Stewart Cink Has an Unreal Tan Line on His Head
There are two
professions the world and I should be grateful I didn’t pursue – that of
diplomat or hairdresser. No prizes
for working out the first – can you imagine me buttoning my lip to play the
minefield game of diplomacy?
Silence may be golden but I was never destined for the long pauses or
second-guessing of that career.
Say it like it is and deal with the consequences. That’ll be me in a nutshell then. The second is not so easy to figure.
It all began when I had my
firstborn. Ciaran was born with
what looked like an inverted classic floor mop on top of his head. It was called hair and it kept
growing. By nine months, his
hairstyle looked like a mutant cross between that of Animal and Beaker’s from
The Muppets. That’s when I decided
to give him his first haircut. It
wasn’t my best move and I’m just glad social media wasn’t around because the
debacle would have gone viral and I would have been locked up. The final result looked like a giraffe
with blunt teeth had chewed his thatch.
Not a good look at any age.
When I took him to a barber the very next day, the ashen-faced stylist
made me promise never to cut hair again.
Not just my son’s but also anybody else’s. I might be an in-your-face-type of girl but I’ve kept out of
everyone’s hair ever since. By the
time the barber had untangled the mess I’d made, my beautiful baby boy made Yul
Brynner look hirsute.
But what has this
preamble got to do with golf, you might well ask?
Stick with me – there’s
neat logic hidden in my mayhem, a pearl of wisdom well guarded and yet to be
revealed, but only if you travel the biblical road to revelation with me to
find the Damascus moment and a whole new game of golf.
GK Chesterton’s great thought of “I regard golf as an expensive way of
playing marbles” is not wasted on the likes of me and I found myself - on a
salvo of sunless days and a protracted busy period that left me without time to
practise, play or think golf - eyeballing my way through golfing videos, trying
to sate the need to hit it on the fairways. Thank
to Messers. Hurley, Chen and Karim, founding fathers of YouTube, I was able to indulge my
needs but, far from learning anything concrete to further my swing, I got
distracted – nothing new there – and learnt instead that “Experience
is a comb nature gives to bald men”.
The largely unwritten rules of golf
etiquette demands that hats should be removed for the traditional handshake at
the end of a round. So be it, but
golfers I had assumed had heads replete of hair suddenly were looking somewhat topknot
challenged and almost beyond recognition!
And so began my thatchplay sequence…
Although Jordan and Tiger have been seen
out and about on a recent NFL date, this is not your average hair-pairing
couple. Tiger and Rory go more
hand in hand. Tiger’s hairline is
receding faster than his game and, while Rory - with his fanfare of tight curls
erupting cornucopia-like from under his cap and faster than molten lava from Mount
Vesuvius - may not be able to lend him much by way of resurrection golf, he can
certainly offer him a handful of excess curls. Tiger, I know a good follicular unit transplant operator
should you need a bit of strip harvesting done. R McIlroy, T Woods, 3&1.
Next stop, Zach Johnson
and I’m thinking his hairstyle mirrors that sported by Sam The Eagle of Muppets fame. Brushing aside the Donald
Trump comb-over as an obvious solution to Zach’s golfing version of a monk’s
tonsure, I think he would be well paired with The Walrus. Hairy donations by way of Craig Stadler’s
moustache and chin-fuzz facial furniture would fill the balding void on Zach’s
head. A word of warning here,
Zach: The Walrus’ follicles have aged to a whiter shade of pale and since
Stadler was released into the world a few years earlier than that classic
Procol Harum song, all I can say is “Get yourself a good colourist”. C Stadler, Z Johnson, Halved (18).
Now, young Jordan, I
know you’ve been having a happy pop at the lovely Lefty and his veteran years
of life since he made the captain’s pick for Team Presidents Cup in
October. At least, I hope it was a
Jordan jest – but I would like you to have a serious word with your team buddy
about what I term ‘Phil flick’. It’s
not doing it for me. Every time he
takes that cap off, bang goes the image of a gentleman pro golfer and all I can see
is an Afghan Hound - you know,
sleeked down hat-hair that rebels into a major flick-out from below the
ears. There’s a lot of shaggy bits
surplus to requirement there, but nothing that a short-back-and-sides wouldn’t
sort, a quick No.2, and Bob’s your uncle.
Or in this case, Phil. You
could take Phil’s surplus to a bone fide trichologist and see if there’s room
to use his unwanted curls for a little light grafting on your own
front-of-house hairline. P Mickelson, J Speith, 2up.
All this carping about
these aforementioned American bald eagle scorers pales to insignificance when
one considers leucocephalus Stewart Cink.
Uh oh, Mr Cink, your performance is hair-raising and a cut above the
rest. That pate is pure barefaced
cheek and the combined forces of Dubuisson, Villegas, Langer, Els, Pepperell
and a young Tom Watson on their most feral bad hair days could not sprout
enough reserves to keep you out of a YouTube viral adventure. Oh my! Even if I threw in Jiminez and
Fleetwood, there would still be inches of baldheadedness on show. On the other hand, if Rickie Fowler (sorry,
Rickie) were to pluck his eyebrows and give you those parings, your follicular
challenge would be resolved in one fell swoop. Well done you for standing head and shoulders above the rest
- even if you looked like a pint of Bass.
You might not be the leading star in making the cut on Moving Days but
there’s no topping your score. S
Cink, Rest of the World, no contest.
Cink wins by a head.
While Sean O’Hair lives up to his name,
and Al Balding never did, the next hair apparent I would like to headline is
Jens Fahrbring. Jens, take a look
at Thomas. You are both bordering
on the Baltic and a little of that love-thy-neighbour and doing good stuff
wouldn’t go amiss with Thomas - who would be Bjørn again - should you wish to
donate a little from your crop.
Think about it…but not for so long that age may leave you without
anything to tithe to Thomas. J
Fahrbring, T Bjørn, 8&7.
While we’re at it, let’s remember Remésy –
that’s bald as a coot Remésy, little known, and oft forgotten, return to Q
school Remésy. That’s Remésy who
has missed more cuts than his hair has ever demanded and who is now playing on
the Senior Tour. I have a young
man in my sights that would make an ideal thatchplay partner for you – fellow
countryman and cheveux-rich player
Victor Dubuisson. Victor: you are
never going to miss a smattering of hair either from your visage or tête and
Jean-François could do with a dollop of help. V Dubuisson, JF Remésy, 3 en haut.
Now, there are some
head-to-head pairings I do draw the line at. Take, for example, this headline partnership: “Nice
hairy Fanny back on Nick Faldo’s bag for one last ride”. As both of them have heads of hair to
die for, I have no idea where this line of reasoning is heading, nor how to
mark it - at least, not anything I could safely score in public.
Moving on swiftly and with alacrity to my
new harebrained idea for those who do not sprout the requisite shoots from
their follicles as nature planned – you can lead the field by sporting your
very own dome of interest in the shape of head tattoos. So I can now end this hair-piece
in the same place as I began: back with the talented Messers. Hurley, Chen and
Karim, founding fathers of YouTube.
With one click of a button, there’s a tribe of brainstorming tattoos to
be found there. Believe me, I’ve
looked. Go see.
Meanwhile, Ciaran and his hair have grown
a fulsome thirty-one years unscathed to maturity in spite of my earliest attempts
to sabotage the latter. Well done,
son. And I'm off to Tattoo School. I feel a whole new business heading my way...
