Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Chichester Golf course



A professional swinger in action..



And how not to do it. Appalling posture. tut-tut.

Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden aka GOLF!!

So my first encounter on a golf course did not quite start on the right foot. Having woken up late and with a two hour journey to ahead of me, I seriously contemplated cancelling. But with at least one months advance warning and the fact that I was actually looking forward to it after about a month work pressure I roused my self from my slumber and arranged to meet my golf buddies at the fifth tee. I say golf buddies – but this was the first time I actually played on a course and not just on a pitch and putt or on the driving range. How hard could it be? As P.G Woodhouse said "Golf ! After all, what is golf? Just pushing a small ball into a hole. A child could do it...."

For a start there is whole paraphernalia that you need before you event set foot on the course. Apart from the set of clubs, the trolley, balls and score cards, you need to make sure that you have the correct clothes and shoes in accordance with club rules. Lucky for me no major faux-pas with the clothes and I was able to borrow the rest. Of course this gives plenty of a opportunity for one-up-manship wrt to club and clothes brand etc. Ide even had a remote controlled trolley thanks to his competition win and looked like the consummate professional in all his gear.

Suffice it to say my first round on the golf course was embarrassing. I think I lost about 10 balls in rivers and lakes and although I was beginning to hit a few good strokes, couldn’t help feeling that this was going to be a very expensive and frustrating hobby if I was going to carry on. Having said that, Chichester golf course on that beautiful summer’s day was as pleasant a way to spend four hours as you can imagine. Yes – that’s right – FOUR hours. You can see why it elicits mixed emotions from players as evidenced by the quotes below. So thanks Ide for arranging it and opening my eyes to this very British of past times. I look forward to the next one.


For you amusement – what famous people have said about golf.
1. Winston Churchill: "Golf is like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture."

2. Jack Benny: "Give me the fresh air, a beautiful partner, and a nice round of golf, and you can keep the fresh air and the round of golf."

3. Lee Trevino: "You can make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work."

4 Unknown: "Golf is not a game, it's bondage. It was obviously devised by a man torn with guilt, eager to atone for his sins."

5. Hank Aaron: "It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course."

6. Lee Trevino: "Columbus went around the world in 1492. That isn't a lot of strokes when you consider the course."

7. Lee Trevino: "I'm not saying my golf game went bad, but if I grew tomatoes, they'd come up sliced."

8. Sam Snead: "These greens are so fast I have to hold my putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow."

9. Paul Harvey: "Golf is a game in which you yell "fore," shoot six, and write down five."

10. Tommy Bolt, about the tempers of modern players: "They throw their clubs backwards and sideways, and that's wrong. You should always throw a club ahead of you so that you don't have to walk any extra distance to get it."

11. Tommy Bolt: "Putting allows the touchy golfer two to four opportunities to blow a gasket in the short space of two to forty feet."

12. Jimmy Demarest: "Golf is about the only things you can enjoy without being good at."

13. Jack Lemmon: "If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball."

14. Lee Trevino: "If you're caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron."

15. Unknown: "Fifty years ago, 100 white men chasing one black man across a field was called the Ku Klux Klan. Today it's called the PGA Tour."

16. John Updike: "Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five."

17. "Silk Stockings" TV Show: "The people who gave us golf and called it a game are the same people who gave us bag pipes and called it music."

18. Gerald Ford: "I would like to deny all allegations by Bob Hope that during my last game of golf, I hit an eagle, a birdie, an elk and a moose."

19. P.G. Woodhouse: "The least thing upsets him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of butterflies in the adjoining meadows."

20. Bob Hope: "If I'm on the course and lightning starts, I get inside fast. If God wants to play through, let him."

21. Ken Harrelson: "In baseball you hit your home run over the right-field fence, the left-field fence, the center-field fence. Nobody cares. In golf everything has got to be right over second base."

22. Chi Chi Rodriguez: "The first time I played the Masters, I was so nervous I drank a bottle of rum before I teed off. I shot the happiest 83 of my life."

23. Chi Chi Rodriguez: "After all these years, it's still embarrassing for me to play on the American golf tour. Like the time I asked my caddie for a sand wedge and he came back ten minutes later with a ham on rye."

24. Tommy Bolt, toward the end of one of his infamous high-volume, temperamental, club-throwing rounds, asked his caddie for a club recommendation for a shot of about 155 yards. His caddie said: "I'd say either a 3-iron or a wedge, sir." "A 3- iron or a wedge?" asked Bolt. "What kind of stupid, #*!~%^* choice is that?"
"Those are the only two clubs you have left in the your bag, sir." said the caddie.

PS How do you put up pictures??