No short cuts to playing good golf

AS one of the worst players ever to grace the greens of the Royal Golf Club it came as a morale boost to be invited to a VIP Golf Clinic by the Sofitel Bahrain Zallaq Thalassa Sea & Spa, one of the sponsors of last weekend’s Bahrain Invitational.

I was instructed to assemble at the Driving Range at 9.15am on Saturday ready for the clinic with Thomas Bjorn to begin 15 minutes later.

Not surprisingly, the session was running late and when I eventually managed to manoeuvre into the range around an hour later the dynamic Dane was happy to sign my official programme and when I asked about the golfing tips, he gently advised me that ‘we’d better wait for Monty’.

Wow, words of advice from Bjorn, who boasted the best season of his career last year with three victories on the European Tour, course designer Monty and, would you believe it, Paul Casey appeared too, the player who won last year’s Volvo Golf Champions event in Bahrain.

My game was about to get a boost, I thought. I thought wrongly. Instead of a serious golf lesson we were treated to a triple act, a warm-up for the golfing comedians to follow.

Monty showed his technique for hitting the ball high and low. It all depends how hard you hit it, he claimed. Bjorn, however, moves the ball closer and further away for the same result and Casey to the left or the right, or it could have been the other way round. It didn’t matter, they all had different ways of swinging and the pros weren’t about to share any tips that might be useful to us mere mortals, although it was all very entertaining, just like the clowns.

A duo of professional golfing tricksters took over showing us how clever they were at whacking balls from giant tees and one could even drive on a tricycle. All that was missing was the face paint, baggy trousers and a ginger curly wig.

This golfing clown, however, will have to carry on the hard work and seek the tutoring of Chris Kelby at the RGC and Matt Chalmers at Awali.

There are no short cuts to playing good golf, even when you’re mixing it with the stars.

– Stan Szecowka