AS we watch the top players at any sport, the Walter Mitty in us
sometimes takes over. The tennis courts and golf courses are boosted
phenomenon each summer as we imagine ourselves imitating the stars.
Eventually, realism forces us to accept that the sport is not really
simple: it's just that the stars make it look easy. It's a different
game they play, isn't it?
Having convinced ourselves of our own incompetence, we come to regard
golf as consisting of the top level, and one's own standard. My
favourite golfer at my own level is . . . well, myself, if you must
know. But, as for the Open at Muirfield, I must adopt someone else to
play for me.
The proxy for many of us will be Sandy Lyle or Colin Montgomerie. But
if your hero is not in contention, you will have to adopt someone else
-- anyone else, bar those you dislike.
I have found it easy to dislike Nick Faldo ever since, many years ago,
he reported Lyle for using some anti-glare tape on his putter. The rules
of golf apparently force you to be a sneak; you cannot turn a blind eye
to a minor indiscretion by another player lest you, too, be disqualified
as a supposed accomplice.
Next there was the incident in the 1983 Suntory World Match-play
Championship. With Australian Graham Marsh on the green, Faldo's ball
bounced through the back only to reappear a few seconds later --
obviously thrown by a sympathetic spectator. He holed out from where it
landed and, instead of conceding Marsh's long putt for a gentlemanly
half, Faldo watched the Australian miss.
My impression of him is shared by many people north of the Border. I
believe Faldo could be the role model if the Herald's former deputy
editor, George MacDonald Fraser, ever decides to write about the
adventures of Flashman on a golf course.
There are other professional golfers whom I dislike for different
reasons. Some, for all the good it does them, seem to take all day
before playing their shots. A couple of practice swings and the removal
of nearby twigs preface any attempt at the real thing. Even then, they
step back from the ball once more because of some supposed distraction,
such as the sound of a woodpecker two miles away. Eventually they hit
the blasted ball, and the camera at last moves on to someone more
interesting.
However, whether popular or not, top golfers do come to grief in the
Open, giving us all a little encouragement. At St Andrews in 1978 Tommy
Nakajima took five shots to get out of a bunker, prompting the quip that
the Road Hole should be renamed ''The Sands of Nakajima''. Four years
later Troon took revenge on the quaintly named American Bobby Clampett
-- wasn't he one of the men Wyatt Earp shot at the OK Corral? -- who had
burned up the course with a 67 and a 66 only to come a cropper with a 78
and a closing 77.
Too frequently, however, just when some illustrious golfer whom you
dislike is about to prove mortal, something happens to rescue him. Maybe
his ball will be lost . . . but no, some busybody manages to find it.
It does not happen to you or to me, does it? You don't have an army of
searchers to look for your ball. In your own club game, too, much
depends on whether the finder is friend or foe. Your ball may be found
all right -- yes, found embedded in the ground in thick rough, or aided
by some nifty footwork into a hazard which you had somehow avoided.
That's another thing. The hazards are in the wrong places for the
professionals. They belt the ball far too hard for it to catch the
fairway bunkers. Not only that, whereas we frequently fall foul of some
exotic rule -- such as, you must not play a wedge shot with your back to
the sun on a Tuesday afternoon -- the professionals always seem to come
up with some excuse to avoid trouble.
Their stray shots conveniently land beside benign things like TV
cables, which can be moved out of the way, or else an official comes
along and the pro gives him golf's equivalent of a doctor's line. Next
thing you know he is allowed a free drop or a preferred lie.
As I was saying, it's a different game they play. You just watch and
you'll see what I mean.
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