THE STORY OF RICHARD DU PANTALON L’ESPOIR

It must be something to do with Vintage Golfer for it is beginning to look like anyone who knows him ends up in “the wrong trousers”.  I wasn’t the only one (see my pants of an adventure with VG at foleysmith555.blogspot.co.uk).  There’s his good mate - named after an English king who managed to get himself buried under a council car park and caused no end of expense getting himself dug up again only to be reinterred (I’m a taxpayer: what was that about?) - who shall forever more and amen be known by us for his style in trousers. 

This Richard is very much alive and wears cargo pants - or at least that’s the nearest description I could pin to those trousers if I were blind or had my sight dimmed by the bedevilment of cataracts.  As I’m neither and I pride myself on having a good eye for fashion, I have to confess I’m hard pressed to find a synonym that comes close to capturing the essence that constitutes Richard’s trousers.  To be more accurate, it looks like he’s wearing two golf bags, one on each leg, and, like any self-respecting golf bag, they have oodles of pockets.  Trillions, in fact, and as Richard doesn’t push a trolley round, I have to assume he stuffs his clubs in his trouser pockets. 

I think he borrowed the idea from journalist Vincent Graff (I’m a fan, Vincent), who beat Ryanair at their own baggage game with the aid of a Royal Robbins Field Guide Vest aimed at huntsmen.  Seventeen pockets, myriad zips, strips of Velcro, the kitchen sink later, and he is on board a flight without the hassle of the shape-shifting baggage allowance getting in the way.  Don’t quote me because I haven’t had this confirmed straight from the horse’s mouth but this pony of an idea seems to be the germ for Richard’s baggy trousers.  It’s a prototype.  Well done, Richard.  Patent it and I’ll head up the sales team.  I am already working on a snazzy pitch: “The Legend of Golf Bag Leggings: what every golfer needs to take in his stride”. 

We have had close encounters with those cargo pants on several occasions.  In the distance and with that entire diatribe about keeping your head down while taking shots, it is difficult to identify who is out there.  Not so with Richard.  He’s a man outstanding on the golf course in more ways than one.

“Is that Richard” Gill or I will enquire.

“Not sure but those are Richard’s trousers” comes the evergreen reply.

“It must be Richard then” we opine in opulent harmony.

Woe betides if the man should ever change his garb.  We could be barking up the wrong tree there.  Gill and I like to do a good character assassination from time to time when we are bored or just being plain silly and it is always good manners to identify the right character before you make a start.  Richard could never duck under our radar with those trews.

And so it came to pass, in biblical parlance and on the occasion of some sort of a club “man medal”, that we found ourselves on the tenth hole of our home golf course.  The peerless pants, Richard and his practice session are behind us on the ninth.  He and VG have an important match coming up so he’s alone and focused.  He is busy reading the green while I am busy hitting a pretty naff drive.  It hadn’t gone any distance and is sitting in a dreadful lie, and my swearing genie was having a party in my head.  Gill, meanwhile, has hit a crackin’ shot and is heading off into the great blue beyond.

There is only one thing to do when you shoot a duff shot: follow it with the most brilliant shot you can muster.  And I did.  Rescue club was the rescue remedy and I hit an excellent shot out of the rough on a left-to-right trajectory that saw the ball coast up nicely onto the skirts of the seventeenth tee.  Not any old tee this one – it was the medal tee.  For those of you who read this piffle for the superlative standard of English and don’t have a clue how sacred the medal tee is to men, let me explain: think football aficionado wallowing on Wembley turf, the Pope having a lip-smacking tarmac snack at the airport, the Queen romping with her corgis (I said corgis, not Philip…) or for me, an audience with the late great Mahatma Ghandi.  Too sacrosanct to mess with on even the most innocent level.  I am so stunned that I missed my first opportunity to shout “fore right”.  Yup, it was a corker!

