Getting to grips with the hard yards

IN the days when you had to do more than just spell your name correctly to get a grade A, I somehow managed to scrape a C in O Level maths. This was something of a miracle since I loathed the subject.

Words have always come easily, but numbers required, if not blood, then certainly copious amounts of sweat and tears as my father tried to drum various theories in to me.

Then I promptly forgot every mathematical formula known to mankind in the blissful knowledge that Id never need to use them again until now!

Imagine my horror, therefore, upon reading that from January 1, 2010, everything has to be advertised in metric terms only, and feet and inches will be banned. In fact, not just banned, but it will become a criminal offence to describe goods in real measurements.

My horror is the impact this will have on golf if it sneaks into clubs as well.

Personally, Im not really affected if my milk comes in some obscure fractions of litres, as long as when I open the fridge door, theres enough for my cornflakes in the morning and my hot choccie at night.

However, I just cant function without yards in golf. Im totally thrown when I play golf abroad and the yardage is in metres. They mean nothing to me.

Im hopeless at looking at a shot and thinking, Thats a nine iron. I find it impossible. I pace every last yard out, so that I know exactly what club to hit.

I might hit the odd shot left or right of its intended target, but its very rare Im more than a couple of yards too long or too short.

Yards are perfect, because you can measure them accurately just by walking with a slightly more exaggerated stride than normal. But its impossible to walk in metres.

Then comes the fine art of club selection. Being a diligent pupil, once Maureen Madill told us at county coaching to go home and work out how far we hit every club in the bag, I went and did just that.

Even better, my yardages fell perfectly for me to remember. I hit a five iron 150 yards, a six iron 140 yards, and with one exception, everything goes in nice neat 10-yard intervals.

How on earth could I remember that rather than a perfectly round 130 yards for a seven iron, it instead flies 117 metres, or that my eight iron now carries 108 metres? (In case you are wondering, my father worked out the calculations for me!) I have got no chance.

I also went away from another county training session finally understanding the vagaries of pitching.

Its all to do with a clock face. Now, when Ive got a sand wedge in my hand, if I take the backswing to 7.30, the ball flies 25 yards. 9 oclock merits 30 yards, and so on.

With this method, I can now land the ball on a sixpence. I really dont think Ive got the technical nous to stop my backswing at 6.38 or 8.42 if Ive got to translate it into metrical distances.

Then, things become really technical once we move onto the putting green. Here, feet and inches rule. Being my foursomes partner means that expecting the unexpected is pretty much par for the course (no pun intended, but Im delighted how aptly it fits!).

However, if upon reading the line of my partners putt I replaced Its an inch outside right lip with, Its 25.4mm outside right lip, then I would quite justifiably deserve a punch!

Everyone knows the terror of standing over a crucial four-foot putt, but it would lose its poignancy to hear Peter Alliss describing some poor unfortunate soul standing over a 1.218 metre putt to win the Ryder Cup.

Of course, things could become really sinister. Once it becomes a criminal offence for any use in the EU of what are called supplementary indications i.e. translations of metric units given to help those who
need them, club secretaries might be out in force monitoring breaches in protocol.

This could be the best chance yet for my own secretary to dismiss me, as Id be a complete give away counting out yard length strides, or pausing with a pained expression while I did the necessary complicated mathematical calculations to work out how far I had to go to the flag.

At the end of the day, imperial measurements were designed to make distances really simple, since most of them relate to body parts.

On the other hand, the metre was originally devised to be equal to a ten millionth part of the earths meridional quadrant!

God bless the EU but will someone please find a loophole to keep golf clubs out of it before 2010!