WHAT'S (IN) MY BAG?

In the world of work, I used to deal with chalk, magic markers, green and white boards, kiddies’ exercise books and black bananas (but only after holiday periods). The biggest consumer of time from that bunch (no pun) was marking students’ work. It is the single activity that I still remember from the dwindling recollections of a quasi-professional on the government tick. So I’ll add red and blue biros to that workplace inventory.

Since abandoning the wearing of ties, other objects have appeared to take the place of the boiler room’s implements and practices. Some of these include-

·         the washing machine

·         ironing boards

·         online porn sites

·         metho

·         lawn edgers

·         local newspapers

·         mirrors

·         polo shirts

·         pizza joint handbills.

The profiles of post-work sixty somethings are remarkably similar. The dual processes of denial and delusion enhance the regimens for us seniors and, unfortunately, I’m in it up to the nostrils. My nearest friendly health professional asserted that the jab would work but it hasn’t. He’s probably over sixty too.

But nothing has come nearly as close to capturing my idle attention as the golf bag. The ‘visualisation’ of whacking 200+m drives on the local goat track feeds both of those delusion and denial critters that seem to hang around the ranch like smelly pets. Correction….they are smelly pets and there are a lot of them here in Bogan Greystanes. Trust me.

The bag contains the standard 14 club configuration as follows-

·         The driver. I play a metal Royal Scot 10.5 degree play club and it’s fucked. Even with the graphite shaft (the old golfer’s equivalent of Viagra), I’m lucky if I find some measure of consistency with it. Fairways certainly aren’t the targets for any shots played with this bastard. When I received this club as a present from my spouse, it came with a complimentary compass and I soon found out why.

·         3 wood. The persimmon Carnegie Clark Condor baffing spoon is the ‘go to’ club for gloriously long fairway woods into receptive greens. However, I’ve found that it’s also really good for generating and launching huge divots that travel fuckin’ further than the fuckin’ pill.

·         5 wood. I only use the spoon for getting out of tight lies where a controlled hook is required. The fact that I’ve successfully pulled this off just once in 1991 hasn’t stopped me from semi-regularly attempting the heroic recovery shot. The use of this club is normally accompanied with loud salty language.

·         The irons. About 30+ years ago I purchased a set of cavity back blades off the once famous Ted Ball at Hudson Park Golf Course in Sydney. ‘Cavity back’ irons feature peripheral weighting (whatever that means) which is supposed to increase the sweet spot on the club faces which leads to long and accurate ball flight being realised. Well, I must have procured a fuckin’ faulty set. Mr Ball also tried to dissuade me from adding a 2 iron to the kit but I had other ideas. Most hackers know that you never take on a competitor who has a 2 iron in his or her bag so I decided to use this intelligence as a sort of intimidation strategy. I grabbed the cleek. I can’t recall ever actually hitting the ball correctly with this thing in the ensuing decades and it’s now relegated to a sort of bunting club for getting out of the rough. As you’ve probably guessed, it’s regularly used in that capacity.

·         The putter. I inherited this club off my father and it’s a Slazenger ‘Harry Sinclair’ signature mallet. It attracts lots of comments from other golfers when I unleash it from the bag (due to its ‘vintage’ status) but it putts like shit.

I understand why marriages break up over golf. I can’t even talk about my own handicap because it’s too upsetting. (Shia LeBeouf)