The best that can be said of my game is that it is consistently inconsistent.
I suspect I am not alone in this facet, particularly among my fellow high handicappers. We stand on the tee and face the target more in hope than expectation, but on our day we can par or birdie any hole on the course.
The problem is that these Stableford point-gathering excursions are inevitably followed by a blackout at the next, no matter how simple the hole might be in the opinion of the wise men and women who set the stroke indices.
It goes without saying that any hole becomes impossible if one of the shots in your repertoire sends the ball sideways.
The remedy for inconsistency is, of course, practice. And the one thing that unites us happy hackers is our utter disdain for practice. A dirty word. Cheating, that’s what it is. Anyway, who has time to spend an hour blasting the sand out of a bunker or slashing practice balls to all points of the compass?
Such a philosophy just about sums up the difference between those of us who surrender our Wednesday afternoons to 18 holes of curses and theatrics, and those who make a living from the game. While we are in the bar searching our memory banks for the three good shots among the 99, Bryson is out searching for something on the range, having just shot 64.
But here’s the thing. Our three good shots live longer in the memory than any of Bryson’s. There was the drive on the 9th when the ball ignored the normal rules of golfing physics, and turned elegantly from right to left into the centre of the fairway. There was the bunt from the trees on the 12th that skirted the bunker and rolled onto the green, and there was the curling 15-foot putt for bogey that followed it. These weren’t golf shots; these were works of art that should be exhibited in the Louvre.
In some ways my average round is rather like panning for gold: I have to move an awful lot of dirt to find a minuscule scrap of the shiny stuff.
For any normal sportsperson such a miserable return would mean instant retirement from the pursuit, but golf is not a normal game and golfers are not normal people.
At the humble club I call home, we come in all shapes, sizes and handicaps. Harry, who just turned 80, went and bought a new driver in a desperate attempt to carry the ball over the ladies tee. Bernie threw out his Srixons and replaced them all with Taylor-Mades because they go further. That’s the secret of Rory’s success, he says.
You go out and buy a better game because it’s either the ball or it’s the club. It’s that mouthy fool wittering on while you line up your second shot. It’s the greenkeeper who doesn’t understand pin positions. It’s the Piet My Vrou shouting for breakfast. It could not in any circumstances be the player.
See you on the practice green. Or not.
– This column first appeared in the August 2024 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine.
Photo: Kate McShane/Getty Images
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