Greetings once more dear golfing addicts.  Today’s post is brought to you from the eternal optimism of the high-handicapping golf academy  and the people who believe that if they keep playing golf for long enough, no matter how poorly, they will eventually win something.  And so it was this past weekend that after nearly three years of trying,  I finally won something!  Admittedly it was the men’s second division and it was the nett score that won me the prize which after removing my handicap from my score takes me back to just about zero but hey, I WON!!  I don’t make the rules of golf, I just abide by them (when I can actually understand them) and then go out and do my level best coax that little white ball around my home course.  On this particular occasion however, the golfing gods were with me as I finished 18 holes not only at the top of a very small heap of B grade players but with the same ball I started with!  A feat I can’t remember having accomplished for at least the past twelve months and almost never in a competition.

            I would like to tell you that I owe my success to dedication, practice, perseverance and a keenly crafted game designed to exploit my opponents weaknesses and maximize my strengths however that would be a blatant lie.  As it happened I was drawn to play with two low handicap A graders whose balls seldom left the fairways and greens and indeed one of them ended up winning the A division nett prize so I was in good company.  It was all I could do to keep up with them, jealously jotting down their 3′s and 4′s on my scoring card next to my own 6′s and 7′s.   It wasn’t until we’d played nine holes and I had broken 50  that I thought things might not be so catastrophically bad as usual.  Sure i had some embarrassingly bad moments, a six on a par three, a four putt on another hole, but I was enjoying myself damn it!  And I wasn’t going to let two or three or even six bad holes ruin my whole round, not as long as the sun was shining and there was still some hope, no matter how small that I was going to complete 18 holes of golf in under one hundred strokes.  And there in lies just one of the many beauties of golf.  You can absolutely murder six holes and still win a competition.

Wherever you are in the world, sitting down or maybe standing up and reading this, you are privileged. With the world at our fingertips our ancestors couldn’t have dreamed what our technology would enable us to do these days.  With this in mind and not speaking solely about technology, my young family and myself sometimes like to share all the reasons we have to be grateful.  Usually it’s at dinner time and usually we include being thankful for our dinner.  We’re not thankful to any “one” or any “thing” in particular, just thankful.   After all, we live a charmed life to say the least, here in New Zealand.   And so it was with this in mind that I had to draw on all my resources of thankfulness and restraint as I arrived at my local golf course to find it….CLOSED !!!!!

To make matters worse it was a stunning day with the sun shining, a gentle breeze to keep from being too hot and just the kind of day one dreams of having for a round of golf!  They didn’t even have a good reason for keeping me from my one day of solitary bliss.  In fact quite the opposite.  They wanted to fill all the greens with  thousands of great big holes and then sprinkle sand all over them !!  The golf course is only a couple of hundred metres from the sea, what do we need any more sand for, I ask you ?  The office lady offered a feeble excuse, “They’re coring the greens, Phil” but they can’t fool me that easily.  It was a Sunday afternoon you see, the only time that those of us who work to support all the retirees in this country can get away from work and family duties to enjoy our little slice of paradise and maybe, just maybe have a round of golf.  All the Retirees play every day during the week while the rest of us are at work but they don’t want us “spoiling” their beloved greens on the weekend so they close the course and cover them in sand and fill em all with bloody holes!!!

And so…. I am grateful.  Grateful that it was a beautiful day.  Grateful that I am a member of a golf course I can’t play at.  Grateful I was able to beat the crap out of some golf balls on the driving range next to the course I couldn’t play at.  And lastly, grateful that someone is maybe reading this and smiling and knowing exactly how I feel.

Greetings, friends and neighbours
                              Some of you will be familiar with a book written back in the thirties by a fisherman named Zane Grey.  It was titled “New Zealand, A Fisherman’s El Dorado”.   Mr Grey spends spends a good deal of time in his book heaping praise on New Zealand and in particular, it’s bountiful waters.     Obviously the guy never played Golf !  If he had, he would have left the rod in the hotel room, grabbed the clubs and headed out the door to the nearest, uncrowded, scenic course he could find.  And New Zealand being what it was in the thirties, he wouldn’t have had to walk too far.  In fact, he probably could have taken his rod with him and picked up a couple of trophy trout on the way to the course !  Now, until some bright University graduate invents a time machine that takes us all back to the way things were in Mr Grey’s day, we’re stuck with the reality we have.    Still, there can be little doubt that we here in New Zealand are spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing where to play golf.  Whether you are a professional looking for that next great challenge, a tourist looking for a scenic hideaway or just an average, high-handicapping Joe like me who simply enjoys the fresh air, a good walk and seeing what tricks I can make a little white ball perform, you will find what you are looking for right here in New Zealand.