Playing many moons ago in a university competition, I was having the round of my life. I stood on the 18th tee of the Old Course at St Andrews, four-under-par. I couldn’t believe it – a birdie on that relatively straightforward par-4 and I would be round in 67. On the Old Course! ‘Oh man – that would be incredible,’ I thought prematurely
I’d been hitting it dead straight off the tee all day but, for some cowardly reason, I decided to err on the side of caution and aim a little left. In so doing I opened up my body and hit a raging block/slice into the old Rusacks car park (here’s a drill to fix your slice).
I then repeated the shot for good measure before squaring up, finding the fairway with five off the tee, limping off with an eight to shoot 72 and to lose the competition by two shots.
That was a tough day and I don’t think I set foot on a golf course for at least 48 hours after that – I do say in the headline that I’ve played far too much golf.
But I always come back to golf, no matter how bad things are. No matter if I’ve suffered a bout of the shanks or the time I developed the putting yips (I went to the claw grip – A lifesaver!)
Golf has an uncanny way of drawing people back to the fold after roundly abusing them. It’s sort of like a cult in that respect, isn’t it?
And, like any good cult, golf holds us all in thrall by showing us/promising us occasional snippets of glory and pure joy. We keep chasing the dragon, even though we know we might never even touch its tail.
There are certain things in golf that never get tiresome or old – including these little joys – and they deliver a dopamine hit that has us yearning for more. Here are five things in golf I find utterly compulsive.
An Empty Golf Course
(Image credit: Getty Images)
I love arriving early to a course and being first to tee off. The birds are singing and the morning dew is glistening on the newly mowed tee box.
I know I won’t wait on a single shot and the course will be unspoiled by any of the day’s traffic.
I also love the feeling of opportunity I experience when looking down an empty first fairway. It’s all to play for and, at that point, I can see nothing going wrong.
I see long drives and piercing irons, perfect pitch shots and potted putts. I see birdies and…
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