ANOTHER trip, another failure. A week spent trying to play golf in Tenerife has come up with further proof that my game doesn't travel well.
This is hardly surprising, as my game isn't all that great when it stays at home. However, there is an extra dimension of confusion about it when it is unleashed overseas. Evidence of this is provided by the presence in my attic of a wooden figure of
a ten-pin bowler which was presented to me by American colleagues after a week's golf in West Palm Beach.
During that week, I plumbed the depths to such an extent that my hosts couldn't think of an appropriate golf-related item to give me and they felt the bowler would do nicely, meeting, as it did, the demands of hospitality without giving the impression that it had anything to do with prowess on the golf course.
While this latest sojourn never quite achieved the sheer horror of West Palm Beach, it brought its own misery which was, on this occasion, heightened by the fact that I'd made the journey in the fond belief I was on to something exciting, swingwise. I think the damage was done by my first putt. This took place at Golf Del Sur and was something of a shaker. A couple of looseners on the practice putting green had suggested the surfaces might be a little keener than those at home, but I was scarcely prepared for what was to come.
The swing felt oiled and silky, if such a blissful combination can be imagined, which only made things worse. The putt was one of some 25 feet and by the time it was finished, little had changed for the better. It wasn't just about the pace, which was terrifying, it was also about a severe and invisible borrow which caused the ball to break off due right practically as soon as contact was made. Thus it came about that I was now facing a putt about as long as the first one and a good deal more difficult as far as line was concerned. From there I applied myself with great care and got down in another three putts.
Seasoned observers will appreciate that while a three-putt start is a discouraging way to launch a round, four putts tend to put a pretty comprehensive damper on things, and so it was in this case. I approached the second tee with some trepidation and, if the truth be told, a measure of reluctance. Before the debacle on the first green, I'd hit a couple of reasonable shots which suggested the "new swing" was still there and I'd taken heart from that. That heart had now had the stuffing knocked out of it and I didn't really want to go on. I just wanted to go home, read an improving book, press flowers and do a bit of knitting.
Of course, I soldiered on, not so much because of any vast resources of manly grit and determination, but because I had nothing else to do. Operating within that murky cocoon of glum resignation which enshrouds suffering golfers when the darkness descends, I forged ahead and, almost despite myself, actually hit some half-decent shots. Scoring was out of the question, but a shot or two will do when things are at a low ebb. The trouble is that the good shots tend to come along when the round is nearing its end and they generally prove to be merely groundbait strewn by the golfing Fates in order to lure victims on to another grim session, during which more of the same will be doled out.
On this trip, the luring was done on the grand scale, for while the slow torture went on more or less unabated for the first four of the five rounds, the shackles were loosed on the last of them. Suddenly, some putts went down, there were pars here and there – even a birdie – and there were sequences of solid shots. By sequences, I mean two in succession, which might not seem much of a sequence to some, but it's a glut as far as I'm concerned.
The result of this little treat was a passable round of golf and I boarded the homeward flight with the old gleam of hope back in the eye, or wherever it is that gleams of hope reside. I know it doesn't mean much, if it means anything at all, and I realise I'm probably being set up for the next KO. However, when it comes to punishment, club golfers are the arch-gluttons.
They always go back for more and, in my own neck of the woods, I put down much of this resilience to Edinburgh's tireless administrators, whose policies of sensible austerity do so much to keep our feet on the ground. The feet of our party were kept on the ground for a long time at Edinburgh Airport as they and hordes of fellow-passengers stood around in bracing breezes at one o'clock on Saturday morning waiting for taxis which seemed to be coming in from Wick.
This is character-building of the first order and it is to be hoped that travellers won't become too pampered if and when the Tram arrives.
