered awareness were the greats you saw on TV: Nicklaus, Player, Jacklin – for a time.
I can’t say I ever wanted to emulate them. Any more than I could in any reality think of emulating Buzz Aldrin. I just liked to play.
The golfaholic bug bit me young. I guess it’s the same for fishermen, or bird-watchers. There’s a bubble of perfection. A sun setting slowly over a green and hole, that’s just out of reach. Carrying the memory of that really good shot of the round, like a medal-bearing hero at a Spitfires fly-past.
Like all good addictions, it’s never enough. It’s not about keeping score, or developing your craft until you can enter the Open Championship, or the Monthly Medal. It’s about being in the experience. Walking in a world removed from the everyday, yet feeling centred. Profoundly frustrated by every rotten shot, yet adoring the trajectory of the one that went right.
It’s not about a swanky set of irons, which in those days felt about as affordable as a Ferrari. I lost the old ones in a sad incident many years ago. I was about to brave the wastes of Mordor (a nasty nine hole course just outside Caterham). I’d left my old clubs in a splendidly shiny new Slazenger bag by the front gate. Then I remembered I’d stowed my lucky jumper by the washing machine.
Having retrieved the golden fleece, I was stunned to see the shiny new bag, propped erect and empty on the other side of the gatepost. This was in the days when you could still leave your bicycle outside and expect to see it there, with cycle pump still attached, when you got back.
Before I could set in motion the village hue and cry, I spied a dustbin lorry trundling away, like a stately but tattered galleon.
https://twitter.com/cartercollectab/status/935613930118017024
I ran after it, in much the same way that a three-legged greyhound chases the electric bone. Gasping, and quickly lighting up for relief, I managed to persuade the council driver to bring his vehicle to a creaking halt. What the god of golf is going on, I breathlessly enquired?
“I fort I was doin’ ya a favour guv. I mean obviously you wanted rid of them old tatters. I knew not to take that new bag, though. It’s alright, we’re not allowed to take tips.”
Rage fires, softly to be quenched by a sea of sadness. Standing helplessly, waving a lost farewell to my childhood friends.
Then I bought a new set and actually got a bit better.
Life as it has to be lived then got in the way. Interspersed with the occasional round, during which I relied on foggy parkland memories of where you should be standing, before and after hitting the ball.
Then the golf green filled bliss of retirement. Now playing with Taylor Mades and golden tee pegs. Not that I was hitting it much better than with Edwardian technology.
The question still haunts. I hit, and it hurts. My muscles have the memory of a goldfish. Though it’d beat me on any 9 holes because at least it manages to swim to the same place each time round the bowl. My feet feel like I’m wearing the golf spikes inside out.
Even with the robot trolley, that hill on the 4th is going to see me carried back down in a hearse one day. Or it might come to collect me on the equally upward inclined 6th. It’s a set back to careful strategic preparation, when you actually carry the ball to within 100 yards of the nasty 9th, and still miss the green.
But, you know. I think I’m going to carry on clubbing. You see, it’s not about the score. Never was. It’s not even about having to buy new balls for every hole. The sun still sets over a flag, gently waving shadows over a dappled turf green. There’s still a sound like angels clapping when ball meets clubface. Breathing is longer, lighter. A rueful smile accompanies the slide of a regrettable club choice into the bag.
A world wrapped in its own bubble of peace. Happiness that even the handicapped can enjoy. Imperfect life perfected in peace.
https://defensivetraininggroup.wordpress.com/2016/09/30/a-silhouette-in-the-sunset/