THE sight of Ian Poulter emerging from a bunker during the US PGA championship and getting rid of clinging sand by hitting his shoes with his sand-iron brought back memories.
Not that I've ever played in the championship, but I did on one occasion hit my shoe on the golf course and paid dearly for it. This had nothing to do with bunkers or sand. The blow was delivered with a putter in a fit of pique after missing from two
feet on the first green and it resulted in the toe-cap of my shoe being severely dented and my big toe taking considerable punishment. The rest of the round was something of an ordeal.
As I hopped to the next tee, I resolved never to do such a thing again and I never have. The toe, for its part, became black and blue and, in time, shed its nail. The experience left its mark and is the reason why, when I saw Poulter assaulting his footwear in the reckless way he did – he wasn't particularly happy about things just at that moment – I felt a pang of concern lest some miscalculation, made when his blood was up, should cause the Englishman to miss his shoe and crack an ankle or something of the kind.
These accidents can occur very easily and, certainly, at club level they do, frequently. An old "Golfer's Handbook" records an incident in which a golfer who was taking a few practice swings, got a bit carried away, overdid it and broke his leg in two places. It's one thing to sustain injury in action, as did the professionals, Richard Boxall and Russell Weir, who, in the space of a month in 1991, both suffered leg fractures while driving in serious competition, but for it to happen to someone who was just pottering around is quite another. No-one, it seems, is safe.
I've seen a fair assortment of mayhem on the links, from trolleys with bad attitudes taking off under their own steam and knocking their owners into burns as they strained to retrieve golf balls, to people who have hurled clubs into trees in an effort to dislodge balls which have become caught up in branches and who are then obliged to spend another half-hour or so trying to get the clubs down – they, in turn, having become trapped in the foliage.
Fortunately, the game isn't all trouble and strife. There is also an element of hard work and success, as epitomised by the Open champion, Padraig Harrington. It was interesting to see the Irishman begin a work-out on the practice ground at Oakland Hills by hitting sequences of balls, first with the left hand only and then with the right. They were good, hearty smacks and though it wasn't possible to see the results you got the impression the shots were going a depressingly long way.
Some years ago, I was given a taste of this one-handed stuff. I'd been going through an awkward phase for a while and was getting the distinct feeling that things were not about to take a turn for the better any time soon. It was all pretty miserable and I was drifting about the club, alone and palely loitering, as they say, like a zombie who had received bad news from home. At length, the professional could take no more and, driven by a compassion rarely found in his line of business, led me to the practice ground.
The details of this moving episode have been revealed in an earlier account, but I offer this crisply edited reprise in the hope that it might bring some comfort to those seeking light where all appears to be darkness. Not to beat about the bush, the blight which had laid me low was the shank. It's sometimes best to be open and frank about such things. As the practice session wore on, I sensed that the pro had realised that this was not going to be a picnic and was now wishing he'd gone to the pictures.
However, he's made of stern stuff this man, and he produced an answer which worked then and continues to provide a haven even now during rounds when the roof shows signs of falling in. The idea was that I should hit with only the right hand for a while, feeding in the left very occasionally, if at all. The system seemed to hinge on the theory that the less I had to do with the shot the better.
It so happened I had a holiday coming up and for a week all I did was hit wedge shots using only the right hand. After a bit I got so comfortable with the method that when the time came to feed in the left hand, it felt wrong and I didn't want to do it. Eventually, however, the left hand came to heel, if you'll pardon the expression, and a state of peaceful co-existence broke out. The scale of the pro's success can be measured by the first words he uttered at the start of that life-enhancing practice session. After asking me to assume my normal address position, he muttered: "Oh, my God!" I've never forgotten that.
The full article contains 890 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
