Byron Kalies

THE textbook for match play

Forget Niccolo Machievelli, Sun Pin, Carl Von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu. If you really want to learn the art of war, battle and conflict join the Saturday morning ball school. This
‘friendly’ ball school is all smiles, jokes, banter and laughter. Yet deep down there’s a mass of psychological insight on display borne out of decades of disappointment, heartbreak and angst.

For instance there’s a psychological condition known as reactance that was developed by Kansas psychology professor, and non golfer, Jack Brehm. He looked at how people react to change. He concluded that most people refuse to be bullied into doing anything. There’s a psychological condition in humans that refuses to be told what to do. He explored this and called it psychological reactance. He found that if someone tries to restrict our choice we tend to react by trying to restore that balance.

He carried out an experiment where people who didn’t have a preference for 2 brands of cigarettes (A and B) were observed at a vending machine. One of the brands was deliberately sold out (Brand A) and the only brand available was Brand B. Logically, it should make no difference and people would, you would guess, choose Brand B. However, people were more likely to try to find another vending machine and buy Brand A. This was all because they felt they were being forced to do something.

Now I’m not sure if the members of the ball school have been versed in the musings of Jack Brehm and his psychological theories but they all seem to use his findings instinctively. Jack Brehm is one of the many psychologists whose work has been explored and translated into practical actions by the ball school members. It’ll be demonstrated as a look, a sigh, a silence. It’ll be a look behind you as you’re stepping up to a twenty foot putt and a sharp intake of breath and a helping word;
“Don’t take any notice of me but this putt’s more uphill than it looks. It’s really difficult to judge and well, if it were me I’d lag up.”
Thereby ensuring you hit it six feet past and miss the return putt.

Or the comment on the second tee as you practice your swing;
“I see you’ve changed your swing.”
You know this is an old trick but you’re still thinking about as you’re looking for your ball in the left rough.

Or you’re playing well on an unfamiliar course and approach the par 3 with a long iron. You notice your colleagues have all got drivers out. They’re not exactly telling you to hit a driver but there’s the assumption that you should. You recognise this is a ploy now so confidently hit your 3 iron into the pond.

Or you’re settling over a 6 foot putt. The innocent question,
“Are you putting for a 5 or 6?”
You lift your head, start counting and by the time you take your putt you’ve forgotten the line, the distance, everything and leave it a foot short.

Now these examples are fairly standard, innocent even… for the first dozen holes. For the last few holes though things change. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing for the club championship or a pound coin - the tactics are the same. There are some people who play differently when it comes to money. There’s a different mentality that kicks in - not meanness but … some kind of primal instinct. There are a number of golfers that play differently whether they’ve a score card or a £5 note in their hand.

Perhaps the area that causes more grief, stress and psychological torture is the grey, dark, undefinable world of gimmes. Gimmes are those putts that are conceded by your opponent when it’s obvious you would hole them… well that’s one definition of gimmes. Another definition is that it’s a device for psychologically wounding and damaging your opponent. The best psychological demonic experts can break weaker players with just a few words.

It’s demonstrated at the ball school with the 4 balls playing in pairs with a pound for
the winning pair. For the first 12 holes its…
“Pick it up, it’s only 5 feet for goodness sake.”
“Oh don’t be daft of course you can have that one - you can’t miss that.”
Or they’ll (in your innocent mind) very generously knock your ball back to you when you’ve just missed a putt with, “bad luck but that’s a gimme.”
However as it gets to the end of the round, and the scores are tighter it suddenly
becomes quieter on the green. You walk up to a two feet putt expecting your opponent to give it to you when suddenly they’re looking at something else and talking to their partner giving their full, total concentration.
Have they conceded it or not? You decide you’d better putt it. You hole it a little nervously when you hear “Oh, you didn’t need to putt that for pity’s sake.”
On the next hole you concede their putt and approach your four foot putt half-hoping to hear your opponent - again silence. As you settle over the putt you realise you’ve only had one or two small putts all day. In fact you’ve hardly had any putts at all. You’ve no idea of the pace of the greens. No idea how well you’re putting and you’re starting to get nervous. You know if you miss you’ll still have to the return putt - no more gimmes from now on. So you think about leaving it just a little short… which you do…. twice.

Now there’s nothing illegal in this. It is part of the game, part of the fun and the sooner you learn these new rules the sooner you can start using them on your opponents.

Aristotle, known to have a temper, with ex doubles partner who wouldn't lay up at par 5 9th

Aristotle would argue;
People don’t like change.
Golfers are people.
Therefore, golfers don’t like change.

