Bill Elliott
I’m back and this time it appears I’m serious. For various tedious reasons, some outside my control and some very much inside my body, I’ve only managed three rounds of golf in almost a year. The third of these has just taken place across the wonderful green acres of West Hill Golf Club in deepest Surrey and a course that never fails to delight.
Anyway, here’s the thing... I am sitting here looking at a scorecard that shows a gross 65 and that includes a run of four consecutive 3s. Put that in your breakfast porridge and eat it. It’s the best scorecard I’ve ever signed in 50 years of grappling with the old game.
Okay, here’s the admission, it was a Texas scramble with four of us forming a team – Michael, Rob, Andy and me. Our highest handicap was 18 (me) and our lowest 1 (Andy, who holds that mark at Royal Troon so it’s especially worth having). Still, I contributed a bit to that final scorecard. I had no choice as we each had to offer at least four drives.
I managed my fourth acceptable drive at the par-3 13th, a seven iron to 15ft. This was just as well as my back had decided to turn nasty two holes earlier, my spine’s alarm at this sudden burst of twisting and turning reducing my swing to an even more comical thing than usual, except I wasn’t laughing.
I by-passed the tee action from there on in, concentrating on wedge shots and putter action. Thing is I still enjoyed it. That’s the beauty of scramble golf and it’s especially terrific when you have a bloke on your side who can whack the ball 300 yards plus. Yet many clubs ignore scrambles. Stroke play is for that small minority of people who can really play this game. The rest of us should concentrate on Stableford, match play and occasional scrambles.
By the time you cast a perhaps jaundiced eye over these words, some man and woman will have won Olympic Gold Medals in Tokyo for playing golf. This will be one of the greatest experiences of their sporting life and yet too many of the game’s leading players resisted the chance of representing their countries and finding out what it is like to become an Olympian.
I understand that some had valid reasons. Sergio Garcia, for example, sidestepped the Games because he is battling to secure a place in the Ryder Cup, while the hapless Jon Rahm managed to catch Covid again, as did Baron Deshampoo. Others just didn’t fancy the trip, especially after finding out there was no prize fund – just a big medal made out of mostly silver with a bit of gold plating and, for Tokyo, bits of recycled electronic devices. Don’t ask, it’s a Japanese thing.
The winners will still treasure these things perhaps more than any other object in their trophy rooms. Justin Rose did not carry round a replica of his US Open trophy to show people, but he did get his Olympic Gold Medal out at every opportunity after triumphing in Brazil five years ago.
While I would prefer to see a mixed team competition and preferably match play to decide Olympic golf, rather than another 72-hole stroke play event, I applaud the game being in the mix. The world watches the Olympics and if I can get hooked on taekwondo and street skateboarding then golf needs its own place in this great sporting theatre.
Golf can be a selfish game for solitary people at times, but giving up a couple of weeks just once in your life to immerse yourself in Olympic action and to feel the special buzz of it all, as well as promoting the game that feeds you, is surely not too much to ask. Is it?
“Stroke play is for that small minority who can really play this game”