What can be said for golf’s distorted, depressing world?
I’VE thought about it, I really have and I’ve done my best to be fair. But honestly, golf. There is nothing to say for it, nothing.
A golf course is a parody of the natural world, with the grass mown just so and overlaid with a network of little paths so every inch of it can be reached by electric cart. A golf course may look like the first chapter of Genesis where the lion shall lie down with the lamb and the 24handicapper, but whoa, one hint of lion or lamb on the 16th fairway and it’s out with bazooka and barbecue in that order. Golf courses are as unnatural as Fifth Avenue. They exist only for the pleasure of an unimpressive subset of the currently dominant primate species.
The essence of golf courses is to be found in a story from Atlanta, Georgia that I told in these pages many years ago and have never forgotten. Atlanta, Georgia is where they hold the Masters — and there’s a title to savour with its overlapping layers of arrogance, absurdity, mythology, misogyny and good oldfashioned southern racism.
It’s also where they dress the caddies in shapeless white overalls to emphasise their subordination, and to remind the overlords of the great days of the plantations — all of which is very golf. But also, down there in golfing Georgia where the cicadas sing and the heat is hot, they dye the water in the water hazards blue to make it look more watery. There you have golf courses pinned in a single image.
Golfers fall into two types: professional golfers and golfers. Of the two it’s hard to know which to pity more.
Professional golfers are a travelling circus. They fritter the best years of their lives going from place to place to compete with each other for the amusement of spectators while wearing clothes best described as — and it is hard to think of a more insulting phrase — smart casual.
The absurd sums of money that professional golfers are paid insulate them from reality and the need to grow up. They are condemned in consequence to a state of perpetual mental adolescence, as illustrated by the most famous of their number, the now middleaged Eldrick ‘‘Tiger’’ Woods, being renowned for chasing cocktail waitresses and crashing fast cars in the manner of any 15yearold boy’s wet dreams.
But most golfers aren’t professional golfers. Most golfers are chubby middleaged men who’ve achieved a modicum of wealth and free time and who spend it on golf.
At the weekend on the first tee they select a club and address the ball and waggle their little buttocks and take
TODAY is Thursday, May 6, the 126th day of 2021. There are 239 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1527 — Charles III, the Duke of Bourbon, left by the Holy Roman Emperor without money for his troops, attacks Rome for the plunder, but dies in the first wave of the assault.
1529 — Mogul emperor Zahir udDin Muhammad Babur defeats a combined Afghan and Bengal force in the Battle of Ghaghra.
1541 — King Henry VIII orders a Bible in English be placed in every church in England.
1757 — Prussia’s King Frederick II defeats Holy Roman Empire forces at Prague.
1835 — James Gordon Bennett publishes the first issue of the New York Herald. It sold for one cent per copy.
1840 — The first adhesive postage stamps, the Penny Black and the Twopenny Blue, go on sale in Britain.
1853 — The Norwalk rail accident, the first major United States railroad bridge disaster, occurs in Connecticut when a train travelling at 50mph (80.5kmh) plunged into the Norwalk Harbour off an open draw (swing) bridge; 48 people were killed, 30 were injured and eight were reported missing.
1864 — Surveyor Frederick Tuckett discovers coal at Coal Point, Wangaloa.
1869 — Colonial troops invade the Urewera. The invasion was intended to punish Tuhoe for supporting and sheltering Te Kooti Rikirangi and his the club back slowly as they’ve been taught and bring it back down as they’ve taught but oh dear me, they hook it or shank it or thin it or fat it and they curse and rant and hate the world because it isn’t the ball that’s bunny hopping 50 feeble metres down the fairway and dribbling to a halt, it’s their manhood.
It is to this that the soaring ambition of youth has sunk. Here is the last bright dance of testosterone, dressed in awful slacks and a patterned sweater and towing approximately $2000 of polished titanium in a little wheeled trolley, in order to achieve, well, nothing, in order to come up wanting.
And I haven’t even mentioned putting. Putting. Any player in the act of putting should mentally climb the sky and look down on himself hunched over the ball and he could not help but be seized by a sense of comic futility, of absurdity crawling between heaven and
rebel force following its defeat at Ngatapa, inland from Poverty Bay, in January. The colonial troops were also intending to signal that there was no sanctuary for disaffected Maori intent on rebellion.
1882 — The United States bans Chinese immigration for 10 years; British statesman Lord Cavendish is murdered by Irish nationalists soon after arriving in Dublin as chief secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Epping Forest, England, is dedicated for public use by Queen Victoria, subsequent to the Epping Forest Act of 1878.
1889 — The World’s Fair, with the newly built Eiffel Tower, opens in Paris.
1906 — Tsar Nicholas II of Russia claims the right to legislate by decree and restricts the power of the Duma (Russian parliament).
