GOLF, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

Golf is used to the odd sniper taking potshots at its integrity but the tired old arguments wheeled out to beat the sport about the head no longer hold water.

Images of exclusivity, where women are banned from the clubhouse and children flogged for so much as looking at the putting green make great headlines, but paint an inaccurate picture of golf in the 21st century as anyone who plays the game will testify.

The reality is that the Royal and Ancient game is hugely popular and accessible, in fact it’s now considered positively hip and cool – a fourball with mates and beers to follow is about the perfect summer’s day out for many.

It’s appeal is broad too - rock stars like Robbie Williams and Alice Cooper regularly thrash a ball about the fairways while even the rich and beautiful in the shapely forms of supermodel Jodie Kidd and actress Catherine Zeta-Jones love nothing better than hitching up their golf slacks and strutting their stuff down the fairway.

However golf’s attraction doesn’t lie in who plays the game but rather the very game itself – from the physical pleasure of smacking a ball down the fairway to discovering all the wonderful rituals and traditions that surround the sport.

To explain to a non-golfer why golf is such a great game can be difficult. If you don’t play, it’s likely you just won’t get it . . . at first!

At its most rudimentary level, its appeal lies in the fact that there is something innately satisfying about teeing up a ball and thrashing it as hard as you can. It conjures up memories of youthful indiscretion, of throwing stones as far as possible and seeing them hit their intended target – a disused garden shed window or abandoned old car – and the resulting clatter/thud/crash of success.

But before anyone writes off golfers as unreconstructed hooligans still seeking a cheap thrill or adrenaline rush, golf proves strangely addictive for altogether much more subtle reasons.

It’s partly the ritual involved – packing your golf bag for a day’s golf is a bit like planning a trek up K2 with every contingency to be covered – rain, sun, cold, hunger, thirst, new glove, pen, scorecard, tees, balls (plenty of those) and the latest gadgets (golfers love gadgets!).

Then there is the equipment itself to marvel at – the tools of the trade. Gleaming silver irons, drivers with heads the size of Pluto, fairway woods, hybrids and putters of infinitive variety. Golfers, as you will discover if you ever take up the game, are suckers for gear. Screaming ads promise the earth and despite knowing better hapless golfers go back for more, convinced that the latest driver on the market is going to cure all their golfing ills.

Once you’re primed for action, bag loaded or trolleyed up complete with essential gadgets (ball retriever and brolly holder are always popular) the real business begins – the addictive, gripping part of golf that keeps you coming back for more - the round itself. Four hours of mostly pleasure but sprinkled with various doses of agony, joy, frustration, hope and not a little despair.

The course is where the love affair is cemented. Driving ranges are great for practice, superb on a wet winter’s night but every golfer lives for the manicured greens and sculptured fairways where he can measure his skill and ability.
And the first tee on every course brings with it the potential and thrill of anticipation of what might be.

So what if you’re playing off 25 and you couldn’t hit a cow’s backside with a banjo from three feet! It doesn’t matter – the first shot of every new round heralds the start of something special. Eternally optimistic, it’s always the same, today’s the day you cast off the shackles of your handicap, unleash your true potential and blitz the course like the great golfer you know you really are.

Of course reality then kicks in – you top the shot, the ball shoots off like a heat-seeking missile, maintaining its perfect height of just a foot off the ground for all its 90 yard journey before coming to rest in a clump of rough on the adjacent hole.

Dream over for another round but there’s still another 17 holes to go and hey, hold on, if I get my five wood to this, actually manage to get a half decent connection, I’ll still have a chance to get on the green, sink the putt and . . . . .

Golf is also about the challenge of beating what the legendary Bobby Jones called Old Man Par – pitting your wit and ability against the course, out-thinking and maneuvering its hidden traps and spiteful hazards, attempting to lower your handicap, and, heaven forbid, even win some monthly medals.

But it’s not all about competitions, draining putts and shaving strokes off your handicap. Golf is something more too, its beautifully civilized, the long walks between holes yielding plenty of time for introspection and reflection as you contemplate a round unfolding before your eyes and take in the agelessness and greenness of it all, letting life’s day to day stresses drift away to be replaced by a kind of happy golfing stupor.

The Scots have come up with a few goods things down the centuries - malt whiskey, Kenny Dalglish, the Edinburgh Festival, the finest ever James Bond – but arguably golf is its greatest contribution to modern life.

It’s certainly yielded a brilliant history and to think that all the great players from all the great golfing eras – from Old Tom Morris to Vardon, Hagen, Jones, Hogan, Palmer, Nicklaus, to Faldo, Ballesteros, Norman and Woods have walked the same fairways, played the same shots and faced the same challenges, giving one a sense of history unparalleled in almost any other sport.

Football is often called the beautiful game but when you really think about it golf...now that is a beautiful game.

By Nat Sylvester