Bill Elliott

Outside it is grey and getting greyer. So grey even Downing Street isn’t considering having a few sherberts in the garden. If there is a day worth slinging aside, this is the one. Oh, and it’s started to drizzle. Dry January? Are you kidding?

Of course January is that sort of month. Always. I’ve long felt it to be a waste of time and possibly a rap across our collective knuckles for (hopefully) having a bit of a good time around Christmas. If there really was a God then he or she surely would allow us to hibernate through January.

Anyway, as I slid further into the Slough of Despond, a rather welcome email dropped. I belong to a wee golf society comprising enthusiastic men who like to lunch at least as much as they wish to play the old game. Possibly more.

The email set out the dates of our 2022 meetings. While a fifth is yet to be settled, the four courses secured so far are: St George’s Hill, Hankley Common, Swinley Forest and Worplesden. If you live around London, you’ll realise how utterly brilliant this quartet is. I love these places – the ambience, the layout, the heather and the soil, as well as the unbuttoned-up tradition.

Suddenly, my mind had left the drab scene outside and instead I was playing golf in summer sunshine and, naturally, playing rather well. In fact, I was playing brilliantly. In just a few seconds that email had turbo-charged my imagination from the now to the then, to the fun to come and to the unlikely prospect of no three-putts. I know, I know, this is the far, ragged side of seriously unlikely, but hey, a man may dream.

And isn’t this at the core of golf’s attractions? Reality may eventually, rather rudely, intrude, but it’s the deliciously uplifting anticipation that keeps many of us going, long after whatever skills we used to enjoy have waved goodbye to bodies that creak where once they moved with all the smooth loveliness of silk slipping down a shaven leg.

This anticipation thing is not restricted to golf, of course, but it certainly wraps its warm tentacles around this old buggeration of a charming game. Even while playing poorly there is, occasionally, the chance to look forward to the next hole and perhaps a change in fortune. This is futile more often than it is prophetic, but there is always the chance of things turning towards the bright side.

Meanwhile, there is much dark muttering to be done as we trudge our way through January. Quite a lot of this chuntering revolves around the numbing performance of the England cricket team in Aussieland.

Clearly there are complex reasons for such an abject display, but one consistently put forward is the increased focus on short-form cricket. Here’s the rub if that is true: for years now the custodians of golf have watched cricket come up with formats that draw in bigger crowds and, crucially, wildly increased TV revenue. No one to date has come up with a new brand of golf, one that doesn’t take days, one the men in suits like and one that interests young people, whose attention span grows ever shorter.

While the search for the solution to the grinding monotony many feel as yet another 72-hole stroke play tournament fills our screens must continue, there is also a big need for some caution here.

The four Majors, the Ryder Cup, the Solheim Cup and half a dozen other tournaments each year are essential viewing, as well as offering an historic backbone to the game’s body of work. Cameron Smith winning recently in Maui (a record 34-under) at the season-opening Tournament of Champions was of interest only to those who enjoy a turkey shoot, or perhaps TV shots of sunshine and shoreline. The core of elite golf, the benchmarks that need to be protected, are different. No one is ever going to win The Open at 34-under, so while the hunt for a shorter yet satisfying form of golf should go on, cricket has shown that it pays to be careful what you wish for. At least this is what I think. Stay safe and prosper.

“The uplifting anticipation of golf keeps us going before reality rudely intrudes”