Winter golf and off-season fitness
IHAVE decided that winter golf isn’t much fun! I’m also not very good at it. In early winter last year I came back from La Manga on a wave of euphoria, having played extremely well, and vowing to carry on the good work into the thick of winter here – until a Spanish baggage handler with the mental capacity of a daffodil put an end to that when he chose not to put my clubs on the plane home with me. At least I didn’t suffer the horror of looking out of the window and seeing my clubs being tossed around the tarmac like matchsticks, like that American singer did when he watched his beloved guitar being broken.
I certainly wasn’t a happy bunny when I was informed that while I was back in good old Britain, my clubs were enjoying an extended vacation in Spain. And, contrary to the apology desk at Manchester, they were not put on the next flight back, so I had to wait a whole five days until we were reunited. It was like losing my left arm.
I would much rather have been separated from my suitcase and five days was all it took to turn the most expensive swing money can buy to one you couldn’t sell to your granny for a fiver! How many years have I forked out on lessons to develop a swing to die for, when it can fall apart in the space of less than a week?
Forget ‘hero to zero’, I went from “awesome” (in the words of Eleanor Pilgrim a few days earlier) to awful quicker than most people change their socks! I now look at all you ‘Tuesday ladies’ in a whole new light. I have absolutely no idea how you can turn up once a week to play golf having not been near a club or ball in the intervening time, and still play anywhere near your handicaps. I am awe-struck. I turn into a blithering idiot if I just miss out on a few days.
I am not one of life’s big practicers at all, but I do need to play four or five holes a day, or hit a dozen balls, just to keep things ticking over and my swing in tune. However, the motivation to do even that just isn’t the same in winter. Golf in winter is cold, miserable and depressing – and it’s even more depressing when you’ve got a broken swing! It is going to take more than a couple of band aids to fix this one, but the incentive to hit lots of shots when you can’t feel your hands, and they are turning a strange shade of red, just isn’t there.
Eleanor Pilgrim might have told me that she could quite happily practise for 12 hours a day, but happy practice for me equates to about twelve minutes a day. And then I spend double that time in winter digging out plugged balls, if indeed I can find them at all. As part of my misery about my poorly golf, I told fellow journalist James Mossop that I had broken my swing, and he emailed me the following reply: “Broken swing, Madeleine? Nah! Don’t believe it. You could not lose the effortless rhythm that thrills your fellow players and drives them eventually to the Samaritans.”
High praise indeed. I have probably driven plenty of people to the Samaritans over the years, but the thought of them queuing up through unrequited envy of my golf swing is too delicious for words! It’s almost enough incentive to make a person want to go out and practise again. Some players use winter to improve their fitness. Indeed, on the day I learned that Padraig Harrington said he had some serious gym work to do in his winter break, 73-year-old Gary Player announced that he still does between 1,000 and 1,500 sit-ups a day – something he has done for 63 years! No wonder he walks with a bit of a stoop now. He must have the shortest, most contracted stomach muscles in the world!
Apart from the sheer physical effort, I can’t begin to imagine how long that would take. When I was 16, I used to do 100 sit-ups a day, and it had to be the most boring, repetitive thing I could have come up with. So, to multiply that 10 or 15 times just beggars belief. I think I’d rather go out and hit balls on a miserable, cold winter’s day, ending up with an eye full of mud after hitting balls fat, and soggy brown trouser legs.
Actually, my other reluctance to go out and do something constructive, rather than stay inside all cosy and warm in front of the fire, is because I’ve become addicted to my Nintendo Wii – or at least playing Brain Academy.
It obviously says something about the competitive streak in me, because I never tire of endlessly trying to beat my own personal best. I’m up to A+ now, (and I challenge any other Lady Golfer readers out there to beat that!) which I’m almost as proud of as my Samaritan-inducing golf swing. Actually, I don’t need to beat anyone else, I just need to beat me - which is exactly how I play golf. Having an addiction is also quite a positive thing these days. You haven’t really made it until you’ve got one, and if it doesn’t automatically get me onto a methadone programme (which sounds like a safer bet than trying heroin) at least it will give me a licence to mug 25 elderly ladies, have 47 other offences taken into consideration and be let off with just a warning and a free trip to Benidorm.
I am not entirely sure how many golf courses are close to Benidorm, but at least I have solved the problem of transporting my clubs there safely. I am thinking of paying for a seat for them next time.
Not only will it ensure that some half-wit doesn’t send them to a different airport – if indeed they get airborne at all – they will almost certainly make better travel companions than the two teenage boys I was lumbered with last time who spent the entire flight having flatulence competitions with each other! I wish I could have driven them to the Samaritans!