Look 1 – Breaking The Habit
One fundamental reason people, and by inference, golfers, don’t like change is that they like the comfort of routine, custom or habit. At a basic psychological level there are 5 basic reasons they resist change; uncertainty, lack of confidence, anxiety, stress, confusion.
You spend £100 on a crash course with the pro to get rid of your slice. On the range it’s perfect. You hit ball after ball straight, straight, straight. Then you get on the first tee and all your frames of reference have gone. What do you line up with? Normally you’re aiming at the 18 tee, but now? What reference points are there in the middle of the fairway? As you prepare to hit the drive you’re really nervous. Everything seems unfamiliar – what do you do with your legs? your arms? How high do you tee it up now?
Anxiety creeps in. (by the way anxiety has best been defined as the anticipation of pain – it’s not the pain itself).
You hit a bad shot and the stress builds. For the past 6 months you’ve hit bad drives on this hole but have put it down to rushing, not warming up properly, a difficult tee shot, a big breakfast. Yet today it’s the fault of your new swing.
Stressed as you are it’s inevitable you hit the next drive badly and suddenly you’re hot, sweating and barely know the general direction you’re heading for.
You return to your old ways, have a miserable round and vow never to change your swing, or anything ever again.
Look 2 - The Coping Cycle

The Coping Cycle - A model for helping golfers : Adams, Hayes and Hopson

People and golfers go through a number of stages as they go through change. In the model by Adams, Hayes, Hopson suggest that everyone has to take this journey. For some, it’s seconds (they’re shown something new – they copy it, assimilate it and move on) others never get to the end of the journey (see story 1). People give up and go back. The joy of this model is that it gives hope. Golfers, and people, need hope – they need to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

As they move along this path their performance and self-esteem fall, then rise. This is inevitable – for everyone.

At the start there’s the inevitable defence and denial stage – this comes when us golfers are asked to confront our demons. We have not been playing well and although the figures, the jokes of our colleagues, the self knowledge points toward making change we rationalise… “It’s not a hook it’s a draw.”, “I’m an aggressive putter not a useless putter.”, “if it wasn’t for those 4 bad holes I would have broke 100” – any excuse to put off the pain of the first steps.

The next stage is the adaptation. This is when the change is finally happening. We’ve bit the bullet, accepted the inevitable and done something about it –new clubs, new shoes, warming up, or God forbid – even a lesson. This will be the lowest point in this whole change cycle process. Our self-esteem is at its lowest. Our performance is at its lowest. We know this is true.
When we’re working on a change to our swing all we can think of initially is your arms, your legs, your elbow, your head – anything except hitting the ball. At this stage everything else goes to hell. Where once it was only our driving that was bad now it’s our approach game, our chipping, everything – just because you’re going through a radical change and nothing seems natural.

The trick, of course, is to stick at this and recognise that it will be better. Remember when you learnt to drive – all unnatural and strange for a long time – now it is the most straightforward process you could think of.

Eventually we work through the stage and it just becomes how it is. This is how our swing is. We’ve internalised and adapted and we’re hitting it better – further, straighter …. It’s at this point that our putting goes to hell ………………

John Daly - A puzzle in an enigma in a golfer

There’s a fundamental question you need to ask yourself when you play golf. This is not the obvious question golf books / non golfers would suggest the questions you ask yourself are;

it’s not;
a. how much am I  willing to spend on the game ? or
b. how much time am I willing to commit ?

Those aren’t real questions. Once you’ve got ‘the bug’ you know what the answer to those questions will be;
a. as much as I can afford  get away with
b. see answer to a. above

No, the fundamental question to ask about golf is, “What do I want to get from a round of golf; enjoyment or getting the lowest score?”

How you answer this question will influence your whole approach to the game. I read a book from John Daly recently and his first chapter was all about… turning up early and practicing – the irony, I thought. However it made absolute sense though. If you are serious about getting the lowest score you can then you need to spend 20 minutes or so warming up. Otherwise you will lose 3 shots each round (a conservative estimate to me).

How many players in your club spend 2 minutes let alone 20 practicing before a round? Stretching and taking 3 swings with a 5 iron don’t really count.

If you want to play golf for fun then don’t leave the house until 5 minutes before your tee time. Or, stay in the bar until someone comes in to tell you your playing partners have teed off. However, don’t be surprised when you come in with another 100+ round.

It may well not be as straightforward as that though. You, like me, may well feel that you really want to score as low as you can because that’s where the fun is. That’s the challenge. So we may occasionally get to the club a few minutes early and have a quick half-hearted putt before we stroll to the first tee.

Part of the problem is not a big deal but just requires some thought and a little courage. In psychology / management jargon it’s about making a choice - Do you want to look good? Or do you want to get the job done?

