Mortification

A recent conversation about children and gifts brought back to me an experience from when I must have been about six. I went to the birthday party of a friend of mine, at the conclusion of which presents were given to all. I watched other children unwrapping exciting toys and games and then my present was handed to me. I eagerly tore off the paper to find - a wooden clothes hanger, painted pink, with a little picture of a robin on it. This was about as big a let-down as it was possible to have at that age. Even today I cannot imagine who thought that a six-year-old boy would be glad to get a clothes hanger (I mean, hanging up clothes at all was a completely alien concept to me), let alone one that was pink. The scars remain to this day.

My first golf pro-am

My first golf pro-am in the mid-Eighties traumatised me so badly I didn’t play golf for ten years afterwards. Okay, the arrival of my baby daughter Kate focussed me on family matters and consumed all available cash, but the scars from that pro-am ran deep.

I was at BT at the time and had just helped to stage a very successful company golf day with a number of older British Ryder Cup stalwarts, Brian Huggett, Brian Barnes and others, helping to create an informal, chatty competition for our clients. So when I was rung up later and invited in return to a pro-am “at Fulford, up in Yorkshire”, I thought it would be another of the same. No worries. I was very much an occasional hacker, no handicap, so I wouldn’t be invited to anything serious, would I?

It wasn’t until we were driving to the course in the morning that the penny began to drop, and keep on dropping. It was indeed serious, very serious. The large yellow banners with B&H on them were a small clue. I asked the question. Oh yes, this was the pro-am the day before the Benson & Hedges International. Hadn’t I realised? So the informal group I would be playing with were? Jose Rivero, then a current European Ryder Cup star; the captain of Fulford golf club; and an important local businessman. No pressure there then. Butterflies began tap-dancing behind my navel.

They broke into a full can-can when we arrived at the club and the full horror of what I was exposing myself to became clear. This was warm-up day for everyone. Television cameras were all over the place, practising their angles, there were crowds of spectators lining the course. There were caddies touting for business, and it was clear that you didn’t carry your own clubs for this round. There were – and this was nice – huge goodie bags of B&H golf stuff. Photographs were taken for posterity of our foursome. The practice ground was full of people sending eight-iron shots 200 yards and landing them on a pocket handkerchief. It was truly terrifying.

As I swung on the first tee – clickclickclickclick - a fast-frame camera was firing away. I was so startled that I sent my drive straight down the fairway. Along the ground all the way, but straight. That was, I think, the only half-good shot I managed all day, and I hit a good few. It started to rain, RAF jets howled low overhead, and Jose Rivero strode along in grim silence, disgusted by his group's performance. Eighteen holes of pure unredeemed misery, ineptly hacking around in full view of the crowded galleries, a memory which even now causes me to break out into cold sweats. At the end I over-tipped my thoroughly disgusted caddie and slunk away.