over par, and other existential threats

​When I lived and worked full-time in London, I would sometimes get up very early to drive the half hour to my local course and play nine holes of golf, before taking the Tube to the office. Usually, I was quite alone out there, apart from the rabbits and the birdies (circling overhead, rarely on my scorecard).

Despite the early hour, I found it therapeutic and used the time on the fairways to switch off from domestic and work-based worries, which would surely follow me around just as a missed putt follows an excellent approach shot. Just enjoying being out on the course, fresh with morning dew, was a wonderful opportunity for ‘mindfulness’ before everyone started calling it that.

If I thought myself lucky enough to be able to go and enjoy those snatched moments of early-morning calm in a busy, urban life – and, yes, by about four o’clock my eyes were struggling to stay open -  I feel truly blessed now. I look out from my office window towards sheep in fields bordered by trees, and the Malvern Hills as my backdrop.

Beyond the woods is a golf course, just seven minutes away by car. On most days, I can decide if I want to go and play – still on my own – and can book a tee time to suit my writing schedule. I have earned the freedom to be able to make those choices.

Perhaps this is why the staff at a nearby golf shop treat me in the way that they do.

In my father’s day – and certainly my grandfather’s – older people were generally respected because of what they’d achieved in life, the knowledge and experience they’d absorbed and could pass on to others.

Ranging from early 20s to early 30s, the men in this shop – and they are all men, strutting and full of the testosterone they are expected to convey as ‘sports professionals’ – each, without fail, turns away as I approach them to either pay for something or (what were you thinking, Mark?) ask them simple questions.

If they do bother to look me up and down with well-rehearsed disdain, they can barely grunt incoherent responses, and are generally clueless with emails and other contact details they are expected to harvest in order to issue ‘loyalty’ cards.
If the digital till is faulty, their mental arithmetic skills come to the fore, and I might even have made it out of a bunker in the time it takes for them to add things up incorrectly.

I have (very little) grey hair; I am not especially brash and self-confident, and I suppose I don’t fit their pre-conceived type of what golfers are supposed to look like.

Being older is certainly not something they want to contemplate, either personally or existentially. The justification for their rudeness is that I am simply not worth cultivating any kind of long-term relationship with.

I believe, though, that it is the fact I have that freedom which irks them the most, no matter that I have had to work extremely hard in often thankless, toxic environments to be able to visit their little fiefdoms.

I may not strut, but I can speak articulately and add things up in my head. Unfortunately, I’ve had lots of practice at that because of the number of errant shots over the course of my life!

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