Ian Wood: Fox a wise and welcome new member

Published on Sunday 4 January 2009 20:34

GOLF having taken something of a back seat recently, what with the frantic festivities and extreme cold, I have spent more time than usual contemplating the first tee from the clubhouse window.

The pattern has been that I turn up thinking about playing, then, after taking a faceful of Baltic air in the car park, settle instead for a comfortable chair and a steaming cup of coffee. Under normal circumstances, this procedure would pall very quickly, but circumstances are far from normal. There's a fox about the place, for a start.

The animal made a few appearances, by way of introduction, in mid-summer before, growing in confidence, it began to assume the style and assurance of a full member and now swaggers around with the air of someone who is quite liable to raise an uncomfortable issue at the Annual General Meeting. It has taken to staging a sort of lunchtime cabaret in the vicinity of the first tee and keeps the other members amused by making off with head covers, provoking – and being chased by – hordes of mad crows and generally creating a stir. It wouldn't surprise me if it's working on a fitting finale to the act – a soft-shoe shuffle, perhaps, and a snatch of song.

The other day, it varied the routine by sitting quietly on the tee regarding two young lads who were about to begin their round. The fox seemed genuinely interested in what they were doing. The scene had a surreal quality which was heightened by the behaviour of the two boys who completely ignored the presence of the animal which was sitting a couple of yards away from them. When they were good and ready and had limbered up, they hit their drives and walked off, chatting in a lively fashion, while the fox trotted after them.

Going by the extraordinary aplomb of the parties concerned, I can only assume that either both fox and boys are endowed with remarkable amounts of sang froid or else they have developed this easy companionship over the the course of many similar encounters – so many that even basic courtesies such as a nod of the head or a gruff hello have been dispensed with. I can't see my boyhood set reacting to the presence of a fox in their midst in such an offhand manner, which just shows what a change there has been in social mores. It's a far cry from tally-hos and the thrill of the chase to an amiable stroll together around the golf course.

Anyway, I'm indebted to the fox – and the boys – for making a non-golfing day a bit more bearable and for keeping me away from home and golf books which, when brooded over by someone who's got nothing else to do, can do a lot of harm. One dreary day in the bleak mid-winter, I unearthed Tom Watson's Getting Back to Basics and came to the conclusion that my trouble is that I don't have any basics to get back to.

The geniuses of the game don't think like the rest of us. You'd imagine that Watson, of all people, would come over in a simple fashion. His swing, after all, looks the epitome of simplicity. Up and down, back and forward, however you like to put it, it seems straightforward and uncluttered and if you get it right the ball goes off like a shell. It's not quite like that, though. However simple it looks – and the way he does it, it looks ridiculously simple – it isn't, and the thought he's put into it is hair-raising.

For instance, in the section entitled: 'Shake Hands' For a Simple Swing, Tom says: "We all make the golf swing too complicated," and advises us to proffer the left hand as if for a handshake on the backswing and to employ a similar action with the right hand when swinging through. Warming to his theme, he says: "I correlate this shaking-hands image with the concept of rotating the left forearm, halfway back and halfway through. The shaking-hands image is a right-handed emphasis for releasing the club through the ball. Or you can combine the two thoughts and hit the ball with your left forearm and right hand. Just be sure you rotate the left forearm so the action of the right hand doesn't break down the left wrist."

It's incredible to think, when watching Watson swing, that his fluid, uncluttered action is, or ever has been, influenced by such thinking. What chance is there for any of us, if it involves all this? Even Sam Snead, golf's nature boy, couldn't get his message across without telling us to think we were swinging in a barrel, imagining we were holding a tray with our right hands at the top of the swing and, as if this wasn't enough, feeling oily while we did it.

There's a yawning gulf between those who can and those who can't. During a television repeat of the Mauritius Open, the Frenchman, Jean-Francois Remesy, duffed a shot. "Inexplicable," gasped a commentator, "a rush of blood to the head." He obviously doesn't realise there are people around who shed tears of gratitude when granted days without duffs.