A classic example of ‘looking good’ instead of ‘getting the job done’ crops up when you are 3 feet short of the green. How do you deal with shots just off the green. Do you, like me, sometimes choose a pitching wedge from 6 feet wide of the green rather than use a putter?  I know a putter will get me closer on 8 out of 10 occasions yet somehow it doesn’t feel right. I feel that I should use a wedge. There’s a pressure on me, a macho, male thing about having to copy the professionals. I can see it in the faces of most of my playing partners - they all feel the same. They’d rather lose a hole going for that ‘tiny gap between the trees and fading it around the corner’ shot than adopt the sensible ‘just chip it back on the fairway’ route. This isn’t everyone – just most of them. The one that doesn’t do this plays off scratch. Perhaps there’s a lesson there.

Ironically the main problem comes when I’ve hit the best drive of my life on the shortish par 5 7th. I know now that I should hit a nice iron, chip over the pond and have a putt for a birdie.
However…. there are demons in my head saying;
“Go on, get a 3 wood and go for it.”, “When will you ever get the chance of doing this again?”, “Go on – wimp.”
So I do and it goes in the pond, I duff the chip, 3 putt and hit driver off every tee thereafter and come in at double figures over my handicap.

So are you saying be boring and don’t take any risks?
Well not really – I’m advocating take a sensible risk and don’t sulk if it goes wrong and don’t carry on taking risks if it works… if you’re committed to getting the best score you can. If you committed to having fun then, in the words of the enigma that is John Daly, “Grip it and rip it.”

However if you are committed to getting a lower score, as I am, then perhaps the next time I’m on the edge of a par 4 in 2 I’m going to reach for a putter, lag it up and tap in for a par……. well, maybe as long as none of my regular playing partners are watching.

"Tell me what's going wrong. Perhaps I can help.... Is it your irons?... that long dog-leg 5th?"

It’s time to seriously think about change…when you put your drive for the 10th on the motorway; when they refer to the sand trap on the 14th as Byron’s Bunker; when your woods really are made of wood; when no-one dreams of giving you a 9 inch putt; when a 4 ball medal match plays through your friendly 2 player match play; when your putter carries the name of a long-dead, hardly-remembered golfer; when your 3 wood has the word spoon inscribed underneath; when your preferred ball is a Spalding Executive; when Titleist sponsor you….. to wear Nike…it’s time to think about change.

Perhaps it’s even time for a radical change.

You’ve done everything you can think of and still your handicap is in the 20s. You bought new clubs, new golf balls, 7 putters, used the interlocking grip, the baseball grip, the leading grip, the trailing hand grip, the Toga Death grip. You’ve stood closer to the ball, further away from the ball, practically on the ball. You’ve tried yoga, acupuncture and chewing gum to help you relax. You’ve tried drinking Red Bull to keep you focused. You’ve bought a shed full of magazines, DVDs, books. You’ve changed your diet, changed your ball marker and even your lucky black hat. Nothing works. You’ve tried absolutely everything short of getting a lesson from the pro.

You need help.

Psychologically people tend not to want to change. There are a hundred theories why this is so. A popular one believes it all stems from the time we were living in caves and any change was dangerous to our survival. In those times change really was difficult. If you wanted to change your swing there were no driving ranges, no nets to practice in, very few indoor practice areas. So change was only made when the price of not changing was so drastic, or life - threatening that you had to. Maybe you were slicing so much you were worrying velociraptors. That would make you work on your grip.

It is now almost universally agreed that people don’t like change because we simply like the comfort of routine, custom, habit. This seems to be true for most aspects of our lives. All our daily life we tend to sit in the same seats in the clubhouse, park in the same place, miss our putts on the same line. We see the vets in the same bunkers on the same holes every day.

We tend to read newspapers from the back, even though the sports pages are rarely at the back anymore. We leave a half inch of tea even if we have never used tea leaves for 20 years. We take a driver off the 8th tee although 9 times out of 10 it ends up in the rough.

However, would you change if your life depended on it? As a betting man I would lay odds that you wouldn’t. This is based on a report by Dr. Edward Miller. The report showed that people who undergo heart surgery are often left with a choice; in stark terms the choice is ‘change or die’. If they change and lead a healthier lifestyle after surgery they could avoid pain, further surgery and stop the spread of a variety of
diseases before one of them kills them. Or, they could stay the same; eat, drink and be dead.

Only 1 in 10 patients changed their lifestyle. It seems that they would prefer to die rather than change. Although this is initially difficult to believe it seems that people get stuck in a defence and denial attitude and simply refuse to accept it. This sounds ridiculous but when you think of people like George Best, James Belushi you wonder. You look at other people who get trapped in a potentially disastrous lifestyle that they simply can’t seem to change; Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson, Bill Cllinton and you believe it a little more.

