It is still dark when I start, very dark. It is 3rd January 2022, and, emerging slowly from a family Christmas, with a slew of new ideas and projects for the New Year, I manage to carve out an hour or so for some early golf. The news keeps threatening further Covid restrictions, and a year ago we had our liberties removed for a third lockdown in the UK, so I am keen to hit a ball and get some fresh air in my lungs.
My headtorch is charged, and bright, but it cannot follow the ball through the air just yet, and the first shot feels like it goes a little left, and after running for a minute or so, I spot it in my lamp’s glare, lurking in the freshly raked bunker. The greens team out ahead will have started an hour or more ago, their biological clocks adjusted for the extraordinary demand for golf in these troubled times, and for the course to be just so, even in the depths of winter.
I select the club best suited to the task of extracting my ball - an easy decision, given that I am running with only three sticks today - and this ancient “approach cleek”, stamped with the name of the maker - Walton Heath’s old Professional, James Braid - is up to the challenge. A quick, restorative rake, and I’m back on the run, and as the light soon improves as I move through the second, third, and fourth.
This type of play - I hesitate to call it SpeedGolf, as my speed isn’t that quick, and were I to keep score, that element wouldn’t be too good either - is so much fun. It takes me slightly under an hour this morning, nursing a sore ankle, and I am back home and having breakfast with the kids before most people get dressed on this lazy bank holiday.
But it is not just about the fact that it is quick, and can fit into most schedules, or that it combines golf with a more intensive workout than the normal, casual stroll. There is something more to this version of golf that I love, that I could use more of.
In having only three clubs in the bag, there is a forced simplicity that appeals to me, and the creative shotmaking you face when not just left with a distance (as if I know what the distance is!) that lies between two clubs, but halfway between a hybrid and a seven iron, is so refreshing. It reminds me of Seve, hacking round Pedreña with only an old three iron, although he probably hit it a little better. I bet he kept score, too.
My golf seems fluent today, and this is often the case when trying to play quickly. You reach the ball, lower your featherweight bag to the turf, and those moments of pre-shot routine, or measurement, or endless, horrible practice swings that the other golfers subscribe to are extraneous, wasteful in this context.
So are the thoughts that so often get in our way (I’m reminded of the words of a friend when delivering, in his Captain’s Speech, an analysis of the guidance he’d been given about that first drive by friends whilst “in the chair”. He explained that on the way to the tee, bagpipes ringing in his ears, he “had about seventy swing thoughts, and they all started with “don’t””).
When playing this quickly, I just glance at the shot and hit it, and it is as if “me” or “I” am out of the picture, just letting the swing happen, the shot just flowing through me. So often it goes better than it might have otherwise, and this form of golf, with no real care about score, or time, or measuring anything but just having a blast, not only feels magical, it is good for my game and my soul.
Driving home, with the group behind me now on the fifth fairway, I catch myself noting that I’d parred that hole, and the eighth, and a good few others besides. There I go again, reverting to the old habits - to measuring things, categorising a score or a performance. So I smile, and instead do the only bit of counting that matters this morning. I count my blessings, to live in a part of the world where leisure time exists, in a place where golf is played, and to have this small chunk of time to have spent on it.
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