The Problem with Golf!

In my second year at university, I lodged in a student hall which offered a panoramic view across the white sands and the North Sea at St Andrews. At least, that’s how I saw it.

To my golfer friends, however, that same vista was of note because it overlooked the Royal and Ancient clubhouse and the 18th green of the Old Course.

As a keen tennis player, who enjoyed most sports where the ball comes back to you, I was at a loss to understand why anyone would have the desire to strike a ball, stop, then trundle off in search of it, dragging a shopping trolley of assorted tools.

On Saturday afternoons, I would enjoy a brisk walk into the bracing wind of the West Sands, and be blown back within the hour. I took care not to cross the sacred links when those on the slow route ambled into view. Fortunately, they were not buffeted by the strong winds, anchored as they were by their ironmongery, and not difficult to spot in their Hi-Viz Pringle sweaters!

It is often said that golf is “a good walk spoiled”, but what is the point?

If the aim of golf were to get to the clubhouse as quickly as possible, then surely the links would be alive with the whirr of little golf buggies jostling for position. Yet much time and effort, not to mention cash, is invested in the creation of complex golf course topography. Can there be any sport for which a level playing field is less desirable? Course designers go to extraordinary lengths to spoil the walk by ever more innovative means, so that the players can experience a more diverse range of problems to solve -and herein lies the clue! The aim of the game is not to get to the clubhouse, but to appreciate the diversions along the way.

I saw it when I was shown the root of the word “problem”. From the Greek, meaning “something thrown or put forward”, “problema” is derived from the verb “proballein”, meaning “to throw forwards”. It is where we get the word “ball” and “parabola”.

On the golf course, the striking of the ball creates the ‘problem’ and the solution is the experience that follows. The little forays into the rough and the seven-shot sandstorm that is the bunker below the eleventh green are not inconveniences to be eradicated, but adventures to enjoy. These golfers are creating the “problems“ for their own amusement and delight.

The Problem is?NOT an Inconvenience to be Eradicated

I used to ‘help’ people to write and publish their books in three months, thereby by-passing the years of problem-solving and figuring out how to do it -or so I thought! ?Now, by way of the golfing analogy, I can see that this was akin to picking up a golfer’s poor tee shot at the eleventh hole and running to place the ball in the 18th hole! To my unenlightened eye, I had solved his or her problem, but for them, I had spoiled the game with a good walk.

I used to compare the experience of writing and publishing to a never-ending saga which had become an Odyssey, but now I see that the writing IS the adventure for the writer. It is their choice, and I do not ‘help’ by depriving them of the “problem” that they have set up to experience.

You see! I knew there must be a point to golf!

PS Students of Bronze age sailing vessels and prevailing Mediterranean currents have shown that Odysseus could have (and probably should have!) made the journey back home from Troy to his home in Ithaca in two short months. However, he chose the slow route, clocking up adventures along the way, and took almost 10 years to get home.

It made for a much better book!

?