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Thursday 21 August 2014

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS ENEMIES???

Trick-Shot-Jodie was on the loose and playing to the gallery.  I’m being kind in using that phrase.  You see, she could never be accused of playing to the fairway, or the tee, or the green – or anything remotely resembling a game of standard golf as you would recognise it.  Perhaps she was playing some perverse form of lay-ups but as I didn’t know or recognise that style of play at this point of my incipient golfing career, my best conclusion was that she was playing to the gallery.  And she certainly stopped players in their tracks and made them gasp – but I really wouldn’t like to be drawn on the quality of admiration that was being expressed in those gasps.  Shock and awe might be the closer ingredients but as it was mainly men who were nonplussed by her antics and we being female, we were easily able to discount their contributions and play on.

Being polite by nature, I did compliment her on her winsome ways with her whack attack on the ball.  At one stage, instead of responding to her usual request for the rescue club, I passed her a spade and shovel.  I felt the ground would be safer if she attacked with these implements.  And she certainly outplayed any strong male that day: the size of her pitch marks and divots were way beyond anything I’d ever seen.  In fact, if golf was scored on size and number of divots taken, Messrs Watson, Kaymer and McIlroy could hang up their golfing gear.  And her pitch marks were something else.  At one point so deep was the indentation, I thought we were heading for Australia.  Concave does not do those marks any justice.

Straight lines did not feature much in her maverick style of play either. She had a definite drive towards crisscrossing zigzags and a star-studded supernatural attraction for trees.  In truth, one stand of trees looked like they’d been attacked by a colony of beavers on a dam building expedition.  For the uninitiated, we don’t have much in the way of beavers in the UK and those we have are only fossils.  This was the crucial point at which I quit yelling ‘fore’ and capitulated into that well-worn cant of ‘timber’.  Trick-Shot-Jodie could certainly show those lumberjacks a thing or two about felling trees.  Our recent Storm St Jude had a lesser deleterious effect on the tree population of Seckford than the effervescent Jodie onslaught.

And things didn’t get any better.  Picture this: we’re back in the trees – for the umpteenth time.  TSJ’s ball is now lying on rough ground, snug between well-spaced trees.  Easy peasy pitching wedge shot between the trees, back onto the fairway.  Or so it would seem.  But TSJ only operates by Murphy’s Law which clearly states that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong.  And it did.  By now, I’d become chief adviser and caddy.  I handed her the necessary iron.  Reader, I really can’t tell you what happened next.  Jodie has this swing that is faster than anything even Dustin Johnson can produce.  Suffice it to say, she swung, she didn’t miss the trees, she did end up on the fairway - but the ricochet landed her a good thirty yards further back towards tee off than our original starting point.  I cried.  Big, big, BIG fat tears of laughter.  My abs worked harder that game then any gym session I’ve ever undertaken.

Now if you’ve ever had the burning need to prove Einstein’s Theory of Relativity – and I have to confess it’s not high on my shopping list – then this was the moment, the coup de grace.  Her standard of play made me look ‘professional’ – relatively speaking that is.  I have a feeling in my erudite waters though that it will be long and many a day before I look that good again.  Perhaps if I have a shot at believing in miracles or take up praying to St Jude.......  He is, after all, the patron saint of hopeless cases and golfers.  Hmmm!  He might have met his match in Jodie and me.  But here’s hoping.


Wednesday 6 August 2014

NEANDERTHAL MAN


Every golf course has one.  I don’t quite know how to describe him when I first meet him but I know a girl who can.  So I phone #1 girlfriend who has not the slightest interest in golf and can therefore be relied upon to give an unbiased opinion.  And she did not disappoint.  She’s the sort of girlfriend I could never fall out with – she knows too much about me.  I call her Tree (you got it: she’s strong, reliable, grounded); she calls me The Mad Irish One (don’t even bother working it out).  It works as friendships go.

I explain my predicament.  “It’s simple,” she says, “that’s Neanderthal Man you’ve just met.”  And I can’t argue with that conclusion: Tree is so right.  But let me tell you what happened.

