I played golf as a teenager when it was just hitting a ball into a hole with a stick. You are fearless at 15, it was fun. There followed a long absence from the game. At 50, I took my 10-year-old nephew to a course to teach him this wonderful game. He immediately smote the ball a hundred metres, straight, while, alarmingly, I could do no more than scud the ball along the ground at right angles to my feet.
I had completely forgotten how to play. I was also nearly blind, with two frozen shoulders, all golf muscle-memory long deleted.
And 50.
So I resolved to learn again.
Obsession joined this quest as easily as a hand slides into a glove. Anyone who knows anything about golf knows your first move should be a lesson, or two, with a golf professional. I of course did a whole lot of other things before doing this, before turning to someone whose actual job it is to teach and improve. I bought books, magazines and videos, I listened intently to more tips from friends, both on and off the course, than I would ever have thought extant. And I fell for every New Thing the golf manufacturers sadistically produced.
At one stage, I decided sheer fatigue was proving my undoing, noticing how often I would start off playing very much like Tiger Woods, and then gradually disintegrate until I was playing no better than one of Tiger's domestic pets. I presume Tiger has domestic pets. So to offset lugging a bag of clubs up and down heaving hills, I bought an all-in-one club that replicated every loft with the flick of a switch, three different putters even, and whose shaft folded in two for the glove box. An entire set of golf clubs in one steel stick 25cm long. Unbelievable. But my golf rounds still turned to swill like meringue under a hot tap.
One of my many friends with European Tour victories under their belt, let's just call him Greg Turner, would occasionally toss me a box of barely-used top pro balls, but I still drove them into the same bushes and trees, only with more spin. And one day he opened his bag and threw me a tee with a tuft of hair on top. "It's the latest new thing," he said, "you might be able to use it." I did. I used it for six holes and barely managed a drive longer than my shadow. I now use it to wipe dust and crumbs from my computer keyboard.
So, I was the golfer who had everything. And still couldn't play.
I got out of hospital two weeks ago after savage abdominal surgery cut me in two, not that I am one to complain. But when your life is a Lotto ball, it should be mentioned. It was my inability to buy quality merchandise at our neighbouring Sally Army shop which really got to me when I was in there, forget pain and no Sky television, so I was very excited to shuffle in there last week, clutching $10 my wife said I could spend if I didn't buy any crap.
My wife's definition of crap is palpably absurd, so when I spotted the brightly coloured box with the beguiling slogan For The Golfer Who Has Everything, I bought it before even taking my brain out of its drawer.
Bathroom Golf. Made In China.
You fit the mat around the toilet bowl and putt balls into a plastic hole, for however long you are seated. Talk about killing two birds with one stone, this is design-creativity beyond words.
Nobel Peace Prizes even. NOW I am the golfer with everything.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
