Golfing gold
Yesterday I visited Old Thorns Golf & Country Estate in Hampshire in order to play a round of golf with the three old reprobates that I played with regularly in one combination or another for about a decade and a half from my early forties.
My early forties were a long time ago – looks, fitness, stamina and degree of crankiness have all evolved since then (and not in a good way) – and, though it is only three or four years since I last raised a divot on the Old Thorns course, time inevitably moves on and as I pulled up to park I hardly recognised the place.
A huge development – an entire new block of what I was told in the pro shop were either new hotel rooms and/or two and three bedroom suites – was being built along the side of the eighteenth green/car park, right on the spot where the old wooden ‘pods’ that some of the wackier guests could choose to stay in if they wished were once stationed.
My inexpert eye judged that this giant new block was adding anything up to 100% to the number of guest rooms, it was that big.
Someone else I spoke to in the bar areas told me that Old Thorns is prospering. It certainly looked like it.
The original car park had been extended away from the main block and an overflow parking area built on concrete-based little squares now lightly covered in grass where once a field had been.
Not only that, the car park was jam-packed full.
I had arrived imagining that I be one of maybe fifty people attending yesterday and that my first few acts would be to park up within 100 yards of the pro shop, pay for my round, and go inside to wait for the others to join me for what we’d agreed would be a sandwich lunch in advance of playing.
In the main car park as I arrived, somewhat disconcertingly, there were great swathes of parked cars as far as the eye could see – I’d estimate between 250 and 300. I spent the next twenty minutes touring round it again and again in search of any single spare slot anywhere that I could nip into. And failed. In the end, I had to go and park in the overflow car park and hike it back to civilisation to begin my day.
I’d only just paid for my round, bought a dozen new Calloway balls and collected a course scorecard when I decided to raise my Garmin-device-counted number of steps by going back to bung these in my car before going to our rendezvous the sports bar. Nanoseconds later I spotted a silver Skoda estate swinging into the car park at high speed, coming straight towards me, swinging around the corner … and parking in a spare car park slot that had conveniently appeared right in front of the pro shop.
Perhaps inevitably the car concerned contain the two Simpson brothers in our group who get habitually teased for their ability to deliver fluke or ‘lucky’ shots at crucial moments when playing golf that any third party opponent or onlooker would regard an unfair to the point of cheating.
Such an outrage is known among us as ‘a Simpson’, so I was able to greet them with an ironic cheer and comment:
“Well, that’s a new world record! You two have already ‘done’ your first Simpson of the day, and you’re not even on the bloody golf course yet!”
I’m a fan of the Old Thorns course.
It’s big, long, offers stunning views of the surrounding countryside and it is kept in immaculate condition by its ground staff.
We decided over our lunch to split into pairs and have a team competition.
In advance of making our way to the first tee I must admit I was a little nervous. Since my hip replacement operation twelve months ago, I had played less than half a dozen rounds of golf in total – and none of them very well.
Furthermore, the last time I had played, about four months ago, I had pulled a muscle on the inside of my arm below my right elbow when hitting my drive off the first tee … and had been suffering with the affliction to one degree or another ever since. It had reached the point where, faced with the prospect of doing anything physical, I don a sporting surgical bandage that I can ‘pull tight’ to whatever degree desired and secure via a pair of Velcro pads as a means of supplying ‘support’ (whether than be physical – as originally was definitely required – or mental only, as it is probably now the case).
In addition, as I reported in my Rust post about last weekend, when I was twice obliged to sleep on the drawing room sofa I had inadvertently ‘ricked’ my neck and right shoulder (amateur diagnosis my a fellow house guest ‘a trapped nerve’) by sleeping in a poor position. Besides being very painful, this was also very restricting. I had subsequently had to drive all the way home to London by recruiting my front passenge as a look-out for any traffic coming from the right at T-junctions because I was physically incapable of turning my head to the right to look for myself.
Any sane individual beset with injuries such as these would have done the sensible thing and scratched from the tournament – as everyone on Radio Five Live (listened to later as I was driving home) was complaining had happened at Wimbledon during the day, in circumstances where the first-round opponents of both Federer and Djokovic had withdrawn ‘with injuries’ barely before their matches had begun, thereby (1) turning up and trousering about £35,000 for losing in the first round, but also (2) preventing spectators who had paid good money – and perhaps travelled long and expensive distances – in order to watch a day of Centre Court action from witnessing anything of the sort.
However, given my past various withdrawals from our golfing excursions over the years (and the howls of derision that they always prompt), I had decided on this occasion to at least ‘give it a go’ and then – if my afflictions should genuinely stop me from swinging a club – simply carry on walking the course as a means of enjoying the company and increasing my number of ‘steps’ for the day.
How wrong could I be?
They say that you’re a long time retired from elite sport and that ‘they never come back’, but just occasionally some old geezer defies the odds. Such feats pass into sporting legend.
Step forward my hero number one, Al Oerter (1936 – 2007) the US discus thrower, who not only won Olympic gold medals in his event in 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968 despite being nearly killed in a car crash at one point and then suffering a litany of serious injuries along the way, several times defying medical advice to quit his sport. Long after his main sporting career was over he then went on to try and qualify for the Olympics again in 1980 at the age of 43 but only finished fourth in the US trials.
Yesterday it was my turn.
Your first tee shot is always a big pointer of what it to follow, especially on this occasion because we were being watched by the official course ‘starter’ as we went off.
As usual, I swung my upper limbs about to warm them up, put my ball down, did another couple of practice swings, addressed the ball … and prayed.
Thankfully the ball soared out towards the left of the fairway and stopped just before the front lip of a bunker. “You’ve done well there …” said the ancient starter, “You’ve got 132 yards to the pin …”
I thanked him for his advice and suggested he might like to accompany me on my round as my personal caddy, pointing out “Your wife doesn’t want you back for tea until at least 6.30pm …”
He replied deadpan “My wife doesn’t want me back at all …”
And on we went.
Suffice it to say here that after two holes I had hit a gross 10, compared to my companions’ 16, 12 and 15.
On the next two holes (the 419 yard long – par 4 – third, and 142 yard – par 3 – fourth), dear reader, I notched just 3 and 2, two birdies in other words … leaving me de facto ‘one under par’ for the course after four holes. It left me 7 strokes clear of the field (my opponents were on 22, 26 and 28 to my 15).
I don’t think I’ve ever hit two genuine birdies in a row on any course anywhere in my life.
I should probably have turned my trolley round and walked off the course there and then – and probably retired from golf altogether as well.
When you hit your lifetime peak of sporting excellence, where else is there to go?
As it happens, I finished the round with a gross score of 115 and in the process lost a total of 14 balls, including all 12 Calloways I’d bought earlier in the pro shop for £30.
Such is Life.