Innocent me had rolled up at a local driving range to fit in an extra practice session.  It’s called Millers Barn.  (http://www.millersbarngolf.co.uk/)  I’m happily installed in my stall, shelling out shots, swishing through my swings and minding my own business.  Except nothing’s going right.  Or left.  Or straight.  In fact, nothing’s going anywhere, except to an early demise straight in front of my feet.  Behind me is Lone Ranger, merrily working away on his clubs and shooting off a shot about every ten minutes or so.  He’s slow (very) but he’s precise, pedantic, owns a pundit’s pitch, assimilated to a perfect execution, fabulous finish and to-die-for distance.  I know it’s happening because there’s that satisfying twack! only ever heard when the sweet spot meets the ball at exactly the right point.  The sort of shot that makes you want to spit or turn green with envy.  As I don’t condone the Tiger habit and I’m Irish – so that makes me green enough already – I pause and stand silently back, gaping in admiration.  And he was in a place where he wanted to show off his prowess.  I should have rolled up to practise with a placard that read “Don’t pick on me, mate.  I’ve already finished off petrolhead Alfa Romeo Guiliaetta back in 1975 and it took him a long time to recover” but I hadn’t had the foresight to do this and, anyway, it would have impeded my swing – which, if we remember, was in dire straits right at this moment in time.

Suddenly, Mr Neanderthal Man took it upon himself to instruct me: no discussion, no preamble, no “would you like a bit of help unravelling what’s going wrong?” sort of intro.  In the flash of an eye, I was corralled in a lesson.  And being told with assertion what I should be doing.  Ahem! I don’t like to split hairs here but I didn’t ask him, nor am I the sort of hapless, helpless female who swoons at the slightest mishap.  It’s just not how my DNA is wired, coming as I do from a long line of ancient Brehons who knew a thing or two about female warrior queens.  Girls, if you ever want to know what early emancipated woman meant, read the life story of Queen Maeve @ http://www.queenmaeve.org/  Boys, if you want to find out about this wild and wanton woman... no, don’t do it.  I can’t be held responsible.  Enough.  Back to the impromptu golf lesson.

Problem: what do you do if the instructions you’re now being handed by NM are radically different than those from ebullient and kind instructor Simon?  Mmmmh...!  That’s when I phone Girlfriend #1.  Having named and shamed him, she then proceeds to tell me what to do: utilise my blood pressure cuff; wrap tightly round Neanderthal’s neck; inflate to max; leave in situ till he has turned blue.  I remind her we are both nurses and hang up.  She may be correct in her synopsis but inciting me to murder and mayhem is not a viable answer.  And she has led me astray too many times before.  We nurses have a duty to care – even when the golfing chips are down.

Next, I text Vintage Golfer for advice.  You must have gathered by now that VG is reliable, patient and pragmatic in all answers to my regular inane enquiries.  Imagine my horror when back came the inflammatory reply “tell him to .... ...”.  Maybe my dials are smashed because I’m a convent school product who was raised on good manners and politeness but, VG, I can’t say THAT to anyone.  For years, I have been aware of the negative influence of Lá Fée Verte, the Leprechauns and a cracking drop of Jameson Rarest Reserve * in my life: their combined forces have occasionally led me up the garden path and made me do things I never wanted to do but now it looked like my sangfroid Vintage Golfer had joined ranks with them.  As I couldn’t figure out whether he’d suddenly migrated to his emotional side or simply lost the plot, I did the only sensible thing a girl-golfer-in-distress can do – by return text, I send him Father O’Field’s number and tell him to have his Confession heard.  I expect it will be a long job.  Sorry, Father O’Field.  Mae culpa.  Mae culpa.

Meanwhile, I’m still at a loss as to how to deal with Neanderthal Man.  The solution to my current problem now demanded a whole new level of counterintuitive alchemy.  Like any good golfer, I looked in the bag.  And I found a diamond-calibre club to swing – in the shape of my long time gym buddy Sam.  She and I have exercised a host of muscles as we train together but none more so than those muscles we’ve exercised through laughter.  It’s our best medicine.  “At least she’ll help me find the hot spot of humour in all this,” I mused as I fired up her number.  I explain my predicament.  Phone-a-friend was bang on form.  She uttered one word and hung up.  I did exactly as she said because I knew she knew I could do it well.  When the chips are down, you don’t need a manual, just the right advice. 
“Run” was all she said.

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