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Golf or Tennis?
I'd rather climb into a hot tub with 19-year-old
ball-girls than partake in a threesome.
by A S H Smyth
Thursday, January 17, 2008
There comes a time in every man’s life when he must
ask himself the question: golf or tennis? And I cannot
for the life of me understand why so many people choose golf.
Mark Twain was right about a lot of things,* and never more so than
when he said that ‘golf is a good walk spoiled’. But – since all too many
people seem not to have registered Twain’s pithy brilliance – I think the
old walrus didn’t go nearly far enough.
Golf is a sure-fire way to spend the best part of four hours trudging and
hacking, only to end up back where you began (there’s a reason why 18
holes is called a ‘round’), like a pilgrimage undertaken in Edwardian
attire** with a really bad map. Tennis, on the other hand, is played all in
one place, with chairs around the edge, and mint juleps, and flaxen-
haired ball-girls. It seldom lasts four hours, and if it does that’s fine
because you’re enjoying yourself out in the sun with mint juleps and ball-
girls.
Try saying the word ‘golf’ to yourself without immediately calling to mind
that stalwart British attitude towards suffering silently in the rain. Golf
(uuuuuurrrrngh….) is the kind of sport Sir Ranulph Fiennes might have
invented, just so he could prove he was more of a man than you are.
Golf even has an Arctic Open, for Reykjavik’s sake! The majority of tennis
tournaments, by comparison, are played in Florida, and the official LTA
rules actually stipulate that you are perfectly entitled to have a knock-
around it in the sun without Celtic types heckling you for being a ‘fair-
weather’ player.
The divergent natures of these two sports are reflected in the natures of
their respective participants. Golf is a sport played by folk with names
like Ernie, Sandy and Geoff - or Billy, Billy and Billy, if you play in Ulster.
But tennis-players have exotic names like José, Andre, Boris, Tomáš,
Björn, Jacco, Lleyton and Xavier. These names sound like they came
from a place where passion burns deep in a man’s breast. Rather than
from, say, Sesame Street.
Ernie/Sandy/Geoff will tell you that the best part of golf is the
camaraderie. While this is probably true, it is not intended to be ironic;
but most golfers seem to have learned the charismatic arts from a Nick
Faldo video,*** and have a sense of humour limited to that one gag
about the pub being called ‘the 19th hole’.
There’s another problem with golf. It’s the only sport in the world where
the worse you play, the longer it takes. A scorecard which ought to
have come in just over par starts to look like an undergrad’s attempt at
solving the Reimann Hypothesis, and before you know it, it’s dark and
you’re stumbling around on the back nine and falling into bunkers. To add
insult to injury, an imbalanced game against mediocre competition can’t
even be finished off quickly: in golf, as in mountaineering, you can only
move at the speed of the slowest player. As for the banter, that loses
something when you and your opponent are on different fairways,
getting steadily further from each other and from the green…
The tennis-players, meanwhile, are strolling about the place with their
big shiny smiles, full of joie de mint julep vivre and reflecting on how,
nomatter how crap they are, they’re never far enough apart that they
have to shout to make themselves heard. And there’s plenty of time for
the chit-chat, too. If both players are equally feeble then the rallies tend
to be shorter even than the ball-girls’ skirts. If the players are hopelessly
imbalanced then I glance insouciantly at the ball-girls, tipping them a
wink every now and then in between spanking aces past my hapless
cannon-fodder, and then give him some tips about how he, too, could
sharpen his game and thus spend more time focusing on the ball-girls.
And if we’re both pretty hot (I’m talking tennis; but yes, there’s that,
too…) then we just take turns body-lining four aces past each other,
and have a whole bunch of time left over in which to meet at the net
and chat about the ball-girls while they bring us mint juleps.
Despite being such great fun, though, there are very few jokes about
tennis. What do you need jokes for when you are frolicking around in the
sun with girls in tiny white skirts (them, not you. Well, mostly…)? Jokes
are ways to dispel tedium and wrestle with the utter ghastliness of life.
There are entire joke-books about golf. Lots of ‘em.
Tennis makes almost everything else look very dull indeed (ball-girls
excluded). The only thing that doesn’t make golf look boring is BBC
Parliament.
Sadly, the horrors of golf do not restrict themselves to the field (or
woods, or ponds) of play.
For example, if you are a tennis player, people will not routinely buy you
a tube of Wilson balls for your birthday, or a pair of sweat-bands for
Christmas. If you are a golfer, however, no birthday, anniversary, leaving
do, house-warming or great-nephew’s bar mitzvah will pass without
someone giving you a plastic ‘wine’ bottle full of tees, or a little towel
with which to clean the business end of your Pitching Wedge. This is
particularly touching on Valentine’s Day.
Also, tennis rackets cost about £50, and thereafter the most you’ll ever
have to part with by way of accoutrements is a fiver for one of those
gizmos that picks the fluff out of the strings. But no self-respecting golf
club will let you step onto the first tee until you’ve spent the best part
of a grand in the pro shop, even if you did bring a full set of clubs.
[Note: you will never need that retractable pole for fishing balls out of
water hazards. If you can see the damn thing, your ‘friends’ will expect
you to play it. Dropping the ball is for sissies.]
