BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP

The tyranny of golf is its ability to tantalise and tease in the same time it takes you to knock out a quick swing.  That’ll be 1.2 seconds.  Its visceral grip never loosens, strangling the bowel and the brain and rendering the incompetent more incompetent and the clever more vexed. In no time at all, you can go from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again, swing by swing.  I am delighted to report that, while my game has remained consistently bad, there has been a tenfold improvement in my ability to trot out a litany of swear words I never knew I knew.  Not only that but I have managed to escalate this verbal deluge into a positive rosary of misanthropy that I can expound in a minimum of five languages and at the drop of a golf ball.  This Jekyll and Hyde behaviour only manifests itself as soon as I stand on the first tee.  It's the only bit of my play I don't need to spend hours practising.  All other times, I am a modicum of sensible and informed behaviour.

I have even worked out course management.  Of course this has nothing to do with my golfing skills and my ability to read the terrain in order to pull off an incredible shot.  No, it solely relates to which slurry of swear words I should be reigning down on a particular piece of course at any given moment.  The art of swearing I have mapped beautifully while the art of course management remains as strange and as foreign as the uses of a chocolate teapot.

I am also happy to report that I am never alone in these nefarious salutations.  A life lesson I learnt a long time ago stands me in good stead here: always surround yourself with people who uphold you.  (This always works well if you’ve had an-over-the-top-drinking sesh.) Joining me in my golfing outings are two ladies of a certain age who, between them, could turn the air blue.  In their professional roles, I am happy to report, they are jewels of sense and sensibility, the very epitome of a Jane Austen hero, models of angelic perfection that only dissolve into dissolute mode when they join me on the first tee.  I have not yet worked out if this is contagious behaviour and who is the prototype but my mother did warn me about the effects of one bad apple in the barrel.  However, as I have no wish to be the named singleton “bad apple” leading the rest south on the Highway to Hell (nothing like a bit of AC/DC; http://www.acdc.com/us/home ) or lose any of my companions because they are rotten to the core, I remain ignorant in my bliss and enjoy the freedom of expression we have fallen in to.  Laissez faire.  For the record, it should be noted that I always did the opposite to what my mother told me.  I’ve been a rebel black sheep for ever such a long time and, once you’re dyed in the wool, it’s a tad hard to turn back.

Now, where was I?  Oh yes, standing on the first tee, swearing.  But not all things on the golf course are a negative.  On the plus side and by way of a free beauty treatment, I can recommend a good burn-up in a bunker.  Don’t hit the ball out first time.  It is by far the better method to have at least five strikes at the ball using the Seve Balesteros method of breaking your wrists for a straight shower of sand deluging up your body from ankles to eyebrows or, if you prefer a full facial, make sure you execute this method facing into a strong wind.  The effects are not immediately apparent but, later on in the shower, you will discover the full results of a glowing youthful skin and the benefits of a free exfoliation. 

Reader, you have to understand I discovered this treatment quite by accident.  Stuck in the morass of yet another bunker on the eighteen-hole journey, I had tried every trick in the golfers’ bible to dig myself out of a deep greenside sand hole.  I went deeper and sandblasted my entire body in the process. During my post-round ablutions, I discovered that scrubbing the thin veneer of sand - glued to every conceivable crevasse of my body by the sweat of my endeavours - did my skin a favour.

I offer this by way of advice for every lady golfer and any of the males who consider themselves city-slicker metrosexuals when not on the golf course.

Of course, if you don’t like any of the above advice, here’s another way to achieve the desired effect  https://vine.co/v/Oa3hXxFOMhd

It should be noted, however, that the procedure is a tad painful but a glass of vino in hand and a modicum of swearing to boot is allowed in the power shower – just to help you slice through the experience.

Meanwhile, improvements in my golfing career seem to come and go faster than the minute-by-minute changes in the Irish weather and I would dearly love to start a serious piece with the title “Oh yes! I think I’ve arrived” but that’s a long way off.  Meanwhile, it might be a wiser move to follow someone who is seriously trying to grow his game
http://hackertosinglefigures.co.uk/playing-better-golf/