Ian Wood: Don't come the guru with me

Published on Sunday 29 November 2009 21:48

THERE'S nothing like a lecture delivered, unrequested, for inducing sleep. Once, when but a lad, I went on a family holiday and had the uneasy experience of having to listen to a Yorkshireman going on at some length about his expertise in the playing of ball games. My unease stemmed more from the effect the rant was having on my father than any discomfort it was causing me. My father didn't really like holidays much and I could tell he wasn't taking this well. There were signs. He wo

I am reminded of this episode fairly regularly when certain people begin doling out golf tips when I haven't asked for help. I say certain people, because I'll listen avidly to a good player, but, as a rule, those giving the advice aren't all that bright themselves when it comes to hitting golf balls and most of them certainly don't take too kindly to being given any guidance by me. I can understand that, but fair's fair and if they're coming the guru with me, I'm surely entitled to come the guru with them.

However, every now and again I find myself, after the manner of the hapless Wedding Guest, trapped and defenceless in the clutches of an Ancient Mariner lookalike intent on putting me right. At such times, I bring into operation a look of intense interest perfected over the years, a sort of facial shield which blanks out all emotion and allows me to weather the spiel in a way which suggests I'm bringing to bear all the care and attention I can muster. This is true, in a way, but what they don't know is that I can't really muster any. The effect of this pretence is heightened by an understanding nod of the head at appropriate intervals.

As time marches on, I find that even books can bring on a strange malaise – particularly when I feel their targets are beginning to strain credibility. This has nothing to do with the content or good intentions of the books, but is probably more a reflection of the gradual erosion of my own ability to cope with the apparently endless suffering inflicted by the game over the years and which I am now persuaded is destined to continue and even increase until the day my sporting activities are confined to a bath chair and the occasional bowl of thin gruel.

One such book struck a raw nerve when I re-discovered it recently at the height of something I rated as a putting crisis, and that is saying something as for a long time now my putting has been in such a state it would be difficult to tell exactly if and when a crisis had been reached. What drew me to the book was the title, which is "All About Putting," compiled in the early 1970s by the Editors of "Golf Digest." I was like a moth drawn to flame. It was about putting – all about it. Could the secret lie here?

Well, no, as it turned out. That is, the book had nothing to say that hadn't been run past me already. Great putters from Bobby Jones onwards were featured, their techniques analysed, their idiosyncrasies pinpointed. The Swinging Gate method was there, as were Sam Snead's side-saddle method, plumb-bobbing and putting while keeping the eyes on the hole. The secret might lurk in there somewhere, but I didn't find it. I've never found it and I am forced to conclude that this is simply because some people can putt and others can't. Due to an oversight, I appear to have slipped into the latter category. In the end, though the compilers were diligent, patient and painstaking, I was driven to the chapter entitled "Emergency Methods" which is recommended "When everything else fails." Everything else had failed, so I rambled through it and found it depressingly brief. Emergency methods, it seems, are thin on the ground.

Putting cross-handed (given a boost by Orville Moody, the 1969 US Open champion), with the left hand below the right for right-handers, was suggested, as was adopting an exaggeratedly wide stance. There was a picture of an American amateur called Kent Myers putting with his hands gripping the putter behind his back and the club slanted through his legs to address the ball. Kent looked as if he'd been struck by lightning. It wasn't a pretty sight and the news that there were "other practitioners" of the method did nothing to raise the spirits. The gulf grows no less. Rory McIlroy, 20, hit a shot in China which seemed beyond the powers of mortals when, from a downhill lie about two inches short of the back edge of a bunker, he managed to bring his low-flying recovery to a sort of emergency stop some four feet from the cup. He didn't need the putt, but he holed it anyway.