1910 — King Edward VII of Great Britain dies after a reign of nine years. His funeral, on May 20, would be notable for the enormous assembly of foreign royalty, including a famous gathering of nine sovereigns pictured in one room. The funeral was the largest gathering of European royalty ever to take place, with representatives of 70 states, and the last before many royal families were deposed in World War 1 and its aftermath.
1937 — The German dirigible Hindenburg catches fire and is destroyed while attempting to dock with its mooring mast in Manchester Township, New Jersey, killing 36 of the 97 on board.
1941 — Josef Stalin becomes Soviet premier, succeeding V.M. Molotov.
1954 — Englishman Roger Bannister becomes earth. But of course no player in the act of putting ever does that because he is a golfer.
All of which is indisputable, so how to explain that when I was invited last week for the first time in maybe 20 years to play a round of golf I not only said yes but did so with a surge of the heart?
And of all the shots I played last Friday afternoon as I hacked my way round Coringa golf course, I have forgotten 124 and remembered two. One was a booming drive that sounded like a rifle shot and sailed beyond the curvature of earth, the other a six iron that leapt from the club like a startled bird and flew and fell and came to rest a metre from the pin.
And how further to explain that late that evening I went online and bought myself a secondhand set of clubs? the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes, with a time of 3min 59.4sec, in Oxford, England.
1960 — The sister of Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, marries commoner Anthony ArmstrongJones at London’s Westminster Abbey.
1974 — West German chancellor Willy Brandt resigns after an aide is arrested on charges of spying for East Germany.
1999 — Scotland chooses its first parliament in three centuries, and Wales elects an assembly. Labour wins the most votes, but not a majority.
2001 — John Paul II, during his visit to Syria, becomes the first pope to enter a mosque as he calls for brotherhood between Christians and Muslims.
Today’s birthdays:
Alfred West, All Black (18931934); Roy Scott, New Zealand cricketer (19172005); Colin WebsterWatson, New Zealand sculptor/poet (19262007); Cliff Whiting, New Zealand artist/heritage advocate and teacher (19362017); Patrick (Pat) Walsh, All Black player/selector (19362007); Bob Seger, US singer/songwriter (1945); Alan Dale, New Zealand actor (1946); Andrew Roberts, New Zealand cricketer (194789); Robert (Rob) Fyfe, New
Zealand businessman (1961); George Clooney, US actor (1961); Rodger Gray, New Zealand football international (1966); Jodie Te Huna, New Zealand netballer (1981); Naomi Scott, British actress/ singer (1993).
Quote of the day:
‘‘Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.’’ — Tony Blair, former British prime minister, who was born on this day in 1953.
ODT
MY little brother Jack is 8 years old. He’s a cheery wee soul, fond of laughing, eating, kicking his soccer ball, and painting. He’s also small and chubby, with a bright round face and a beautiful smile. But my parents think he’s fat, and often make remarks to that effect. In fact, they make him run up and down the driveway most days, and frequently comment on the food he eats.
I remember being a chubby child and countenancing such comments. I remember pinching the skin on my upper arms, and wishing that my thighs didn’t rub together. I remember obsessing over every calorie I consumed, and getting up before daybreak to run around the neighbourhood in a desperate bid to lose weight. I was still a child but my parents’ fatshaming comments imparted to me a weight of adult concerns.
Fatshaming happens when people criticise and harass other folk about their weight and eating habits. People make such comments for a variety of reasons: out of cruelty or malice, or often, in a misguided attempt to motivate someone to eat less or exercise more. But fatshaming doesn’t work, especially when directed towards children. Countless studies show that instead of motivating people, fatshaming makes them feel terrible and disheartened, causing people to eat more and gain weight. It causes their selfesteem and confidence to falter.
Many fat teenagers are secluded and isolated due to fatshaming and internalised fatphobia accumulated throughout childhood. When the people one loves most have such negative things to say about one’s appearance, such opinions usually manifest into something more permanent and ingrained within one’s mind.
Fatshaming is symptomatic of
❛ Fatshaming perpetuates negative stereotypes and opinions about fat
people within society, causing widespread stigma, discrimination, and
psychological harm.
psychological harm. Eating disorder expert Andrew Walen argues that fatshaming contributes to an internalised ‘‘eating disorder’’ voice, which can lead one to engage in countless diets, obsessive exercising, food binges, starvations, and bulimic behaviours. I know I certainly engaged in these behaviours, and still do, to an extent.
There is a common myth within society that eating certain foods makes you a better person. However, as activist Monique Melton states, ‘‘you can eat certain foods and still be an awful person; eating a salad isn’t courageous.’’ Food and moral values should not correlate in this aspect. By automatically deeming healthier eaters as ‘‘good people’’ and junkfood eaters as ‘‘bad people’’, we completely dismiss the huge range of factors that go into someone’s diet.
Morality has also been assigned to weight. Fatness is seen as a failure within society. When people look at a fat child, the blame for failure is often assigned to not only the child themselves, but also the parents,