Near the first tee, there now sits a large, white board, with a whole load of numbers on it, and in front of it, a huddle of confused golfers, of various vintages. As I roll a few practise putts, snippets of conversation drift across, and the usual buzz of (often naive) anticipation that we used to hear - that this might be the game they’ve always hoped for, the form they been so close to finding all these years - has been replaced by a deep and bitter irritation. They are staring at the matrix, and scratching their heads.
Welcome to the World Handicapping System. I could write a book on this latest development, about how it is yet to meet its key principles, and how its delivery put additional pressure on golf club and county administrations at a time when the lethal cocktail of Brexit and a global pandemic seemed to have that pretty well covered already. But that would be a very dull book, perhaps ;ess appealing than the matrix itself, and to dwell on the negatives or criticise anyone is not the idea here. This system is now in place, along with Brexit, and must surely get better in time. There is plenty of scope for that to happen, at least - some room for manouvre.
The idea here, as I prepare for my own rare outing, is to try and find a way to be grateful to those poor souls having to defend and desperately administer this colossal mess, and to pay tribute to those who dreamt it up. For this is just the latest in a perpetual stream of “developments” that remind me why I play this game, when time permits. So I am surprisingly grateful to England Golf and everyone else involved, for bringing me back to a different form of golf - the one I have loved for thirty-five years.
This constant drift towards technology, and ever-more complicated rules, and of distance control and club-fitting, and the senseless pursuit of certain green speeds or perfect hazards, and a whole load of other metrics…it goes on and on. All of this noise reminds me that I play the game to have fun, and studying a board full of numbers and operating a scorecard, or worse still an app, is not part of that dream, at least for me.
In “The Art of Possibility”, Benjamin and Rosamund Zander talk about two conflicting concepts, and the mindsets that can emerge from examining the interplay between them. On the one side, in a society obsessed by metrics, is the “world of measurement”, and as the golfing authorities harness infinite data streams to try and take luck out of the equation, some of the simple joy of the game disappears along with it.
But on the other side, they identify a “universe of possibility”, in which the default is not a downward spiral of thought, but rather a lightness of attitude. In this approach they see a sliver of hope, an optimism that humanity might see through the data, this veil of statistics, and glimpse that there is, in this short life we are given, the chance to simply explore what might be possible. Perhaps not probable, but at least possible. The attitude they seek is one of openness, explorative…positive. Tigger rather than Eeyore.
For me, as the groups behind grapple with the appropriate adjustments, and try to remember what percentage of which number is applicable to today’s format from whatever set of tees they eventually reach, this concept of possibility celebrates leaving behind this endless measurement, along with the blasted phone, at least for the next couple of hours.
My Distance Measuring Devices will be my eyes, which have served me perfectly well so far, don’t require charging, and are harder to lose, and rather than pacing out each shot I will feel my way round, and use old-fashioned judgement. My pre-shot routine will not be some awkward, pre-determined, robotic sequence, but instead a case of looking at the challenge ahead, licking my lips in anticipation, and then just hitting it.
Like Ty Webb in Caddyshack, “I don’t keep score”, but will instead judge the success or otherwise of today’s round by whether I enjoyed it; whether I found once again the simple pleasure that I had as a kid knocking balatas around the park in the rain. I will try out the shots that anyone who cares about keeping score might be best served avoiding, but once in a while I will make the shot work, and my heart will sing.
Thank you, World Handicapping System, for bringing me back to the joy of the game.
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