COME HELL OR HIGH WATER
Grant believes fans’ return will be Renaissance for the game
In the beginning there was a Dubai sun beating down on him, an Open champion by his side and a throng at his back.
Seven months later Grant Forrest was relying on folk renting out lodges bordering Celtic Manor to will him on.
The 27-year- old Scot feels fortunate to be back to the day job with his European Tour colleagues. Not that it resembles the one he left.
Bubbles have become as sacrosanct as course guides, Call of Duty as much a lifeline as a rescue club.
The UK Swing of six events paved the way for golf’s return from the coronavirus shutdown, with players pitching up at the start of the week for a test then hunkering down in hotel rooms until a negative result allowed them to roam.
Roam is a rather generous description, though, with the hotel and clubhouse the only change of scenery from practice and the course.
“If you’d told me six months ago that’s what I’d be doing, I’d have told you to run and jump,” says Forrest, who can appreciate the lengths taken to get the show on the road. Friday’s announcement that next month’s Scottish Open will be the first on Tour with fans since March augurs well then. “There are scoreboards out there so you’ll have volunteers at them and they do their best,” he says of playing behind closed doors.
“But having one or two guys clapping is not the same as playing in front of a decent crowd.
“I was out with Shane Lowry in Dubai at the start of the year and we had a pretty good following. You go from that to having nobody there.
“You have to pinch yourself and say, ‘This is a tournament, not a practice round’.
“It doesn’t change what you’re trying to do but it’s nice to have a bit of atmosphere.
“There were some lodges next to the 17th at Celtic Manor which look down on to the hole, there were people staying in those and they were out in the garden watching it.
“They were cheering away. That is as close we’ve had to a crowd. It was quite nice just to hear something again.”
Not that he’d need any more motivation to make the cut at the Renaissance Club in East Lothian in less than a fortnight.
But the fact 650 fans will be allowed in on Saturday and Sunday for his home Open – just f ive minutes from his mum’s in North Berwick and 15 from his Haddington home – gives him something to salivate over.
The Tour’s latest guidelines also mean Forrest will be able to stay at home rather than face the prospect of driving past it to reach an official hotel.
He says: “It would be nice, especially at a home event, to have some family there.”
Anything that helps avoid being burst by the bubble.
This month Englishman Jordan Smith withdrew from the Andalucia Masters, declaring the bubble “has gotten the better of me”.
“He’s not the only one, there have been a lot of guys,” adds Forrest. “I’ve not played as many tournaments as I planned, the first couple I played in I thought ‘ I’m not going to do this every week’, because it is a mental ly draining sport anyway.
“You’re just so limited with what you can do at events, you can’t really go and have the social side of it. The weeks feel longer, then little things start getting to you that wouldn’t normally get to you and it doesn’t really put you in a good place to try to perform.
“The two weeks at Celtic Manor felt like two months.
“I watch a fair bit of Netflix but there’s only so much of that you can do. I’m not an avid reader by any stretch of the imagination but I’ve made myself read a bit more.
“Once I get into a book it passes the time. I’ve got a golf psychology one I’m reading, Golf Flow, and a John Grisham I picked up the other week.
“For the UK events I took my PlayStation, I know a lot of guys who did that, playing Call of Duty, it just makes it a wee bit more normal.”
It would be fair to say Forrest, speaking on the eve of teeing it up in Portugal last week, was not too enamoured with how his game shaped up on return to competition. The fact he finished inside the top 15 four days later suggests this season still offers hope.
“To win a tournament is always one of the goals and to make the Race to Dubai is another one,” says Forrest, who is 66th in the rankings.
“That’s top 60 now for the DP World. We have Scotland and Wentworth coming up, which are two Rolex events so they’re worth a lot more.
“It is nice to look forward to those and getting some good results would stand us in good stead for the end of the year.
“Real ly, just looking forward to drawing a line under this year as a whole.”
In the meantime, his weeks will continue to start with a Covid test before teeing up.
Asked if he gets a feeling in the pit of his stomach waiting on results, he says: “Not really.
“I think we’ve only had one positive test in the whole time so you’d like to think that guys are being pretty sensible and trying to minimise the risk.
“It is comforting knowing everyone is tested and has tested negative. There are no guarantees – you could be fine one week, then test positive the next, so it is a bit strange.
“But it is more just the fear of, if you do test positive and you have to sit in your hotel room for two weeks. That’s my biggest fear at the moment.
“It is not really the actual testing positive and not being able to play the event – it’s not being able to just go home.”