Yes, yes, I know there are tech terms for this sort of golf ball trajectory.  And for you golfers who are grinding your way through this diatribe with gritted teeth, I know you know your slices from your hooks, your fades from your draws but knowing all these terms doesn’t make you a great golfer.  How would you feel if you visited me in my world and I insisted you speak only of your plicae circulares or haustra? In fact, don’t mention those words to me in clinic.  I’m cardiac and those words are much lower down in the grand scale of your anatomy and physiology.  Draw, fade, plicae circulares or haustra: they are all flatulence and wind to me.

There is only one proper thing to do in times like these: die of embarrassment and since I’m very au fait with this sentiment, that’s exactly what I do.  I would like to recount that I walked confidently down the fairway to proffer my apologies to those magnificent men set for tee-off on the seventeenth’s medal spot.  I didn’t.  It was a sort of over arm crawl along the ground, and possibly the only time I’ve kept my head down in true golfing fashion.  I looked like a belly-rubbing-along-the-ground dog returning submissively to his master’s voice after sojourning away in an indulgent spree of disobedience.  In short, I was mortified.

Meanwhile, Gill - still busy laughing at my debacle - took her shot.  Laughing, swings and shots do not hang well together in the game of golf.  This is about the only thing I can tell you with real assurance from my experience with this gargantuan game.  Oh yes, she hit her ball with a dollop of backspin straight on to the green – except it wasn’t the tenth green. Now, if she had been really clever, she could have executed a shot like Rory McIlroy when he literally dropped a shot in a spectator’s pocket.  Heaven knows Richard of the Cargo Pants has enough spare pockets but, instead, she plopped the ball down, slap-bang, beside Richard who was busy minding his own business on the ninth green.  Give that man his due, he responded with stalwart dignity in the face of Gill’s unexpected right-to-left shot across the fairway.  Straight-laced, straight-faced and straightaway, Richard magiced-up a large white cotton handkerchief from the bowels of his pantalon – with a sort of Tommy Cooperesque “just like that” flourish - and held it aloft, flag-like, in the light breeze.  Shakespeare once said, “Brevity is the soul of wit” and I’m with Will all the way on this one, but I now suspect Richard is a Bard fan too for he uttered only two sterling words as Gill wended her way sheepishly forward to retrieve her errant ball.  “I surrender” was his tongue-in-cheek comment.

There is now chaos on the course.  I have arrested medal play on the seventeenth (cardinal sin), Gill has stopped play on the ninth (mortal sin), and there isn’t anything happening on our tenth (to-hell-and-beyond sin), as we are too busy apologising and swooning with embarrassment.  I think this sort of behaviour might cause a furrow or three with the “Frown on Slow Play” brigade but the only wrinkles on everyone’s foreheads that notable afternoon were those of laughter.  Respect to those medal men who made me feel my game was a million dollars and a high five to Baggy Trousers who gallantly dealt with Gill and her wrong-green gaffe.  Golf legends were they or, in Richard’s case, golf leg-ends.

And now, Richard, a few words in your shell-like.

Those cargoes are worth their freight in gold, flying as they are in the face of fashion.  A distinctive logo for your go-low rounds, you might say, but should you abandon those, erm, pants, I have it on good authority that HM Paras would be grateful for the yardage.  In these harsh days of economic cutbacks, they could literally be flying by the seat of your pants.  What a profound and patriotic thought!  Keep it in mind when you retire those pantalon.  There might yet be a knighthood in them.

But a word of warning.  White cotton handkerchiefs, sunny days, and a lack of protective headgear from those UV waves seem to bring out the worst in men of a certain age.  I’ve been on too many English beaches and seen that four-cornered, knotted-hanky look being aired.  It’s not elegant.  If I ever find you’ve substituted your golf cap for this odious look, there will be trouble.  Let me put it to you gently like this: I’m out of oestrogen, I’ve got a gun, and I’m not afraid to use it.

Do I hear you say “Why the French title?”  Indulge me here.  I keep the French flag flying in case Victor Dubuisson might swing by and follow my blog.  It hasn’t happened aujourd’hui, nor is it likely to happen au demain but je vis dans l’espoir.  Oh yes, Richard, I live in hope!