The problem with our golf
It is like everything is going wrong with this beautiful game of golf. Like football, the game is threatening to stand on its head. Interestingly golfers appear aloof at the new strange things that are coming on course. Those who should care pretend as if all is well. Yet the ethics surrounding the game are changing like the weather, and on a daily basis for that matter. Amusing, you would say.
Let us start from the beginning. The game of golf is all about rules and ethics. It is one game where you must stay honest whether you like it or not. This is reason the game remains the only one where you need no arbiter. It’s what you, the player, claim you have done that goes. This is why you’ll have nowhere to hide if you are caught toying with the rules, worst still, cheating.
Elsewhere around the world, if you are caught cheating on the course, you will be immediately expelled from the club. And in most cases, you could be prosecuted. Those one even take it a step further. Hidden around the courses are powerful cameras that could get you recorded while kicking the ball from the rough to the fairway. Now you will watch it since you cannot tell which points on the course are those hidden cameras. Well, that’s in a good land where laws are kept sacred.
In Nigeria, everything about golf is assuming a new dimension. If St Andrews, Scotland, the world body ruling golf, is churning out rules, such rules might as well apply to every nation on earth but Nigeria. It is disheartening but it is the fact. But, then, why won’t this be? For God’s sake, jobbers are now pouring on course like an ill rain.
It seems the Nigeria Golf Federation (NGF), a body that has the responsibility of keeping the nation’s golf a uniform set of rule is in comatose. Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola who is President of the NGF is busy doing coalition party with Aremu Obasanjo. Most golfers don’t even know there is a governmental body on ground with the sole aim of seeing to golf issues in the nation. Okay, in the area of football, footballers in Nigeria operate and abide by the rules of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF). So sad, no golfer cares a hoot about NGF. This is the reason some golfers play by a convenient rule that usually paves way for indiscipline and greed. We are talking about convenient rule that holds nothing for the good of the game.
It is only in Nigeria you will see a group of people coming together to perfect a world golf event without the NGF getting to hear of it. And if the NGF gets to hear of it, those who run the Federation will simply melt into the dark and pretend nothing is amiss. And it shows in the way we run golf. It rubs on our hugely talented youth who can no longer stay at home to perfect their skills. These days, they run off to South Africa. Amusingly, the best golfers from South Africa, Ratief Goosen and Ernie Els never received their training in South Africa. They went elsewhere in Europe. We pretend we are the giant of Africa, yet a billionaire on the golf course pretends that all is well. Whatever is happening to Nigeria?
Here is another shock. The whole trend is changing. Right now amateurs are not prepared to play for some balls or some golf sets. Electronic equipment is in vogue as prizes. These equipments don’t even go beyond the pavilion where they are won before they are sold off. The youngster amateurs are so pauperized that they need whatever form of fund to transport themselves out of tournament venues. Well, this, to some extent, could be overlooked. The youngsters are talented and yet they are poor. They hardly come across sponsors and yet they must play tournaments. So, how do they go about it if they can’t pawn off stuffs they win on course.
But, too sad, some of our rich fellows on the course are about dragging prizes with the poor youngsters. Well, if the rich fellows could beat the daylight out of the youngsters, on course, so who says they can’t go away with those electronic items. But a situation where rules are shifted so the rich who can’t stay out of the rough, not to talk of sinking a putt, will want to pick a prize at all costs is unacceptable.