HOW TO… LOSE AT GOLF
TEXT ALAN NEEDHAM
ILLUSTRATIONS LADISLAV KOSA
There are two main reasons for losing at golf. The first is because you are a golf hustler, a Minnesota Fats of the fairway who lulls gullible sorts into a false sense of security before taking them for $100,000 on the back nine, usually while wearing a big, show-off hat or eye patch. Unfortunately, you have to be amazingly brilliant at golf to be able to do this, so we’ll concentrate on the second reason: flattering your boss’s ego.
Here’s the great thing about golf: it’s played during the day when there’s usually nice weather, and it takes you out of the office. Somehow even corporate gibberish sounds much nicer when it’s accompanied by birdsong, you have a dangerous bit of metal to swing about, and there’s a drink waiting for you at the 19th hole. If you’re really lucky, the company is feeling a bit flush, and you’ve played your cards right, you could end up playing on the Royal Course in the Algarve (watching your ball disappear between three cliffs on its notorious par-three hole), or the Marbella Golf and Country Club (narrowly missing the head of an oil sheikh with a slice off the tee).
The other great thing about golf is that it’s divided into 18 bite-sized chunks, meaning that you don’t have to be consistently rubbish. You can still enjoy your game and lose – after all, you’re always competing against yourself in golf. In any case, it can be downright expensive to be too good at golf: in Japan, for example, any club golfer who scores a hole in one is expected to buy everyone in the club a drink, get presents such as monogrammed pens and towels for their mates, give the caddie a hefty tip, donate a tree to the course and throw a party for everyone who knows them. Here’s how to avoid the chances of that ever happening…
Practise the fundamentals.
As any golf pro will tell you, getting the basics right and exact every time is the difference between victory and defeat. The same advice counts double for the golf loser. For example, check your stance – are your shoulders parallel with each other, and are your arms snapping into a perfect V-shape when you swing? If so – oh dear, that will never do. Better develop a hunch in one shoulder and aim for an L-shape. Much better.
Invest in the right equipment.
This could be expensive, but worth it in the long run. When you have a moment to spare at home or in the office, get some vital putting practice in with a mug laid sideways on the carpet. And then try to either chip the handle with a slightly errant putt, or smash the thing completely with an over-enthusiastic tonk.
Always, always, always keep your eye on your foot.
Or the cigarette end to the side. Or the divot you just hacked up. Or anything but the ball.
Leave your best game at the driving range.
No one likes to lose to a perennial loser, and your partner will get bored with constantly winning – usually after their 50th victory on the trot. Therefore it’s crucial that you make it look as if you have an extremely good chance of battering your opponent at the moment when it matters least. Uncorking arrow-straight drives on the range will allow you to let it all out of your system and ramp up the tension.
Remember the golf motto “drive for show, putt for dough”.
In other words, it doesn’t matter how well you play on the fairway if your putting game is rubbish – you’ll never win. This is an incredibly important rule, as it allows you to take some pride in one aspect of your game (which you can brag about later) while still hitting your target of making your boss look good. Club selection is vital, so mess it up every time. Remember: you’re not attempting to play badly, you just want to rig the match to make your partner look good while making yourself look just that little bit worse, and the wrong club can give you the chance to demonstrate your perfect, yet underpowered, swing. As a wise man once said, “Every loser wins once the dream begins.” Admittedly, if you’re hacking around on a course being humiliated you may not always see the wisdom of this. But hark the remainder of the message, “In time, you’ll see, fate holds the key.”
Allow me to translate: if you can impress your boss with your tenacity, calm in the face of adversity and all the other rubbish they look for in an employee, you will win in the long run. Examples? Well, your insistence on rolling your trouser legs up and wading into a pond to play a shot currently resting on a floating crisp packet demonstrates a can-do spirit, while plunging into a thorny bush to retrieve your ball and coming out covered in scratches shows an approach to resource management and waste elimination that will be highly prized in today’s troubled times.
There are many different ways to lose, so make use of them.
A consistently rubbish game will always do the trick, but that gets boring for both parties after a while. It’s much better to learn from the masters and attempt to recreate some of the greatest “choke jobs” in golfing history. Take inspiration from Jean van de Velde’s magnificent effort on the final hole of the 1999 British Open, when he only needed a double bogey (two over par) to win, but ended up hitting the rough, the sand, the water hazard – even the seating section – for a historic triple bogey (three over par).
Don’t overdo it.
Not only will your boss drop you as a golfing partner if you play too poorly, but you may commit the faux pas of holding up the game behind you, which is one of the cardinal sins of golf. Besides, you’ll also be eating up valuable time in the 19th hole. And talking of which…
Be gracious in defeat.
You may be satisfied with a job well done, but your boss doesn’t want to hear about that – he wants to know that you missed that vital putt on the 15th because you were intimidated by the completely jammy chip-on he somehow managed to pull off, not because you were deliberately aiming a few inches away from the hole and had skilfully brought the ball to rest on the lip of the cup.
A good start, rubbish middle and strong finish works best of all.
I let’s call this the “Eurovision entrant” method. What you’re aiming for here is to run your boss close and demonstrate that you do have some skills while still losing. Start well and make a game of it – maybe even take a commanding lead – and then go to pieces for the middle holes before coming back and looking like you might just have a chance on the final hole. Which you cock up.
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