Therapy for uncertain times
The umbilical cord between hubris and nemesis
The prospect of a keenly contested alternate shot foursome always raises the spirits. It’s just what’s needed in these uncertain times. Right now every continent faces challenges, whether military, political, financial or environmental. The prospect of chaos, or even worse, is sufficiently real to upset the equilibrium of even those fortunate souls whose love life is stable and income reasonably secure.
Therapy, therefore, is occasionally needed and for me golf is the best source. Where better to seek it than Rye, the quintessential two ball links tucked away in a corner of southeast England? And when nicer than now, as summer has belatedly reached these shores? Full of eager anticipation, I headed there yesterday morning for the latest game in a series which began long before the pandemic.
The match is a couple of past Rye captains against a former boys international and myself. None of us admit to minding too much about the result and betting has never been involved but I’m sure we’re all playing to win.
The drive from a modest 17th century townhouse in Sandwich, my current global golf headquarters, is fifty miles. The first two thirds of this is motorway where all you need to do is set the cruise control at the speed limit and listen to a serious podcast or two. After that it’s a narrow and sometimes twisting rural road with a few sharp bends so it’s time to flick the lever by the steering wheel into sport mode, silence the podcast and focus on the road.
Boy racers get excited about cars which reach sixty miles an hour from a standing start in three seconds. Middle aged golfers who enjoy driving fast on their way to and from remote English and Scottish links are wiser. We know it’s the kick in the back acceleration provided by a classy south German electric car from thirty to seventy that actually gets past slow moving traffic and reaches your destination in the shortest time.
Yesterday, however, as I turned into Rye’s unostentatious and unsurfaced car park (long may it stay that way) it wasn’t the match I was about to play that came to mind. Instead I recalled the first time Hugh Grant was my foursomes partner. The occasion was the afternoon round in the twice yearly club match between Rye and Royal St George’s, selection for which is highly prized by members of both clubs.
In winter this is played at Rye, whose greens in early February are usually the firmest in England at that time of year. This particular day was so cold and windy that a penguin would have felt at home. As I got out of my car in the dim early morning light I saw a solitary figure braving the elements and hitting balls on the practice ground. I was pleased to note it was Hugh.
In the morning I played like a moron and duffed a simple pitch to the final green which, if properly executed, would have halved the match. But, as Tennessee Williams points out in Camino Real, a play sadly less frequently revived than his other classics, the Gypsy’s daughter, Esmeralda, recovers her virginity each time her menstrual cycle begins. Similarly golfers wipe out all previous errors the moment they step on to the first tee.
So, fortified by roast beef, apple crumble and a glass of wine, I was ready to surrender my virginity again. The afternoon started perfectly from my point of view. On the first tee the sight of Hugh’s well-honed practice swing raised my hopes for our prospects and I wasn’t in the least dismayed when he hit his drive majestically over the road on the left. It was almost his only mistake of the whole afternoon.
It put me at my ease because my replacement tee shot flew gratifyingly far and straight. We fell into conversation walking down the fairway and I quickly discovered he is a fiercely competitive golfer, exactly the type you want as your partner when you’re desperate to win.
The game turned out to be tight, with neither side ever more than one up, though two fluffed pitches by me meant we were all square on the thirteenth tee when we should have been ahead. There Hugh hit a perfect drive and a decent mid-iron by me left our ball a yard short of the green. It looked like a safe four and our opponents were scrambling around in the rough at the top of the bank to the left of the green, having already taken three shots.
At this point I uttered a very foolish remark. In my defence I should stress that it was agonisingly cold and we had begun to have the better of the play in the previous few holes. Our opponents were older than us so it was conceivable that, after 31 holes, fatigue was taking its toll. At Rye there’s a short cut to the clubhouse from the fifteenth green and we were yearning for the tea cakes that awaited us there, not to mention something stronger.
I whispered to Hugh “We’ll be one up in a moment. We can win the next two and go straight in.” My brain was so numb with cold that he had to point out this would not actually finish off the match as we would still have to play the sixteenth hole. As we talked our opponents hit a miracle recovery shot, inches from the hole, to secure a bogey five. Four shaming putts later Hugh and I holed out for six.
We dragged ourselves to the next tee, not one up but one down. Despite this horror we carried on fighting somehow. One halved hole followed another, both sides making par on the tough sixteenth and the seventeenth. On the eighteenth, with dusk falling and a left to right breeze, the opposition hit a solid tee shot down the fairway and it was over to me. We had to win the hole.
My morning drive had been blown just off the fairway on the right into rough from where it was impossible to reach the green in two. I therefore now aimed a shade further left. Alas, this time I struck it too well and it didn’t drift on the wind as expected, dropping instead on the edge of the bank on the left.
Moments later on the green we congratulated our opponents on their victory. As I walked gloomily towards the clubhouse Hugh came over to me. A verbal assault of the sort the warring couple in Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf routinely dished out would have been justified but he was too much of a gentleman for that. Instead he made a more deadly point. “It was what you said on the thirteenth that dished us,” he said. “About winning and going in early.”
He was right, of course. I don’t know what came over me to make such a crass remark. Then and there I resolved never to anticipate victory again, even if my opponent is four down and his ball is lying against the face of Hell bunker on the fourteenth of the Old at St Andrews.
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Looking back I have to admit there was a touch of hubris in my claim that my partner and I would defeat two tough opponents, merely because we thought we were about to take the lead in a keenly fought battle. When that’s noticed by the daughter of Zeus, nemesis invariably follows.
Golfers particularly ignore the relentless and intimate link between hubris and nemesis at their peril.
NB A shorter version of this essay appeared some time ago in Weekend Financial Times