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Golf - more serious than life;
more profound than death
Foreign bodies are seriously off-putting hazards in golf only because they are rare. But there are many, many constant forms of challenge, of adversity, of cruel luck, of irony and of tragedy in golf which combine to make the game a compulsive obsession.
The obsession comes possibly from the fact that golf is so unpredictable, so relentlessly punishing most of the time and then, as you are about to surrender -- so surprisingly forgiving. Unlike life, there is no place for fate in golf. As I explained to an opponent once when my ball bounced off a tree and dropped next to the pin: 'There is no such thing as good luck in golf. There is bad luck - and there is skill.'
However, despite its unpredictabilities, golf, like life, has two certainties. Neither death nor taxes deter the dedicated golfer. But what he or she is unwilling to face is the certainty that -- regardless of the purity of purpose and the strength of unquestioning faith -- there will never be a totally satisfactory round of golf, let alone a perfect one. The second certainty is that in his (or her) lifetime it will not be possible to experience personally all the great golf courses the world has to offer. This in no way discourages the dedicated golfer from trying.
Before we look at one or two of this little planet's great courses, let us consider the basics of what is laughingly called 'the game'.
Golf is far more serious than life. More profound than death. Golf's oldest incident -- concerning the golfer who lifted his cap to a funeral cortege going by the fifth green, and was commended for his courtesy to the dead (you will remember he replied, 'Least I could do. For fifty years she was a good and faithful spouse.') -- that incident probably occurred in AD 1284. It has been retold weekly over the centuries, not as a joke, but as a parable about values.
There are no jokes in golf. But there are a million stories. In order to illustrate the seriousness of golf -- to show how life itself sometimes impinges on the more significant pursuit -- let me recount an incident that happened at a golf course I know well. It was a scandal, and it happened thus:
After the club's annual ball, as several members were hurrying home to prepare for the next day's golf, these early leavers discovered, in the deep sand-trap at the eighteenth hole, a member of the committee in an energetic and compromising embrace with the spouse of the club captain. The embarrassed couple's explanation merely added to the scandal. They explained that they had removed their shoes and some other apparel to ensure they did not damage the green as they crossed it; and that they had lain down in the bunker rather than on the fairway in order to avoid the dew.
The club president pinpointed this sorry example of deteriorating values by pinning to the announcement board the next day a notice simply reminding members of the convention which stipulates that no two people should be in a bunker at the same time -- certainly not if there was any danger of the one interfering with the other's play.
The consensus was that the couple had broken not only that rule but also, in the flurry of discovery, they had failed to rake the bunker after playing in it. This failure, this misbehaviour, is perhaps the more heinous offence. It is distressing to recall that it happened not on a mere municipal course, but on the course of one of Africa's major upholders of the standards of the royal and ancient.
As with life, one should apply oneself to golf from the day one is born. One should be playing golf at the age of 2; groove one's swing while one has the suppleness and narrow vision of a teenager, and reach one's zenith by the age of 20, before adulthood brings doubts and the first inklings of disillusion.
I became hooked far too late in life -- if one may say 'hooked' about someone who has sliced his way through two global hemispheres. I'm hooked on a remarkably consistent slice -- it happens every shot, except where water or bush beckons on the left.
The slice-hook syndrome is a consequence of starting late in life (aged 26). If one enters the obsessive realm of golf so belatedly, it means one is involuntarily setting off on a personal pilgrimage to purgatory -- especially if one's companion on the route is a partner such as Ben.
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