So it takes a fair amount of pain and effort to change - so why bother? I have playing partners who approach a bunker with the same enthusiasm you display approaching a rabid rhinoceros. Yet they rationalise it away by remembering the one great bunker shot they played on March 28th 1987. And, then they say, “Well, how often am I in the bunker - once or twice a round if that - it’s hardly worth bothering. “

So they don’t and carry on…

I wonder what would cause someone to be sufficiently fed up with their game that they would actually do something about it? Well, if you did actually hit your playing partners on the tee with that hook you keep compensating for, or you were making more and more bizarre excuses not to play in medal competitions then this could well indicate that you are getting dissatisfied enough to actually do something about it.

So, if you seriously think about feigning injury and walking in, rather than play out of a
bunker you should probably start thinking about making a change…….it’s time to face your demons and do something about it.

Dr FBG Stableford - Saint or Sinner ?

Undoubtedly the most tortured, most anguished look I’ve ever seen on a golfer’s face came a month or so ago at Bargoed Golf Club. It was a normal friendly, tense, bickering, frustrating, but very entertaining Saturday morning Ball School. There were 4 in our particular multifarious group and, as is the custom, it was a stableford competition.

For non-golfers Dr. Frank Barney Gordon Stableford various described as a Glamorganshire, Penarth club member, a Royal Porthcawl club member, or a Wallesey club member invented the system and first tried it out on members of the Glamorganshire / Porthcawl / Wallesey club on the 30th September 1898.

Prior to the invention of Dr Frank’s system if you had a bad hole - and for me a bad hole is double figures - you could just as well walk to the clubhouse, get the beers in and watch Sky Sports until your friends joined you one by moaning one. Previously the only means of scoring was medal - which was OK for professionals, veterans and banditos but a bit frustrating for the rest of us.

His new system meant that golfers got 2 points every time they completed a hole as they should according to their handicap - subject to all the bracketed conditions further on. This is universally considered to be a great thing. However read the following tale and I’ll let you be the judge….

Back to the first tee at Bargoed……Having played for many years the handicaps in the ball school had sorted themselves out really well and we all tended to finish pretty close, most weeks. On this particular day, however, we had a newcomer, a brother of a friend of someone who worked with someone who was married to someone who knew my cousin. He was young, keen and excited. He looked out of place.

However, he was a very nice lad ( anyone under 40 at our club is a lad ) who had just taken up golf and was playing off 28. (For non-golfers you get awarded a handicap based on your current level of skill, honesty and ability to put up with the taunt ‘bandit’. If you have a handicap of 28 it means that Tiger Woods, Bradley Dredge and you should be evenly matched on a round of golf if you had a 28 shot start…. Well not exactly as Tiger and Bradley are (or were) probably off +10 or something, but theoretically a scratch golfer would give you 28 shots and you would tie).

None of our Ball School were Tiger Woods, Bradley Dredge or scratch golfers although one of them, the ‘one with the face’ (which I referred to earlier, and will come on to later) was playing off a handicap of 9 and co-incidentally, his wife knew Bradley Dredge’s mother to talk to.

The morning was progressing steadily and the scores were pretty close between our 9 handicapper and the newcomer. The rest of us suffered with the usual mixture of hangovers, bad lies, bad luck and over-optimism. After the 13th our 9 handicapper was on a steady 26 points, a few points behind the newcomer who lead the way with a worthy 28. The 14th hole is a fairly unremarkable but quite narrow par 5, stroke index 10.

The man with the face played the hole exceptionally well; nice drive, long iron, pitch and 12 foot putt to get his 3 points (for non-golfers, see para 3 above - keep up) and announce it calmly; “4 for 3″ (i.e. four shots and 3 points). He now felt he had a distinct advantage, especially as he had seen the newcomer hook into the trees from the tee. We had all gone a-rummaging and found the ball under the root of a tree. Somehow he managed to chip it back out onto the fairway. He then topped a three wood that still trundled 150 yards before it dived into the rough. We found this for him as well. He hacked it back out onto the fairway. The next shot bent like a banana, looked like it was going out of bounds, hit a branch and plopped in the bunker at the right of the green. He managed to find that one himself - extracted the ball from the bunker by some means and watched as it rolled and rolled to within a few feet of the flag. He strode up and confidently missed the putt by inches then backhanded it into the hole with a groan.

