Creating a spectacle

T he first tee, I was addressing the ball confidently. My slow backswing was followed by a fluid easy down stroke and a high follow-through. I missed the ball completely. My first air shot and with a handicap of 12 things like that just shouldn’t happen. It was a Sunday morning and though not my club I knew most of the members and my playing partner and I were making up a four ball. There was a knot of players waiting their turn. Most of them were now looking at their feet and shuffling uneasily, others looked at the sky. It was an awkward moment. The ball still nestled on the tee. I swung again – another air shot! The shuffling continued while others hummed silently or whistled soundlessly to themselves. I was that sure of my game I didn’t feel the slightest embarrassment. I turned to my partner of long standing and asked: “What on earth am I doing wrong?” He knew me well.  Over the years we had sunk a considerable amount of beer and golf balls together. He too was nonplussed. I thought - why today, what‘s different? And then it hit me. It just so happened that recently old age had caught up with me and after an eye test I needed long distance glasses for driving a car and a golf ball - today was the first time I was wearing them. I took them off, handed them to my friend, squared up to the ball and smashed it straight down the middle. It landed no more than a wedge to the green on this quite difficult opening par 4.
Now I leave my glasses off when I play golf. Unless my ball goes straight down the middle I find it difficult to follow and I possibly lose a few balls than normal, but I’m keeping the boys who go looking for them in business.

Tom Kite proves a point

Answers:

28/01/2010 From Bob Warters, editor www.GolfMagic.com:

I've worn vari-focal specs for reading driving and more lately computer work for over 30 years and it took only one experience to teach me they were unsuitable for golf.

You're right, the ball wasn't in the place I thought it was as I addressed it, so after one uncomfortable round (call it three holes!) of nobbles (tops), miss-hits, fat shots (though I could easily see where they all went), I decided I'd better learn to hit the ball shorter but straighter.

I need glasses for my other sport passion (bowls) where judging distance and assessing situations over a shorter length is more crucial, but I reckon I can manage without specs on the course for another few years yet! 

Regarding other pro golfers, I seem to recall that Stuart Little (left-hander from SW region and European Tour player in the 1990s) wore specs very successfully at one time. 

See www.golfmagic.com for more answers to this problem.  

Golf: an outdated ethic of "snobbery and Chauvinism"?

 

 

I n the outstanding British magazine The Week, www.theweek.co.uk on 5th September 2009 we read the following:

Golf: an outdated ethic of “snobbery and chauvinism”?

 

Can golf survive the modern era? I doubt it, said Melanie Reid in The Times. Clubs are reporting “shrinking memberships and unsustainable outgoings. Some are teetering on the edge of insolvency. “Signs advertising for new members with “No Joining Fee” are now frequently seen outside Britain’s stuffy” clubs – inconceivable just a few years ago. And why? Because this is a game that finds it hard to keep up with the times. Few modern wives, for example, will tolerate a husband who disappears every Saturday to play 18 holes of golf. Besides, today’s young fathers like to spend more time with their children at weekends. Yet golf clubs have made no attempt to be more family-friendly. “Women and children are not really welcome on golf courses, except through gritted teeth. You hear of children being turned away because they are wearing tracksuit bottoms”.

A game still stuck in the past?

In short, it’s the men who run the clubs who are largely to blame, said Reid. They have turned the sport into a “watchword for elitism and discrimination”. Over the past quarter of a century, “while the rest of the world embraced equality, informality and diversity”, golf refused to change, clinging to an outdated ethic of “snobbery and chauvinism”. Many clubs have also refused to recognise that today’s keen amateur golfers are “nomads” who like to roam from course to course, paying as they go. “The old school frowns at this, failing to understand that in an age where gym membership changes on a whim, lifetime loyalty to one club is history”.

The blazer-wearing fraternity have always put me off golf, said Simon Hoggart in The Guardian. “Whenever I go to a function at one of these places I groan at the bossy, prescriptive notices, the crisp instructions to ‘lady members’ and the fuss-potty dress code which seems to vary from room to room and from day to day.” One of the only nice clubs I have ever come across is Cleeve Hill, near Cheltenham. “It was and remains a largely working-class club, and the members include builders, plumbers and anyone who doesn’t feel the need to escape to a recreation of the old class system and be ordered around by self-regarding martinets.”

The professional game also has serious image problems, said Mark Reason in The Daily Telegraph. The sport’s most famous face, Tiger Woods, is becoming better known for his petulance than his wonderful golf. Far too often recently “he has been seen spitting, throwing clubs and swearing”. The great Australian golfer, Peter Thomson, summed it up in The Sydney Morning Herald. “I wish he’d smile more,” said the five-time Open champion. “There is also very little consideration for the fellow he is playing with. He could show more humility.”