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Why winter golf is the best
Me, and my trousers, simply can’t get enough of winter golf
IN the next three months I will enjoy my best round of 2012. In the words of Rafa Benitez: fact. Is this down to a new training regime or the ability to chip the ball forwards and upwards? Don’t be silly.
The reason for my new-found optimism is one that rears its head at this time of year, every year, thanks – to quote the brilliant Ewen Murray on a weekly basis – to the wonderful examination paper that is laid out before us in the winter.
It might be cold and a bit gloomy blah blah blah but when else do you get to play a course with no rough? When do you get to play a course that plays a thousand yards short of its full distance? When do you begin a round with a list of excuses why you won’t play well as long as your arm?
You can’t really fail. Hit the fairway and you can improve your lie, hit it in the rough and you can trampoline yourself about to unearth some casual water or, finding yourself nicely/not really plugged, drop one from an ever decreasing shoulder height into some fluffy stuff.
One hackneyed phrase trotted out is that ‘the scorecard doesn’t paint pictures’. So when you get a par 5 that is playing 340 yards because of a temporary green and a huge bucket hole, what’s not to like?
Get your drive away, sclaff some sort of wedge to the general proximity of the chasm, batter a putt to within six feet and, to a backdrop of mumbling and grumbling over temporary greens, accept the gimme for a hugely satisfying birdie.
Is there a better sight than someone who is skilled enough to get a bit of check on their 20-yard pitch following the first bounce... only to then see it fail to spin and dribbl...
Winter mats? The general dreary old nonsense trotted out is that people struggle to get your tee in.
Solution: get a shorter one. Then enjoy the insurance that the mat gives you as you continue to drop kick it down the fairway.
Likewise your iron shots are more often than not thinned, a far more welcome outcome than covering yourself in gritty soil.
The real kicker, though, is that it takes the good chippers out of the equation.
Is there a better sight than someone who is skilled enough to get a bit of check on their 20-yard pitch following the first bounce... only to then see it fail to spin and dribble off the back of the green?
Welcome to my world, only without the crisp strike.
In summer I worry more about the weather. If it’s scorching I fret about sunstroke and finishing in a Ken Venturi-type state where I have no recollection of the heroics that have just occurred over the previous four and a half hours.
I never drink enough water, then get one of my heads midway through the back nine and have to time my third legal high with another can of Coke and a second Mars bar.
In the next few months all there is to concern me is how to preserve a polystyrene cup of rank coffee before, without fail, spilling it down an already egg-stained jumper.
There’s no pressure in winter to ‘dress up’. The general look I go for in the footwear department is someone who has been planting potatoes the previous day which impresses nobody. In winter this is de rigeur within a few holes. And then there is the great trouser debate in the hotter months.
I own three pairs of trousers, all are black, all are thick cotton and all have been bought from the same shop at two-year intervals.
The only difference is the degree of a copper-type sheen on the front. I have not considered going beige since trying to recreate the Don Johnson look on a summer holiday to Greece in 1987.
And white isn’t even an option. There is the shorts alternative but, since I am unlikely to make it into the US Amateur, that, too, is a no-no.
I could splash out 60 or so big ones for a thinner material but my cut-off is £40 and The Gap have remained competitively priced since the onset of the recession and I’ll be staying loyal to them.
Fact.
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