As we walked away from the green our newcomer was counting his shots. He counted them in the traditional golfing way of looking back up the fairway and mentally replaying the scenic route he had taken. We moved on to the next tee with the newcomer still counting. Our inane chatter politely stopped as the 9 handicapper strode to the tee, placed his ball and made a few practice swings. The newcomer looked up from his scorecard and quite calmly, quite loudly and to my mind, quite shamelessly announced that he had still scored a point even though he had played the hole as badly as anyone ever had in the history of the game. His actual words were “8 for 1.”

The 9 handicapper stopped and turned around. Then came the look. The look was one of utter, utter, total disbelief. The face that had seen 52 years of pain and anguish took on a new, tormented expression. The face that had seen highs and lows, weddings and funerals, death and destruction was now resigned to life just not being fair and there was nothing he could ever,ever do about it. It was the face that had finally learnt to accept the futility of human life. It was a face that had looked into the face of God and found disappointment. He was practically in tears. he was beyond tears.

The remainder of the round he never scored a point. He spent the rest of the time wandering off into far flung corners of the golf course looking for his ball muttering under his breath.

He now sits in a dark corner of the clubhouse cradling a pint of cider, smoking roll-ups muttering “8 for 1; 8 for 1; 8 for 1.”

Thank you very much Dr. Frank Barney Gordon Stableford.

"Madam, you'll never reach with the 5th with an 8 iron. Relent I besech you!"

When you put your drive for the 10th on the motorway; when they refer to the sand trap on 14th as Byron’s Bunker; when your woods really are made of wood; when no-one dreams of giving you a 6 inch putt; when a 4 ball medal match plays through your friendly 2 player match play; when your putter carries the name of a long-dead, hardly-remembered golfer; when your 3 wood has the word spoon inscribed underneath; when your preferred ball is a Spalding Executive; when Titleist sponsor you….. to wear Nike then it’s time to think about change.

Having been in a number of the above situations I do sometimes think about changing. I do know, however, that change is very, very difficult. A piece of research carried out in America looked at people who had had major heart surgery. They were told that after the operation they would need to change their life styles or basically, they would die. They needed to stop drinking, quit smoking - basically give up whatever vices they had that would cause them another heart attack. Only 1 in 10 changed. So, what hope is there for me getting lessons from the pro for a relatively minor (in non-golfers eyes) slice?

However, I would like to change and I’m convinced the best, most useful change I could make wouldn’t be a 3 week intensive course with Butch Harmon, or a new set of Majesty Prestige golf clubs, John Lobb made to measure golf shoes and a box of Maxfli Black Max balls. No, if I had a fairy golf mother - the change I would make would be to acquire the services of the 1st Century Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca as my caddy.

An unusual choice - granted, and perhaps Seneca’s knowledge of the bumps and borrows on the undulating Bargoed Golf Club greens may not fantastic. However……

Assume I’m playing in a monthly medal competition at Bargoed, Celtic Manor, Pontnewydd or any of the major South East Wales golf courses. I could be having a really good round. I tend to start carefully, play each hole on its merits, taking no real risks and enjoying being on the fairways and greens in the company of my playing partners. After 9 holes I could perhaps have dropped just 6 shots. This is excellent news as I’m playing off 22 and in my mind I’ve doubled that, gone in at 10 under and won the competition by a mile. Then I reach the short, but narrow and tricky tenth.

I hit my drive out of bounds. Still emotional, my second ball ends up in the long grass close to a tree. I noisily hack out onto the fairway and hit my approach ten yards short of the green. However there’s a bunker between their ball and the flag and I find the bunker with a topped chip and a curse. A superb bunkershot, it has been known to happen, finds me six feet from the hole. I walk up to the ball and hit it with barely a glance at the hole, and again and again, and loudly shout “at last” when the ball finally disappears. On the card I angrily scrawl a big fat 10 and mentally retire to the bar. I start moaning and groaning at everyone, try an impossible shot on the next hole, start hitting three woods from everywhere and generally grizzle my way around the back nine for a final score of 103. I’ve had a miserable time and ensured everyone within snarling range has had a miserable time as well.

*****

Seneca, the Roman philosopher, and caddy, would argue that the only thing that causes unhappiness is a desire to see things as they aren’t. He believed that people get angry, upset and disillusioned because they are too hopeful, and often unrealistically optimistic.

One of the main reasons people get angry is that they refuse to accept the truth. There is an example he cites of a famous Roman nobleman who became really upset when a servant broke one of his plates. The nobleman kills the servant. Seneca argues that this is totally unreasonable. Plates will break. This is neither unfair or surprising. There are features of life that are predicable and inevitable. Plates break. People who think plates don’t, or shouldn’t, break simply has a very strange, and incorrect expectation of the world.

*****

Back to my woes in the monthly medal;

If Seneca had been my caddy things would be different. At the half way stage he would have given me a bit of a reality check.

