HARRY Vardon, so legend has it, used to wear braces to make him feel "together." Of course, they also helped to keep his trousers up, but the togetherness angle is quite understandable. Things which are, on the face of it, unremarkable – such as braces, caps and shoes – can contribute to a feeling of wellbeing on the part of the wearer and can have an influence on sporting performance.
This is why golfers who are going well have been known to soldier on in conditions of sweltering heat wearing heavy pullovers rather than risk rocking the boat by taking them off. Form is an elusive thing and not to be tinkered with.
I first becam
e aware of this type of sensitivity on the football field when, as a boy, I began to notice that I tended to play better at the beginning of matches when I was feeling neat and well turned out. My game seemed to respond to my appearance and it was also evident that once clothing became unfurled, once jerseys began to flap about and socks collapsed around the ankles, so my game started to fall apart and things were never the same again.
No doubt, in the present climate of flailing shirt-tails, such dated considerations have lost much of their clout, but there will be something else to be handled with care lest players suffer through their own negligence, something unfamiliar to those of my generation – a misplaced earring, perhaps, or a tattoo which has become inadvertently hidden from sight.
Golf, in which the workings of the mind seem to be particularly frenzied, is susceptible to most things. Its adherents operate in their own Twilight Zone, a murky area in which Velcro fastenings lie in wait, ready to screech into action at vital moments and even the clubs appear to play their role by adjusting, unaided, their positions in the bag with loud clicks which occur at the top of backswings. This prompts baleful looks from the victims, who will never be convinced that the clubs have acted quite independently of their owner.
The delicate tightrope walked by golfers was dramatically illustrated during Saturday's third round of the BMW International Open when Anders Hansen, the Danish professional, holed out on the last green for a 67. If that was all there was to it, everything would be fine, but it wasn't. Hansen was, in fact, completing what the commentators described as a "quiet" inward half of 37 and even they were at a loss to explain why a man on fire, who'd shot to the turn in 30, could then go so meekly into his shell.
Of course, it's all relative. Hansen's "quiet" 37 is another man's dream of heaven, but all the same, it is a mystery that so much brilliance can flare, recede and be replaced by what in his case might be described as mediocrity, all in the space of one round of golf. It's a mystery because Hansen is so good and a seasoned competitor at that. It would be less of a mystery if he'd been an average club golfer, or rather it would have been a different kind of mystery – a double one. The big mystery would have been how he'd managed out in 30 and the only slightly lesser mystery would have been how he'd come back in 37 – and what was he doing going round in 67 anyway? And, while we're about it, who signed his card and what had he been drinking? Was bribery involved?
In my own case, fluctuations in form are pretty much the norm and, therefore, come as no surprise. I won't say they don't bother me, for they do, but they occur so regularly that I've now reached the stage where, if I have an unusually sustained run of accident-free golf, I become uneasy. I begin to wonder what's going on and ask myself what sort of devilry is afoot. To revert to the Hansen case, if I made it to the turn in anything vaguely respectable, never mind 30, I'd be a man on the verge of nightmare. I'd know full well, that retribution was at hand and that I'd suffer dearly for what had gone before.
An example of the pressures which passages of good play exert on golfers whose talents are on the limited side, cropped up during a medal competition in which I played many years ago when I was in my prime. I didn't know it was prime then, but now, tragically, it appears it was. I'd had an unfortunate start to the round and played on in a resigned way – not relaxed, exactly, but not stressed either. While still in this detached state of mind, I ambled on to the sixteenth tee and was informed by my playing partner that I was going well and only needed a par finish to beat my handicap by so many strokes and perhaps win the thing.
As he spoke I felt my hands go clammy and I noticed that the club I held had obviously been designed by a madman. Suffice it to report that I came in third with a 6, 6, 5 finish – not bad for a man in shock.
The full article contains 881 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
