BILL ELLIOT T
Fifty years after I first started trying to play golf, I’m still trying. It’s been a long and trying time. Most of us, I suspect, start a lot of rounds with a sense of anticipation. In my case, maybe yours, I’m anticipating problems. Negativity is the abiding curse attached to the old game.
I have a few golden rules as to what I really do not want to do. Top of this list is the determination not to lose a ball off the first tee. I usually achieve this by (a) topping the ball an unmanly distance or (b) ballooning the damn thing so high I have time for a long chat with my playing partners about Brexit before the ball lands. Occasionally, for variety, we discuss whether or not Piers Morgan is England’s most attractive TV personality.
on my list of potential disasters to avoid is the accursed bunker. I’d enjoy a round of golf a lot more if bunkers had not been invented by some sadistic soul who thought it would be fun to mess up a perfectly nice field in the middle of the country by throwing in a hole with sand in it, which is something you don’t see anywhere else unless your house backs on to a beach.
These two thoughts bring me on to a recent foray to the admirable Tandridge GC and a Harry Colt course that makes the most of some spectacular North Downs terrain on the edges of Surrey. It was a 9am shotgun start on a Monday morning for a day planned by our GM forum readers to raise money for Help for Heroes, and my partners were to be Phil, Nathan and Mark, whom I’d never met before.
Tandridge is some 50 miles southeast of me and so this meant a journey on the M3 and then the M25, a route that some of you may know offers a lot of things but tranquility is rarely one of them. It’s even rarer on a Monday morning, when more people than ever seem to be on the move. Incidentally, these same people then don’t move again until Friday afternoon. What the hell are they doing in between?
To my delight the journey wasn’t bad and within the hour – on a blindingly sunny September morning – I was at Junction 6 of the M25, from where Tandridge is a mere six-minute drive. I relaxed. This was a mistake. A combination of that low sun in my eyes and the close attention of some berk in a Merc behind me meant I turned left too soon off the junction and found myself back on the M25. It was 11 miles to the next junction. Worse, there was an overturned lorry on the opposite carriageway and traffic was backed up for several miles.
Reluctantly, I turned on the satnav and it took me on to the M26 in Kent and then across country to Tandridge, crawling through some of England’s prettiest villages on the way as battalions of parents took their children to school. It meant that instead of arriving shortly before 8am, I screeched to a halt at 8.50.
Pausing only to give somebody 20 quid in the clubhouse and sign something for someone else – I’ve no idea – I pulled on my boots and went to the pro shop to pick up my buggy as my right leg is presently giving me some serious pain. Only they don’t do buggies at Tandridge, they do those three-wheel scootery things that are to Hell’s Angels what blancmange is to a hunk of sirloin.
I gave this abomination the full throttle and sped, okay crawled, to the 1st tee, where my partners were patiently waiting. Handshakes done, I whacked my drive. Not bad. It hit a tree some 150 yards ahead and my ball dropped to the ground. We all saw it, only none of us could find the bloody thing. First rule broken. At least I hadn’t gone in a bunker.
Off the 2nd tee I hit a high hook but it was okayish. While I reattached my clubs to the scootery thing – inevitably, they’d fallen off – my partners wandered on ahead and were soon hidden by some trees.
Never mind, I’d soon catch them up. Only as I hit the throttle, my clubs fell off again, pulling the scootery thing hard left and, yes, into a bunker. It took me five traumatic minutes to haul it out and another five to smooth the sand over, while the following group sensitively offered laughter as encouragement. I quite enjoyed the back nine.
“I’d enjoy a round of golf a lot more if bunkers had not been invented”