HARRY’S PATCH AND MY WIFE

I love golf almost as much as I hate writing in the first person singular.

On reading those first three words some of you, most of you, will reach for the off key but I could care less.

It is our strength and our weakness. Us golfers are so taken with the game that non-believers fail to mark our card but if you show the slightest, even feigned, curiosity we are your friend, your partner, your golf buddy.

For me, an Open assignment at Royal Birkdale in 1998 turned a professional interest into a consuming passion.

That was the year Mark O’Meara, at the age of 44, supped from the Claret jug and a 17 year old amateur Justin Rose chipped in on the 18th to finish joint fourth. I also saw Tiger Woods in the flesh for the first time.

And I remember it for two other reasons.

On the Saturday evening Lee Westwood left the course at the same time as myself and a colleague were walking to our hotel. He negotiated the crowd in his shiny new Mercedes sports car and despite his shooting an eight over par 78 we exchanged a cheery greeting.

150 yards down the road we stopped to let Westwood enter the drive of his rented house. A sheepish professional golfer was greeted with an equally cheery,

“We beat you!”

And I realised that golf, like horse racing and motor sports, is best watched on television.

In the twelve years since that magical working weekend on the Lancashire coast I have thought about golf roughly once every seven seconds.

Golf is proof of the maxim that the smaller the ball the better the writing. And I should know I have read most of it.

Books and magazines as well as videos were devoured whole and every spare morning, afternoon and evening was spent at the nine hole Central London Golf Centre in Wandsworth endangering fellow addicts and disfiguring the big round ball.

Slowly, painfully slowly, I began to hole the ball in less than double figures and graduated to Beckenham Place Park.

Then I suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange. I gave up work.

Or, more accurately, I went freelance.

My inclination to wear spikes around the BBC newsroom had already been noted and the sports editor was happy to see the back of my Dunlop rainwear. I was pleased to be able to play golf whenever I liked.

Beckenham became my first home which I shared with my pal Mark. He, too, is a sports journalist but we never talked about football, cricket or racing.

It was always golf.

Did you see Tiger last night? (of course). Is that the 150 yard marker?(no, it is a beer can) And do you think Ben Hogan ever shanked one as badly as that? (highly unlikely).

Beckenham is a public course and open to the yet to be converted. Once I overhit an approach shot into the 8th green and nearly creamed a jogger. We saw him again on his second circuit and, as Mark helpfully pointed out, he bore a distinct resemblance to the boxer Nigel Benn. The former middleweight world champion must have been in another world because he pounded past us without a second glance.

For 18 months I mixed rounds of triple figures with occasional work assignments and frequent visits to Enfield for assignations with the one. Eventually the trips north turned into a permanent move and five day membership of the Harry Vardon designed Bush Hill Park.

Then I got married. But within three months she was onside. Or, more accurately, greenside.

Our early married life was up and down although there was also plenty of time for golf.

Caddy No1 soon followed. Jack’s inability to carry a full set restricted the swing for a while but a change of strategy enabled me to make more visits to the golf club even if it meant less time on the course.

Three holes here, a bucket of balls on the driving range there or a one man competition on the putting green kept my hand in and my marriage intact.

Six majors later and we had a bag carrier each. Charlie also slowed down the club head speed but after a polite and considerate wait of four days it was back to the track.

That was three years ago. Juggling golf with family life and work has been interesting but meticulous planning and bouts of begging have allowed me to roam free on Harry’s patch.

But while I was feeling pleased with myself for playing more golf than I had any right to my wife was playing more.

Now, more often than not, it is me left at home begging the boys for a go on their Wii as she heads off for another yet another competition or round with friends.

I have been stymied.