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002669 Visit since
| Learning
the game - Part 8 | by Peter Gray
November
24, 2002. | 
Sooner or later, the opportunity or the desire to play new courses will motivate
the beginner to find pastures new, so to speak. For the first two years of my
golfing career I contented myself with the two local courses then available around
Puerto Vallarta. I started at the Marina course. The need to play anywhere else
depends a lot on how good you are at remembering eighteen holes. After playing
with the same group of friends for some time, I was amazed to find that they had
total recall, not only of each hole - but how they had played it days, weeks and
even months before. On a glorious January day, we might be standing on, say, the
eighth tee. " Peter, do you remember the shot I made here in September? What
a shot that was, eh?" Not wanting to look like an imbecile, I reply with
cunning ambiguity: " Oh boy! Yeah - what a shot that was!" And I would
probably have fooled him into thinking I did remember, if my next words had not
been: " Where are we now? Is this hole a dog-leg to the left or the right?"
Since I do not store up memories of past play - God knows, it is much better to
forget - I can go on playing the same course month after month and it is still
all new to me. But real golfers need new challenges. I remember
going with a friend of mine to play at the Flamingo course, which is just beyond
Nuevo Vallarta. The course at that time belonged to the Nayarit state government,
who were trying very hard to sell it. My friend approached the counter in the
pro's shop, wanting to know how much it cost to play a round of golf there. "How
much is it?" he asked in his best Spanish. The person behind the counter
looked him up and down. " I am not sure, senor," he said. "You
would have to check at the office. But I think it is about eleven million dollars!"
I have regarded my friend with puzzled respect from that moment on. Clearly, there
is something about him that says "Big money!" I just can't figure out
what it is. Since then - which was only three years ago
- five more courses have been opened around the immediate area. And within a couple
of hours south of here, there are at least two or three more. You might think
that would be enough to satisfy any one. But golfers collect courses like other
people collect stamps or china pigs. They plan vacations around them. They go
off to business conferences, smuggling their clubs into the hotel while desperately
hoping they don't run into their boss at the check-in counter. If they take their
kids to Disneyland, they take their clubs "just in case!" My
first experience of this came when my wife and I were invited to join three other
couples on a visit to Ireland. Two rounds of golf were included in the itinerary.
The first course we were to play was described by my friends as "very historic."
As it turned out, it had about the same relationship to a modern golf course as
Neanderthals have to Homo Sapiens. As far as I can see, the man who "designed"
the course simply went for a walk through a dune area that resembled a World War
I battlefield, sprinkling flags around like a demented Johnny Appleseed. My
first problem, however, was how to dress for the occasion. Up until then, my golfing
attire had always consisted of khaki shorts topped by a short-sleeved sports shirt.
On this day, however, a light rain was sweeping in, chilled by winds blowing in
from the Arctic Circle. At the pro's shop, my friends kitted me out with a windbreaker
and a tartan cap in the antique style my grandfather used to wear. Together with
my long trousers, under-vest, long-sleeved shirt and pullover, I was now pronounced
fit to play. I waddled to the first tee with all the grace of the Michelin man. At
the tee, a gentleman who could have doubled for the boatman who ferries lost souls
over the river Styx, gave us our orders on how to make the journey. He was particularly
stern about the indescribable punishment awaiting anyone who did not complete
the course inside four hours. As I attempted my first
drive, swaddled in so many clothes I could not get my arms to rise higher than
my waist, I could feel the starter's eyes boring a hole in my back. I knew then
that bad things were in store. My worst suspicions were
confirmed when we at last finished the first hole, during which time I had several
times disappeared, swallowed up by cavernous sandpits that centuries of Atlantic
winds had carved out of the sea-shore. Like the unexpected appearance of the Terminator,
the starter was sitting in a golf-cart by the second tee. After giving us the
evil eye, he drove off. Unfortunately, we took some time on the second hole, because
I lost two balls, both of which disappeared into a tangle of old gorse bushes
that a rat could not have penetrated. Sure enough, the man was waiting for us
at the third tee. "Gentleman," he said with the pseudo-suavity of a
James Bond villain. " I see you have made little forward progress. If you
cannot speed up your play, I will have to instruct you to not play the fourth
hole." I thought longingly of the easy-going forbearance I was always granted
on my home turf in Vallarta. My companions conferred together. " Peter, we
think we had better switch to a scramble. That means each of us plays from where
the best shot landed." That was fine by me. Playing
in this fashion, our "forward progress" improved considerably and the
grim reaper never appeared again during the course of play. When we finally got
back to the clubhouse, though, he was waiting for us. " I have to thank you,
gentlemen, for making better progress on the rest of your round." I started
to say: " That's because we switched to a scra…." But at that moment,
one of my companions trod heavily on my foot. I suspect
that "Old Tom" Morris, the man credited with nominating this off-road
sand-pile as a golf-course, wandered about with a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey
in his hand while he marked out the course. Why else would there be two fairways
that intersect each other at right angles, with giant dunes preventing the players
on one hole being able to see the players on the other fairway? To cope with this,
we had to wait on the tee for an all-clear signal before driving off. From just
below the crest of the mountain of sand that blocked the fairway about a hundred
yards in front of us, an ancient and hairy leprechaun suddenly emerged from the
earth, urgently waved a tattered flag at us, and scuttled back into its hole. "You
are free to play now," my caddy whispered. With the image of that strange
apparition firmly in my mind, I let loose with my driver. By the grace of the
golfing gods, my ball failed to bazooka its way into the leprechaun's hidey-hole
by a scant six inches. I could hear the impact it made as it thudded into the
sand. I have to say that it was quite embarrassing to have to play my second shot
with a disgruntled and displaced leprechaun standing by my shoulder. Good
golfers, it seems, remember their good shots. In my style of golf, however, it
is the embarrassing ones that stick in the memory. I will tell you one day about
the time I drove my ball into the ladies' toilet! Archives
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