The Rocky Horror Show, invitation days and Walter Hagen

OK, I give up. I am definitely going to have to start my column from now on with the proviso, "If you don't understand tongue in cheek humour, please skip this page and go straight to the sensible pages."

Actually, by the time you get to the equipment reviews, I do have my sensible head screwed back on again, but I have no intention of taking my column seriously. This is my pure flight of fantasy, my escape from reality, and more importantly, it keeps me amused writing it!

I suspect that Ms Taylor (of the July letters page) and I wouldn't enjoy an evening out together. I have my suspicions that she wouldn't think that the Rocky Horror Show was the greatest thing since rescue clubs were invented, and I would hazard a bet that she doesn't ever change her shoes in the car park.

I also can't see her being at the head of the queue for my book ­if I ever finish writing it ­since it is in exactly the same style as my articles, but without mentioning golf.

I don't have a problem with people disagreeing with my views, that's just healthy debate,­ but when someone completely misinterprets the funniest line I have ever written in this magazine, then I get upset. I still giggle to myself every time I think of the possibility of dirty old men in raincoats shouting 'Show us your chip and run' or 'Get your wedge out' (June issue), so for Ms Taylor to completely miss the point (and the humour in that statement) has almost silenced me. Almost.

In her letter of complaint she said, 'Her claim that men in raincoats will be attracted to galleries in order to shout obscenities is ridiculous. For starters, if it was raining, not one of the girls would be wearing anything skimpy!' I give up.

Fortunately, though, I do have a fan ­ well two actually, although one was wearing fishnet stockings and suspenders en route to the Rocky Horror Show at the time, so on the sanity scale, she may not count. However, I do have one other bone fide fan who tracked me down via LG and asked me to play in her club's invitation day.

Unfortunately, I was ill last year when the first invitation arrived, and obviously I hadn't managed to upset Mary by any of my articles in the ensuing 12 months, since another invitation duly arrived this year. And, I have to say, I really enjoyed myself.

As well as the company and the banter, I discovered a little gem of a course in Staffordshire which I had never played before. Stafford Castle is only a nine-hole course, and it doesn't have any death-defying carries just before greens, or any bunkers that rise above your head, or even any cunningly-positioned water features where you have to decide whether to lay
up or go for it. It was simply a delightful parkland course in superb condition.

It made me think about how many other courses I must inadvertently have overlooked in my golfing lifetime. For some reason, we seem to play the same courses year in, year out, but I now think I should endeavour to play every course within my own county, at the very least.

After some hasty research, I have counted that Staffordshire has 44 courses (not all affiliated to the county) and I have played 34 of them. Thus, added to my list of things to do before I die, after jumping out of a plane, going over Niagara Falls in barrel, and white water rafting down the Grand Canyon, I will endeavour to play the elusive remaining 10 courses.

However, if I adopted the challenge which Walter Hagen offered Joe Kirkwood, I may not get invited back to many of these courses again. After the Tijuana Open in 1928, Walter had a bet with Joe that he could hit his ball back to the hotel in less shots than him. That part sounds harmless enough, but then it transpires that although Hagen reached the hotel first, it was Kirkwood who won the bet, since he was the first one to chip his ball into the toilet bowl, which they had decided would be the hole!

The trouble is now, since the idea's been put into my head, I just want to go out and try it. The other trouble is that the nearest downstairs toilet to the 18th green at Trentham is virtually opposite the secretary's door, and even I might have trouble talking my way out of that one. I did actually blot my copy book once before in the dim and distant past when I challenged my father to a nearest pin from the 12th tee to the 18th green, and I missed the green by a considerable margin to break one of the Oak Room windows.

I don't know if I was more mortified by the fact that my usually reliable swing had let me down to produce such an awful pull, or to learn that the side windows of the clubhouse didn't contain reinforced glass like the greenside windows did.

Fortunately, I was young enough then for my father to bale me out, but if I started marching through the clubhouse wielding a lob wedge and lining up the angles off the walls, I don't think I would get off so lightly. I don't suppose Ms Taylor would care to join me...