GOLF IS GOOD: ANDREW DADDO
HILARIOUS, actually. Like, there are moments when it’s turned me inside out and had me ready to wet my pants with myrrh and then, there’re those other days.
Where some days are gifts, and others you just want to gift the game away, and after nearly 40 years at the rubber end of the club, a light may have dawned. We are passengers in this game, it’s as much about us as the forces around us.
And oh, ho ho, that’s what makes golf so bloody funny.
Put it this way. I had been looking forward to a game booked six months prior at Links Kennedy Bay, south of Perth. It’s a brute of a course, but it’s also a beauty. True links, as the name suggests, awkward, almost rude pot bunkers scattered throughout the course and 17 of the 18 greens are raised. It’s properly hard. The scene was set for a rematch with an old foe who hits it looooong and straight. I’d decided to hit it longer and straighter. Apart from anything else, it’s what the course requires. So, Christian, my newfound nemesis starts off long, and not too straight. I start with straight, but not terribly long. He had to get straighter, I had to get longer.
As he achieved his goal, I began to fail: The longer I tried to hit it, the wider it started to go. The worse I got, the better he became, something he got fairly jolly about. And as much as my bad play contributed to the flogging, it was clear Christian beat me between the ears.
As it turned out, the entire field did, too … 96 strokes in the Wednesday stroke round from the white tees, which were up the front. Move forward 10 whole days to Long Reef on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Like Kennedy Bay, it’s links golf, but not quite as hard. But still, many have walked off this bluff jutting into the Pacific literally unhinged.
I’ve turned up for the Saturday comp to play with random partners and an open mind. It’s not a grudge fest, there’s been no months of planning and honing a stinger or a zinger or a Rudolf (the shot that’s so bloody good it lights you up). It was just a matter of playing golf with members; an afternoon game, which I generally avoid because that’s generally when the wind gets up. In the group was Adam, a new Longie member. Tania, who I’ve played with before and is managing her downward slide from five with aplomb, and Mike the metronome. Funny game!
I should have videoed Mike’s swing and shared it with you as a Chrissy gift. He was so peaceful and calm. In fact, it’s exactly how we’d probably like to have our Christmases, not the harried, stressed, ‘boy, oh boy, isn’t this fun? Why am I drinking at nine o’clock in the morning?’
On the 1st tee, I actually thought he was taking the piss. He was so smooth and methodical it didn’t seem real. His putting was like his chipping which was like his driving which mirrored his bunker play. Everything was so considered and careful and had such beautiful tempo.
Tania noticed it first. She said, ‘Oh, my Lord. Have you noticed his tempo? How does he do that?’ To which I said, ‘Prozac.’ And we laughed like five-year-olds behind our hands because it felt kind of mean in a good way. But later, after he’d been hitting darts for six holes, we regrouped and realised he did look and sound like he was on beta-blockers. I put that to him and he smirked, saying lots of people thought that. “But no, it’s just swing easy, you know?” Because we’d been taking so much notice of Mike, we hadn’t really been thinking too much about our own games. I hadn’t, anyway. But he was infectious, without realising, I’d started trying to swing like Mike. Waiting just a fraction longer at the top, being a little smoother through the ball, a little cooler in the berating of bad shots. It was amazing. Ten days prior, I’d tried to beat the ball and my opponent into oblivion, only to be destroyed. On this day, at Long Reef, simply trying to groove the ball around the course like Mike resulted in the greatest game of my life.
True anxiety arrived on the 18th tee when Adam asked if I knew my score. I told him if he told me I would punch his face in, and so the world returned to its normal axis.
It was epic, we all won at least one ball in the comp!
Season’s greetings, may someone bring you a metronome.
SIMPLY TRYING TO GROOVE THE BALL AROUND THE COURSE ... RESULTED IN THE GREATEST GAME OF MY LIFE.