THERE being no sense in rushing things, I am not about to return to the golf course without giving the matter due consideration. While once upon a time I'd have been panting to get back to the links and start trying things, I am now fairly convinced there isn't much I haven't tried already and found wanting and the thought of going through the whole dreary business again holds little attraction. I have, therefore, decided to take a different tack this year by keeping my powder dry fo
This stealthier approach to the new season should, I feel, give me an edge. Rather than stumbling blindly into the unknown and wondering what's going to hit me next, this time I will sneak forth sustained by the knowledge, albeit skimpy, that there a
re certain aspects of the game which were not totally discouraging at the last time of sighting. The aspects in question might not constitute hearty grounds for optimism, but at least they stand a chance of holding at bay for a time, the black depression of past years.
There are, to be precise, two encouraging aspects. Two might not seem a lot of encouraging aspects to scrape up in the course of a season's suffering, but it's better than nothing and all too often, nothing has been the case in former times. There have been signs of improvement in the areas of putting and bunker play. I could point out that driving might also have come into the scheme of things if that side of my game had not been reduced to rubble on technical grounds by the merciless powers-that-be, but then life staggers on and it's probably best that I come to terms with the harsh realities, choke back the tears and forge ahead as best I can.
In both areas of improvement, the clubs involved are, if not eccentric, then worthy of note. The putter is from another era. The wry-necked Gem-like head is inscribed with the name of Anderson of Perth. The shaft is hickory and the whole caboodle has a nice feel to it. It should be appreciated that the term "improvement" must be taken in context, which, in this case, means it has to be set against a background of abject failure.
I make this point lest anyone gets the impression that anything spectacular is happening on the greens as a result of my liaison with this putter. What has happened is that things have become marginally less pathetic and though that might not seem much of a breakthrough to anyone else, it means a lot to me. A measure of the putter's success is that I've been using it now for nearly six months, which is roughly double the time it usually takes for my putters to be consigned to the condemned cell I keep for golf clubs which have failed to come up to the mark. Such has been the demand for space, you can hardly get in there these days.
On the bunker front, it's probably fair to say I've been going through a bad patch. For most of the last three years, getting out of bunkers first time has been beyond me. Why this should have happened is a mystery, but it did and in time I came to accept the fact that for me medal play had become impractical. The simple fact was that if bunkers figured largely in any round on which I was obliged to keep a card, my score could quite possibly exceed 200. Indeed, on bad days, finishing before nightfall was by no means a certainty.
During this spell, I was offered help by everyone at the club including the bar staff. The professional, having shown me how to do it by splashing out with ridiculous ease from a vast crater on the practice ground, then left me to it and went off. For a while it worked, but it seemed that even as he retreated to his shop and I stayed flailing away in the bunker, my success rate dwindled as the distance between us grew until, once he'd closed his door behind him, I was once more alone, clueless and doomed.
Salvation came from an unlikely source. I'd bought a lob-wedge which performed the function for which it had been designed about as effectively as my collection of sand-irons did what they were supposed to do. One day, after I'd jettisoned the sand-iron I'd been using and forgotten to replace it, I turned to the lob-wedge for the sand shots, reasoning that the state of my bunker play being what it was, anything would do – lob-wedge, rake or frying pan.
As the ugly duckling turned out to be a swan, so the lob-wedge turned out to be a sand-iron. The bunker shots didn't start nudging the flagsticks, but the ball came out of the sand every now and again. On my last round I came out to ten feet and the ball actually spun back. I'd have tried a high-five with my partner had either of us known how to do it.
The full article contains 867 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