“Look” Seneca would say, in Latin presumably, “Well done you on the front 9. But you’ve been lucky so far. Going by your past 10 years of playing golf you’re due for a bad hole somewhere along the line. Isn’t that true?”

I, who happen to be able to understand enough conversational Latin to get by, would smile knowingly and say “Etiam,tamen is vicis is ero diversus.Ego sentio is!” (trans. “Yes, but this time it’ll be different. I feel it!”)

Seneca will point out, with a rye smile, that this could happen, but basically the odds are that it won’t and would warn me of false hopes and quixotic ideals.

As my drive on the 10th flies over the wall I would growl once then look at Seneca and smile ruefully and take a deep breath. The next ball would find the fairway, there would be a bad shot along the way and the hole would be completed with a disappointing, but acceptable 8. I would finish the round in the high eighties, or, on a favourable day, mid eighties and it would be smiles and harmony all around.

Committee Members approach to discuss slow play

It’s easy to forget that other golfers are often people as well. Frequently all they appear to be are slow moving, exasperating, megalithic obstructions, arrogant youngsters or grumpy old committee members. They are, in the main, real people, just like you, with their own fears and concerns, handicaps and hang-ups.

However, it’s especially easy to forget this when the group of wilderbeest are on the green a hundred yards away from you clustered around the flag tracing a virtual path toward them up the fairway calling out random numbers as they mark their cards. Or when the 28 handicapper stops to take out his new £10,000 or so Bushnells Medalist with Pinseeker Range Finder and stares at it for 10 minutes looking at God knows what. Then gets out a 7 iron and leaves it 80 yards short. Or when one of them is ambling back to the tee after they’ve duck hooked one so far left that the only question is whether it’s in the same post code as the fairway, not whether it’s in or out of bounds. Why didn’t they just play another one off the tee? Were they hoping for some divine intervention? Did they think that a dove would swoop down and gather the ball in its little beak and drop it back on the fairway? Why can’t they get a move on? Why don’t they just take up bowls?

Preposterously the people behind you have the shameless temerity to complain about you for slow play. You feel them getting angrier and angrier. The fact that they are Committee members seems to want you to play even slower for some reason. Granted it was getting dark when you finished and the group in front of you had finished, showered, had a three course meal and waved sarcastically as they passed you on their way home. Yet, you need to align yourself correctly, don’t you? You had been taking advice from your colleagues; “keep your head still”, “don’t forget to hyper-extend”, “your feet are too close to the ball……after you’ve hit it.”

You’ve seen professionals stop when something disturbs them and go through their whole pre-shot routine again. On Sky Sports Ewen Murray said that Ian Poulter showed remarkable composure when he did it. Yet, when you do it all you get it abuse. When you have to look for a ball it’s inevitable. When you need to mark an 18 inch putt you’re just being careful.

And another thing, how come, when you play with your ‘friends’, they say the most wounding, most unfair, most hurtful things. It’s not always good playing with people who have played the course at least once a day every day for 40 or 50 years. It should be an advantage, but it rarely is. It starts on the first drive on the first tee. Before you’ve finished your follow through Keith (they’re all called Keith) is whispering “bunker” as it sails over the hill. There is no way he can know that from your swing, unless he’s putting some kind of hex on you - again. From the greenside bunker you thin it and the ball whistles across the green head high like a tracer bullet. It stops 50 yards away. You’re greeted with a less than sympathetic, “Well out”. A few shots later and you’re close to the edge of the green. Your putt hit a sprinkler climbs vertically for a few kilometres and plops back to earth further away from the hole than you were 3 shots ago, “looked good in the air”, comes the less-than-helpful quip.

There are times when your companions can be incredibly cruel. For instance the time you were in the middle of the fairway next to the 150 yard marker and asked politely,

“Do you think I can get there with an 8 iron?”

“Depends. ” comes the weary response.

“On what?”

“On how many times you’re planning to hit it.”

I did get my own back, just the once. I had eagled the long par 5 3rd hole for the first time in my life and couldn’t resist it. I’m not proud of it but it had to be done. When would I ever get the chance again? As we stood on the next tee I took a driver out and asked politely,

“Did anyone get a two?”

An orderly queue formed on the first tee for the inaugural Ladies Winter Medal at West Mon

The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones” - Wedell L Willkie

Ninety nine percent of the time golf is a Victorian game of etiquette, politeness, civility and manners;
“After you.”
“No after you. Please. You go if you’re ready.”
“Well only if you’re sure.”
“Oh I insist.”
“Charmed I’m sure.”

