Ian Wood: Even friends find foursomes fearsome

Published on Monday 28 September 2009 00:29

SOMETIMES we seem to be in danger of doing our sportsmen some disservice. We forget that for the most part they tend to be very young and have a lot to learn.

The fact that they are often grossly overpaid shouldn't be allowed to cloud our judgment. They're only paid what some people are prepared to pay them. This train of thought trundled into the station recently when two footballers, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo, were taken off before the end of matches in which they were taking part and Rooney started to throw boots about and Ronaldo looked as if someone had stolen his fruit gums.

In neither case, I would submit, were the reactions all that surprising. Most people who played football in their youth and can still remember the experience, will realise, if they put their minds to it, how they would have felt themselves had they been out there all fit and healthy, enjoying a game of football when, suddenly, someone told them to stop what they were doing, get off and have a bath. It must be particularly galling if you can play football like Rooney and Ronaldo.

Of course, football has come a long way since the days when jackets doubled up as goalposts and the athletes involved were wont to relax with a fag at half-time. Now it's all diets and physios and at the top end of the scale it has become a squad game. Footballers have had to accept that, having assembled considerable numbers of players at great expense, managers feel more or less obliged to do a bit of tinkering now and then. In Rooney's case, the early departure seemed to be because a change in the pattern of play had been deemed necessary, while in Ronaldo's, the aim was to keep him fresh for an up-coming midweek European tie.

Worthy causes on both fronts, no doubt, but try telling that to youngsters raring to go. Come to that, try telling it to the people who have paid to come along to see them. I often watch the comings and goings in the latter parts of matches, when players are trudging off and bounding on in endless relays and think back to my boyhood when I watched the Hibs and wonder how I would have reacted had anyone dared to take off Gordon Smith. I'd probably have emigrated. Fortunately, in those days, the only ways to leave the field before the end of the game were by the referee's decree or by stretcher.

However, while games might evolve, those who play them stay pretty much the same – human and vulnerable. This was illustrated in the Vivendi Trophy golf event which concluded at St Nom-la-Breteche yesterday, when match-play, as it has always done, got under skins and created havoc with normally placid temperaments. That's why the Ryder Cup causes such a stir. There's no hiding place in match-play, no lurking unobtrusively down the finishing order before slinking away, as in medal play. It's win or lose – and that goes for everybody regardless of rank and that's all there is to it. The winner preens unbearably and the loser bares the teeth and tries to make a rictus look like a smile.

I'm not sure that pitting the players of Continental Europe against those of Britain and Ireland is a good thing from the point of view of building team spirit for next year's Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor. Those taking part are supposed to be potential teammates after all and it's not going to do much for the cause if they go into the fray bearing grudges against each other. As it was, I thought I detected the odd frosty glare being directed towards opponents who were busy scanning the skies and scratching their ears while iffy putts remained to be holed and the silence remained unbroken by any whisper of concession.

It was interesting to hear the commentary team agree that foursomes was the most trying form of match-play and certainly there's nothing like it for getting the hackles up. It's bad enough at club level, where those involved are usually friends (after a fashion), and while this does little to ease the pain, the suffering is at least contained within the group until, that is, the triumphal braying which can occasionally break out later in the clubhouse among the less self-disciplined.

The strain of foursomes is caused by the fact that when a putt is badly overhit or a drive squirts off the toe, it's the partner who has to play next. I know that in my own case, such is the state of the putting that in the ordinary run of things, taking three on a green has ceased to be a disaster. I don't laugh carelessly, or anything like that, but neither do I break down in tears. I might, after missing from close range, rake the ball back and try again and if it goes in, feel a catch in my throat, but no more than that.

In foursomes, however, I become distraught and utterly cast down. There's no point in apologising, for it just makes things worse. But then, I invariably do apologise and it does make things worse.