Ian Wood: I'm trapped in technology's bunker

Published on Sunday 4 October 2009 23:38

HAVING spent a disconcerting Saturday, I awoke next morning, as W.S. Gilbert so aptly put it, with a shudder despairing. The immediate prospect had been rendered grim, or so it seemed to me. I'd spent almost the entire afternoon on Saturday searching the TV channels for news of the Dunhill Links golf and working up a lather of indignation because there wasn't any.

Where the golf should have been, there was some sort of boxing event featuring fighters, most of whom looked to be carrying a fair bit of weight.

I've nothing against boxing, and, indeed, quite enjoy it when the mood's upon me, but it wasn't upon me on Saturday and the fare on show did nothing to help me come to terms with things. I immediately leapt to the conclusion that the dreaded channel alterations which I'd heard were imminent, had arrived. Sets, I'd been warned, would have to be "retuned." The very word chills the spine.

Of course, came the dawn and all was made clear. The golf had been abandoned because of the high winds and once again I'd been reduced to a quivering wreck by my innate fear of modern technology which robs me of all rational thought. I'd spent the best part of a day foaming at the mouth about the lack of golf and threatening to write to whoever it is you write to in moments of crisis and now, as usual, it turned out I'd got it wrong. That's the trouble with technology. It's always my fault.

Having said that, it wasn't entirely my fault that on the first day I used the laptop upon which I am now performing, I couldn't switch it off because I didn't know I had to click on "start." Like a fool, I'd been mucking about with buttons marked "close" and so forth. Who in their right mind would think of clicking on "start" when they wanted to stop? The whole thing's ridiculous.

But I digress. The depressing aspect of this channel-changing business is that, though the problem has been resolved for the moment, it will not go away. Somewhere along the line I will have to face up to the nightmare of "retuning" and that, television-wise, could spell the end. If I've had to struggle to close down a laptop, it's difficult to see how I'm going to "retune" a television set. I've glanced at the instructions which came with the set and it was a draining experience. All manuals appear to use words in an alien way, a way with which I've never been trained to cope. The instructions might as well have been written in Sanskrit.

The closest thing to a silver lining in all this was the knowledge that after two days spent strolling, for the most part, in glorious sunshine and an unnatural calm which rendered Fife and a corner of Angus almost unrecognisable, the distinguished field of top golfers, well-groomed celebrities and captains of industry had been given a quick blast of the stuff to which the locals are subjected on a regular basis. The fickle nature of the weather on the East coast was nicely reflected in an exchange I once overheard in a shop in Carnoustie. Shopkeeper: "It's a fine day." Customer: "Aye, we'll suffer for this."

Before the gales swept in, the professionals had done their usual job of making daunting courses look easy. Whenever the pros start talking about how to be good, they always get back to hard work, which isn't what the lower orders want to hear. They want a secret – quick and painless. Tony Johnstone, a welcome addition to the TV commentary team, hinted at how pros practise with a thoroughly discouraging disclosure about bunker play and how he, something of a master in this department, went about getting it right. "I love bunker play," he said. "I love practising it, there are so many variations. I never get bored."

So saying, he more or less blew my already fading hopes out of the water. My bunker play, while showing signs of sitting up and taking nourishment, is still a weak thing and ready for a relapse at any minute. I fail on practically all Tony's counts. I hate practising – particularly when I'm hitting the ball badly, which is most of the time. In a bunker, where my main ploy is hitting the ball into the face of the trap and leaping out of the way to avoid the rebound, a practice session can be a kind of hell.

There might very well be many variations of ways to play out of bunkers but as far as I'm concerned, they're thin on the ground or, more precisely, on the sand. My standard shot is as described above, with the occasional break for a shank. Things have been looking up lately since I began using a lob wedge instead of the old heavy-flanged sand-iron, but with every good shot, my reaction is in line with the customer in the Carnoustie shop: I'm going to suffer for this.

There is, however, one point at which Johnstone's philosophy strikes a chord. He never finds practising bunker shots boring.

Well, neither do I. It's difficult to be bored when you're frantic.