Golfers generally are the most polite people in the world. Generally we are incredibly patient and especially helpful to newcomers. We’ll spend an entire round standing behind a new 28 (with a star) handicapper watching closely to determine which side of the fairway to begin the search. We’ll do this without a thought of resentment. We’ve all been there. We’ve all had that embarrassing virgin medal round where we’ve reached the final tee and the only balls we’ve got left are:
1. a Day-Glo yellow Top-Flite XL ’straight’ (surely dodgy under the Trade Descriptions Act(1968)) golf ball that has been described as having “high visibility” - high visibility indeed! You can see it from the other side of the valley in Tirphil. You take it out of your bag and there’s a glow as if the Arctic sun were rising after six months of darkness;
2. a brand new untouched £5 Titleist Pro V1x that your daughter bought you as a father’s day gift and you’re saving for some mythical, fantasy tournament you’re going to get invited to;
3. a thing that you believe is a golf ball. This thing has been in your bag ever sense you bought it second hand at a car boot sale. You assume it’s a ball but you can’t be 100% sure. The thing is brown… or yellow. It’s covered in dirt that may have been around since the Silurian period and you’re afraid to clean it as you’re concerned it will either disintegrate or break the ball-cleaner.

Oh yes we’ve all been there.

Golf is an unusual game where winning isn’t everything. It’s a game where someone, allegedly, gave up the prize of a new car in order to retain their amateur status. It’s a game where players call fouls on themselves. It’s the only game where you form a queue, wait your turn and smile - in general…….

It’s the Tredegar and Rhymney Open and you’re waiting politely, smiling sincerely at a quartet of golfers with a combined age of exactly the distance of the par 4 hole you’re playing (in yards). You are keen to play this hole again as last year you hit a driver and three wood to within a foot of the pin. You remember it as if it were yesterday… After you’d hit your three wood you wanted to run to the green and tap it in. However you had to go through the ritual; mark your ball, wipe it on the cloth in your pocket (although I suspect this would only make it dirtier) and make the birdie trying to look as dispassionate as possible. You scribble a nonchalant ‘3′ on your card (as if you’d forget), pretending you did this every other day of your life.

However. You have to wait and watch as think nothing of pausing patiently as this foursome of members one by painful one, spend an eternity half swinging their £1600 matrix graphite Vega RAF-CM blades in the general direction of their third-hand, six for £2, ‘found on course’, reconditioned golf balls. Their shots are all so remarkably similar to each other you wonder why they just don’t all have the one ball between them. You look on agonizingly, but respectfully as a quartet of worm burners stagger limply across the ladies tee, pick up speed as they bounce on the barely-reached fairway and roll on and on and on and on and on, into the distance, like all good committee members’ drives seem destined to do.

As they rumble off into the distance complaining about a bad lie, another doddery tetrad grumble onto the tee your mind goes back to the following week and your experience. You were on the 18th tee at Bargoed knowing that a seven will virtually guarantee you ‘a name on the board’ for the ‘Ystrad Mynach Medal’. You step onto the tee and take a few practice swings that bear totally no relation to your real swing when you notice two ancient, gesturing, shambling members wandering back down the fairway toward you. You are stressed and confused. You’re in such a state that you imagine they’re coming back to tell you there’s a problem with your new ping irons - perhaps they’ve suddenly become illegal, perhaps your jumper’s too bright…You can’t think straight and your mind races back to the last time you were in this position….

…you needed a seven on the last that day as well. It was a horrid, stormy, tempestuous day and your newly acquired playing partner (who you’d met standing around the first tee like a teenage virgin at a school dance) had a heart attack on this exact same 18th tee. By the time the ambulance had turned up, with all the fuss and noise and confusion, you didn’t see how you could pluck your card from his back pocket without it looking like theft. It was a sad occasion - in so many ways. That would surely have been your first time ‘On the Board’. Now this. You breathe deeply and await the pair of Glenmuir-clad Cassandras scurrying toward you.

The two ancients stride onto the tee and one by one screw their tee pegs into the ground, pause for breath, put the oldest golf balls you’ve seen outside a museum on the tees and drive off - in complete silence. .As they moved off one turns to you and explains, “We have having such a nice chat we forget to tee off.”

You smile and mean it - and bear them no ill. The relief you feel.

A few minutes later your elegant drive sails across the river, short of the trees and settles down just in the edge of the rough. You have totally forgotten the prehistoric pair as you march confidently, and a little cockily, toward your ball. You still giggle slightly as you spot the funny old duo in front approach the green still gesturing wildly to each other.

The next time you think about the twin harbingers of doom is when you’re walking back to the tee five minutes and one second later, your ball having crossed into some parallel universe.

“If it wasn’t for that pair on the eighteenth,” you’re heard to mutter to yourself for days afterward.

