I will never forget the feeling of standing over a birdie putt, wondering if I wanted to hole it.
Golfers have always had a weird problem with other people playing well. And if you play extremely well, it is frowned upon. What other sport does that?
My handicap has been single figures for a while, and I’ll admit to looking at winning scores on competition leaderboards from higher handicappers open-mouthed. They are scores I can’t hope to match.
There is none from me, but some golfers resent higher handicappers playing well in club competitions. That’s always been the case, no matter what handicap system is in place.
But I have also experienced a different type of resentment in my time, which happened when I was younger.
Although I’ve not been a junior golfer for over a decade, my days of playing from dawn till dusk with my pals every weekend don’t feel as distant as they might appear.
I played in hundreds of junior Stablefords and, once I built up enough confidence and ability, I entered men’s competitions. They were probably Stablefords to begin with, rather than big, mean medals.
Angst from the men’s membership still focused on good scores and common accusations of banditry, but it ramped up a notch if a 16-year-old shot 40 points.
‘Why are they playing in our competitions? Do they not have junior competitions to play in?’ – these were regular lines I’d hear if my friends or I played well in a men’s competition.
Sometimes, it was genuine banter, which we enjoyed sharing. Part of growing up at a golf club is growing increasingly comfortable with older heads, sharing laughs and shaping yourself as a person. Not all of it was spiteful.
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Do you welcome junior golfers in men’s competitions?
But it could be intimidating, as there were definitely members who meant what they said, and it left me with a very strange feeling the next time I played.
Back to the putt I mentioned at the start. I had made a birdie on the 1st hole of a men’s competition, and I had about six feet downhill for the same on the 2nd hole.
I vividly remember being nervous.
Partly because it was a firm and trickling putt which could easily run away from me, but mostly because I was about to be two-under-par after two holes, as a teenager, in a men’s competition.
That sort of thing doesn’t go down too well. My playing partners were two of the kinder members, if I remember rightly, so it wasn’t them I was worried about. It was the packed clubhouse afterwards if I strutted in with a nett 66.
It’s not right to presume you’ll end up with a good score after two good opening holes of a round – far from it – but I was in a rich vein of form. When your confidence is high as a young, enthusiastic, golfer, that can take you to some very decent scores.
I genuinely stood over the putt, thinking, ‘Do I actually want to hole this?’
I dribbled my ball by the hole and tapped in for a par. Fear didn’t force me to miss the putt deliberately – I tried holing it for sure.
But I definitely lacked conviction.
This might sound like a problem that only existed in my head. Maybe it was. But it was a mutual feeling among my fellow juniors, and while I can’t say for sure, I imagine clubs up and down the country had the same dynamics.
I say ‘had’, because golf clubs have probably changed since then. I’m not plugged into junior golf now, so I can’t say if youngsters still have adults breathing fire down their necks if they’re beating them in competitions.
I hope not, anyway.
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