A life well spent?
Many golfing plans took a hit in 2020, and I probably spent more time looking back than forward. For some reason, I decided to try and work out how much of my life had been spent on a golf course since my first 18-hole round at 19 years of age. How on earth would you do that, though? My spreadsheet of ‘courses played’ was a handy starting point.
The next task was to estimate how many rounds at each course. Easy for the one-rounders, which accounted for 557 of the 890 courses. But what about those I’d played several times, especially ones where I’d been a member? I estimated 200 rounds for
The Nevill, for example, my home club for eight years from 1985.
It’s far from a precise science, but an educated stab suggests I’ve played the equivalent of 2,134 18-hole rounds. Allowing an average of three-and-a-half hours, that would equate to 311 full 24-hour days spent on the golf course. Factor in eight hours of sleep a night and that becomes 466 ‘waking days’ of golf.
Estimating that 15 per cent of my 2,134 rounds were 36-hole days and the rest single rounds, that would mean I’ve played on 1,974 days, which works out at 14 per cent of my 13,880 days since taking up the game. That’s pretty much once a week, which is probably about right factoring in weeks where I’ve played considerably more and occasional prolonged spells of zero golf for various reasons.
What’s the point of all this? Only really to remind myself anew what a huge part of my adult life golf has been and what a vast amount of pleasure, tempered by occasional heartache, this great game of ours has the capacity to bring.