The Wonders of Golf
Isn’t golf a wonderful game? Well, if you’re a non-golfer you might wonder what’s so great about it. Golf provides pleasure on so many levels. You get:
The challenge of the course;
The test of co-ordinating your mind and muscles, even when the pressure is on;
The pleasure of the company of friends;
and the beauty of the countryside you are playing in – even if it is surrounded by tall buildings, a golf course can be beautiful.
You’ll see straight away that I don’t agree with Mark Twain that golf spoiled a good walk – great writer, but he lacked imagination when it came to golf.
The Scots invented golf
So whom do we need to thank for this great game of golf, now played almost all over the world, including in the desert? No one knows for sure, but we do know that the game was well enough established for Mary Queen of Scots to have played golf – quite often, it seems – on the Links at Leith, in Edinburgh, at Musselburgh and Port Seton in the 1560s.
Golf has certainly been played in Scotland since the 18th century, and what is now the Old Course at Musselburgh became a golf club in 1790, and it was in 1810 that a Mr Gay supplied a machine to cut the hole in the green – and the hole is the same size to this day.
You see you can play golf on any piece of land that is big enough for 18 holes, or even 9 holes. It can be as flat as a pancake or up and down – you can still enjoy your game. But the best golf courses has slopes and curves, but not steep hills. And they are difficult – a challenge to the golfer.
We all stand on the first tee and look down towards the green, take in the green fairway, maybe a few trees, or the distant sea, and prepare for another game. Today, we will score better. No one says it standing on the tee, but everyone hopes so. This is golf: a microcosm of golf, we start off with hope, just as we do each we get out of bed.
Often we don’t play well, but …
Mostly, we get down the first fairway well enough, and maybe play the first hole well. But somewhere out there, the course will suddenly jump up, grab your ball and hide it in a bush or a pond, or it will blow it over a fence so you are out of bounds. Or just as you are putting, the hole will mysteriously move aside a couple of inches so your ball goes past. Well, that is what it seems like sometimes.
Sometimes we play very well
On other days, you can play really well. You’re like a king, majestically travelling past all the dangers – brushed aside by your staff – and you just hit the ball into the middle of the fairway, into the middle of the green, and into the middle of the hole.”Easy, this game of golf”, someone might remark, but you remember the last game when it was so hard.
Golf is about enjoying the countryside, it is about learning to co-ordinate your muscles,and enjoying that mastery – and you can have mastery at many different levels. Then, there are two or maybe the games in one. A lot of the time you want to hit the ball a long way, such as when you are driving off the tee, or when playing a long shot from the fairway. But then, you need a delicate touch to hit the ball from 50-100 yards from the green.
Finally, you need the ability to ‘read’ the slopes of the green, and hit the ball with precision of length and accuracy of line to get it into the hole. When you can do that well over 18 holes every time you play golf, “Well, you’re a better man than me Gunga Din – or should I say Tiger.”
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