The Committee (and associated entourage)

Golf Is Not A Natural Game for a Welsh Person - Well it certainly wasn’t when I was introduced to the game. As a youngster the only people I knew who played golf, or at least the only people who admitted it, were Graham the Milk (owner of local dairy), Mr Rees (bank manager) and ‘Whack Whack’ Williams (grammar school headmaster). It was definitely not a game for the likes of me.

I pursued the usual Welsh sporting path of playing rugby for the school (Pontllanfraith Grammar) on Saturday morning and football for local teams (Pengam and Cefn Fforest) on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. After college I chose rugby and spent the next few years yo-yoing between Barry Plastics 1st and 2nd teams. One Sunday morning I awoke barely able to get out of bed with all parts of my body aching and I decided that my body, God or the selection committee were trying to tell me something. So I decided enough was enough. My fellow rugby and soccer colleagues had steadily disappeared to the golf course and I decided to stop fighting and accept the inevitable. At the time golf for me was one step up from bowls, which was itself one step up from sitting in a corner of the pub announcing “I’m 84 I am……. Guess how old I am?” So I decided to take up golf.

Golf in Wales, is not the same as golf in England. Golf in Wales, especially on the ‘pay as you play’ municipal courses, is not that most genteel, respectable, most English of (Scottish) games. I wonder if this could be an attitude to life synonymous with the Welsh valleys. Perhaps it is a part of the culture; the culture of pits and mining and closedowns and austerity. I’m not talking of today, so much, but the centuries of hardship and toughness that permeates Welsh people. It may be a particularly unique Welsh or Celtic attribute - but I doubt it. I guess golfers are golfers the world over. Golfers will always get a bad lie, a tough break and more “why me? s” than any other group (including fishermen, farmers and bankers).

If it is a Welsh characteristic and there has to be a reason then I’d blame climatology and topography. Years of cold, stinging, horizontal rain must have an effect on your swing and your temperament. Centuries of narrow, squeezed river valleys will surely have an adverse effect on chipping and putting. The parallel Rhymney, Sirhowy and Ebbw rivers with their enclosed cultures, vicious sheep and harsh environments will influence the mentality of the higher handicapped people trapped within.

There are villages north of Tredegar as remote, as inhospitable, and as dangerous to missionaries as any outlying Amazonian villages. This will surely have an impact on the people, their traditions, their dress sense and their approach shots.

I learned to play golf - well I learnt to swing a club and hit a ball fairly accurately after months of hitting Penfold balls in the field behind my house and at a variety of bizarre driving ranges. However, my introduction to the savageries of the noble game took place on a cold, foggy, Saturday morning. My brother and I had somehow managed to get an early tee time at the 9-hole, speakeasy course on the outskirts of Caerphilly, romantically named Castell Heights, Heol Penybryn. The unwritten rule (if there were any rules in operation at all) seemed to be - “out of sight - out of mind”. This was frequently a potential problem on a number of semi-legal hills and valleys courses. I remember zig-zagging down the fairway / rough and reaching the first green in four. As I walked around my ball checking my putt from many angles I heard, rather than saw, a Top Flite XL whistling past my ear.

“Oy!” I screamed in some panic. “You nearly hit me.”
Hoping I wasn’t being too forceful in my criticism I watched as a small figure emerged from the mist. Fully expecting a contrite apology I saw a 5 feet 3 inch, 24 stone miner lumbering toward me.

“Nearly hit you? F******* good. Now f****** hurry up I’m working nights.” He further informed me that he and his colleagues were ‘playing through’ and so they did. Five other groups played through that Saturday morning and I’m still known as an “instinctive putter”.

This attitude is still around - although invariably couched in jokey, or semi-jokey remarks; “Don’t be shy about calling us through if you lose another two holes”; “Looked good in the air”, I was told of a long putt I attempted from off the green that somehow found a large stone in its path; “I’m putting you in the book”, I was informed toward the end of one particularly bad, one hundred plus, round. “What for?” I asked. “Practising on the course “, came the hurtful response.

‘Putting someone in the book’ is the ultimate threat on many a Welsh golf course. You can be put in the book for anything from ‘not taking your hat off while shaking hands on the eighteenth’ to ‘armed robbery with assault on the short uphill eleventh’. Members have been put in the book for ’slow play’ and ‘playing too quickly’; ‘being seen surreptitiously using a mobile phone on the course’; ‘walking around the course inappropriately dressed (shirt not tucked in) and ‘nearly swearing in front of the ladies’ captain’. The fear of going in the book is the dread of having to go before The Committee…. The Committee are a fine bunch of people who do a thankless job and I hold them in the highest esteem.