It takes a certain sort of person to play golf, I think. Anyone can pick up a club - young or old, weak or strong - and have fun thrashing it at the ball for a while. Now and then, one will connect (there’s “the enigmatic hook” of the game, again), and a further journey might begin from there.
But to really play golf - to be willing to put up with the effect on the rest of your life that labelling yourself as “a golfer” entails - it demands a commitment rarely seen in the modern world. The golfer is a searcher - not just of their errant golf balls - but of something deeper, transcendent. The elusive sweetspot is like our crack-pipe; a moment when things are for a change effortless, flowing. And then, it slips away again as quickly as it came.
So, we golfers are either daft, or on to something, and time will tell. But we cannot always play alone, so golfing friendships must and will develop. I have a few very good golf buddies, and they are among the most precious friends I will ever have in this life. Perhaps this is simply because they’re great people, and it just so happens that golf is part of our common ground - certainly a few fall into this bracket, though why they put up with me remains a mystery. But perhaps it is also a function of this journey we occasionally traverse together, the golfing path we tread side by side, from that first “enigmatic hook” to our final breath.
We grow together and share - in this microcosm of life that unfolds on the links - all of the highs and lows that this world has to offer. Golf brings an intimacy that is rare outside of it, as far as I can see, yet it is possible (and I am guilty of this) to not actually know that much about golfing friends. There are some for whom I couldn’t answer the most basic questions, and I realised not so long ago that I had mistaken the surname of one of them, despite playing golf with him on a fairly regular basis for a dozen years at least. I don’t even know if he noticed, and after that long, it may have become awkward to correct me…perhaps it was easier for him to not mention it, like Rodney in “Only Fools & Horses”, putting up with Trigger calling him “Dave” endlessly. That makes me “Trigger”, I realise, but if you’ve seen some of the golfing decisions I make…
So, we golfing friends meet by the tee, or in the car park, and the balls go up, and we head out, and we talk about golf, and golfing equipment, and golf travel, and on and on, and one day you realise that although you don’t know the slightest thing about them, you could pick out their practice putting stroke in a silhouette line-up, or identify their backswing two holes away.
You don’t know their wife’s name, or how many children they do or don’t have, and perhaps with some, you have the same conversations over and over, politely trying to show an interest in this stuff - the details of the “real life” we leave behind for a few hours - but you remember instead the golfing narratives that pass between you.
You put up with their funny little habits, and they yours, and try not to let their putting woes, or at times wretched driving spoil your own walk. They hardly ever laugh at, say, your feeble, twitchy stab at a three footer, which wouldn’t have touched a hole the size of a garden bucket. Because we’re in this together.
Through golfing, you come to know more about their vulnerable, even fragile self-confidence than anyone they work with, or perhaps even live with. You become life partners of a different sort, meeting in locker rooms throughout the land to spend short windows of time in this other dimension you call golf - a mental landscape of, to the outsider, unimaginable strangeness. There is nothing physical in this close friendship - “it’s not that sort of club” - but when one day the flag drops on the club mast, and you are another golfing friend down, you will have lost a close bond. And your foursomes partner.
Our golfing friends see us when hopeless, desperate. They might even, occasionally, see us proud, exhilarated, although the game seems to focus on suffering, so these moments are the exceptions, but no less sweet for that. And despite all that they’ve seen you do in the pursuit of this laughable “pastime”, despite all the hours they’ve spent looking for your golf balls in ditches, trees, heather and jungle, they still want to play with you.
Our golfing friends are with us through thick and thin, through fats and thins, shanks and duck-hooks, tops and slices. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, etc. Who knows what they’ve done to deserve this, or you for that matter, but don’t ever take them for granted. It takes a certain type of person to golf, so look after these people, and tell them, once in a while, that you appreciate them, and their ongoing support out there in the heat of the battle. Goodness knows, they’ve earned that much.
Maybe you could send them this, and save having to say it yourself. For they’re probably too busy thinking about the new driver in the shop to really listen anyway. You never know, they might start giving you a few more of those tricky length putts…
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