We all play and enjoy this great game of golf for different reasons. There are lots of things that keep bringing us back for more, some of which are obvious, some of which might not be. We got to thinking about it and came up with 10 of the things that we love about golf. Let us know what it is that brings you back.
Empty courses
Who wants to take five or six hours to play 18 holes of golf? So how good is it when, once in a blue moon, you turn up with your regular fourball and discover that there isn’t another soul on the course? You don’t have to wait on every shot, you don’t have to lean on your driver in an intimidating manner to let the people in front know that they are holding you up, and you don’t walk onto the tee at every par three and find three groups already there. There can be one downside, however – thinking there is nobody on the course, the steward has shut the bar and locked the clubhouse, inside which are your shoes, mobile phone, wallet and car keys!
Wide fairways
We may kid ourselves that we would like to face the challenge of threading drives with pinpoint accuracy through 20-yard-wide fairways surrounded by 3ft-deep rough, but please, let’s not kid ourselves – that sort of golf course is no fun at all, all the more so because it encourages the higher handicappers among us to attempt to steer our drives, with disastrous results. What we ALL want is to stand up on the tee, open up our shoulders and thrash the ball as hard and as far as possible – and still be on the short grass, even if we are 50 yards off line.
Shallow bunkers
Nobody likes to find that their perfectly-flushed drive has finished up the face of a hidden fairway bunker. If you have ever played the Old Course at St Andrews you will know what it is like to wander down the fairway and discover your golf ball lying in a tiny pot bunker that you did not even know was there, and then find it is impossible to take any kind of stance without defying the laws of gravity. So how good is it when you play a course for the first time, hit a drive into a trap and get there to find that it has no lip, that it is filled with “proper” sand and that your ball is sitting up, inviting you to take a rescue club or long iron?
Drivers
We lose all sense of reason when it comes to the driver, a club we will use a maximum of 14 times in a round. Why is it that we are all seduced by the claims of manufacturers who suggest that the latest model will hit the ball further and straighter than the one upon which you have just forked out £350? There is something called the laws of physics which dictates precisely how much performance you are going to get from a driver, regardless of the brand name on the sole. You can adjust it all you want, but the chances are that it probably won’t hit the ball any further than the one you already have in your possession. But we all just love to go out and hit that shiny new club, filled with so much hope and promise. And then we wonder why it is that it worked so well on the driving range but we can’t hit it for peanuts the minute we pay for it
Cavity-backed irons
If you ever thinned a shot with a blade iron on a cold winter’s day then you should give thanks to God every day of your life for the guy who came up with perimeter weighting and cavity backs to irons. They helped to make decent golfers of us all, and all but eliminated that dreaded judder that started at the tip of your fingers, went all the way up your arms, down your spine, through your legs to your toes and then all the way back again – and left you with no feeling in your fingers for the next four holes.
Easy fixes
We all love to take short cuts but the truth is that there is no “easy fix” to finding a good golf swing or a sound technique. All of us know this, so why is it that we keep falling for the “miracle cure” to your slice? Or the “three easy steps to playing par golf”? Or the sand wedge that is guaranteed to get your golf ball out of the bunker every time? Or the new driver that will add 40 yards to your drives?
Trees…
To be a little more specific, trees into which a drive disappears, rattles around among the branches for what seems like an eternity and then, lo and behold, the ball miraculously reappears slap bang in the middle of the fairway. Unless, of course, you are having one of “those” days.
Hot weather
Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun…and Scots, Irish and Welsh. We get more than our fair share of dud weather in the British Isles so when the sun comes out we cannot wait to get out there. Usually, we forget to take enough water with us. Sometimes we forget to take a baseball hat and almost always we don’t apply sunscreen before or during the round. Four hours later, we stagger off the 18th green looking like ripe tomatoes and head straight to the bar and do the one thing that you should never do when you are dehydrated – consume one or two pints of alcohol.
The career shot
Every once in a while we all hit a shot that could stand comparison with those that the world’s best tour professionals manage to accomplish every day of their lives. It might be a bunker recovery shot, it might be a drive that travels in excess of 300 yards, or a long, snaking birdie putt. It might be a holed chip or it could be a miracle iron shot over a lake to the heart of a green. The problem with career shots, or course, is that they are precisely that and the chances of replicating them are slim – but we always try.
Slow Greens
Every time we switch on the TV and watch Tour professionals suffering the screaming heebie-jeebies on lightning-fast greens we long for the opportunity to play on such surfaces. Except that we don’t. Not really. Can you imagine a downhill putt on a green so fast that if you hit it just a fraction too hard you know it will end up 50 yards back down the fairway? And that when you play your next chip, there is every chance that the ball will finish up back at your feet? No, your humble, average amateur wants a green that is true and slow, so that he can hit the ball hard.