Now, astute readers will have noticed that I have referred once or twice
to ball-girls. This is because the whole point of exercise of any kind is to
make oneself attractive – or even more attractive, in my case – to
members of the opposite sex (in order that you might graduate to
exercise of an altogether different kind). Hence ball-girls… ****
Alas, where our poor friends the golfers are concerned, dressed up like
so many shortbread advertisements, the only member of the opposite
sex they’re likely to pick up is one who sees absolutely nothing to laugh
about in ‘threesome’ or ‘four-ball’. Sure, she’ll be a mean golfer: but what
of the camaraderie?
There’s a simple and evident hierarchy at work here.
It’s true of the pros… Tennis clubs have pros who look like Paul Bettany.
These pros have girlfriends (pl.) who look like Kirsten Dunst. Golf clubs
have pros called Barry, who look like car-thieves and wear the same
hats. They have wives who look like night-shift employees at Primark.
And it’s true of the club members… Playing golf is a sure sign that that
your marriage is so hellish you desperately need to spend 8 or 9 hours of
each weekend in the trees, looking for your balls. Playing tennis is a sure
sign that you’re about to get in a hot-tub with no fewer than three 19-
year-old blonde ball-girls.
And if that’s not an argument for taking up tennis, I don’t know what is.
Right. See you out on court. Don’t forget the juleps.
---
* He once accurately predicted the end of Huckleberry Finn.
** Edward III
*** Narrated by Gavin Hastings. Price: 4 tam-o-shanters.
**** There is, after all, usually a fence surrounding the court; some
might say the ball-girls were technically superfluous.
© lizardmagazine.com, 2008
Also by A S H Smyth:
I'd rather climb into a hot tub with 19-year-old
ball-girls than partake in a threesome.
by A S H Smyth
Thursday, January 17, 2008
There comes a time in every man’s life when he must
ask himself the question: golf or tennis? And I cannot
for the life of me understand why so many people choose golf.
Mark Twain was right about a lot of things,* and never more so than
when he said that ‘golf is a good walk spoiled’. But – since all too many
people seem not to have registered Twain’s pithy brilliance – I think the
old walrus didn’t go nearly far enough.
Golf is a sure-fire way to spend the best part of four hours trudging and
hacking, only to end up back where you began (there’s a reason why 18
holes is called a ‘round’), like a pilgrimage undertaken in Edwardian
attire** with a really bad map. Tennis, on the other hand, is played all in
one place, with chairs around the edge, and mint juleps, and flaxen-
haired ball-girls. It seldom lasts four hours, and if it does that’s fine
because you’re enjoying yourself out in the sun with mint juleps and ball-
girls.
Try saying the word ‘golf’ to yourself without immediately calling to mind
that stalwart British attitude towards suffering silently in the rain. Golf
(uuuuuurrrrngh….) is the kind of sport Sir Ranulph Fiennes might have
invented, just so he could prove he was more of a man than you are.
Golf even has an Arctic Open, for Reykjavik’s sake! The majority of tennis
tournaments, by comparison, are played in Florida, and the official LTA
rules actually stipulate that you are perfectly entitled to have a knock-
around it in the sun without Celtic types heckling you for being a ‘fair-
weather’ player.
The divergent natures of these two sports are reflected in the natures of
their respective participants. Golf is a sport played by folk with names
like Ernie, Sandy and Geoff - or Billy, Billy and Billy, if you play in Ulster.
But tennis-players have exotic names like José, Andre, Boris, Tomáš,
Björn, Jacco, Lleyton and Xavier. These names sound like they came
from a place where passion burns deep in a man’s breast. Rather than
from, say, Sesame Street.
Ernie/Sandy/Geoff will tell you that the best part of golf is the
camaraderie. While this is probably true, it is not intended to be ironic;
but most golfers seem to have learned the charismatic arts from a Nick
Faldo video,*** and have a sense of humour limited to that one gag
about the pub being called ‘the 19th hole’.
There’s another problem with golf. It’s the only sport in the world where
the worse you play, the longer it takes. A scorecard which ought to
have come in just over par starts to look like an undergrad’s attempt at
solving the Reimann Hypothesis, and before you know it, it’s dark and
you’re stumbling around on the back nine and falling into bunkers. To add
insult to injury, an imbalanced game against mediocre competition can’t
even be finished off quickly: in golf, as in mountaineering, you can only
move at the speed of the slowest player. As for the banter, that loses
something when you and your opponent are on different fairways,
getting steadily further from each other and from the green…
The tennis-players, meanwhile, are strolling about the place with their
big shiny smiles, full of joie de mint julep vivre and reflecting on how,
nomatter how crap they are, they’re never far enough apart that they
have to shout to make themselves heard. And there’s plenty of time for
the chit-chat, too. If both players are equally feeble then the rallies tend
to be shorter even than the ball-girls’ skirts. If the players are hopelessly
imbalanced then I glance insouciantly at the ball-girls, tipping them a
wink every now and then in between spanking aces past my hapless
cannon-fodder, and then give him some tips about how he, too, could
sharpen his game and thus spend more time focusing on the ball-girls.
And if we’re both pretty hot (I’m talking tennis; but yes, there’s that,
too…) then we just take turns body-lining four aces past each other,
and have a whole bunch of time left over in which to meet at the net
and chat about the ball-girls while they bring us mint juleps.
Despite being such great fun, though, there are very few jokes about
tennis. What do you need jokes for when you are frolicking around in the
sun with girls in tiny white skirts (them, not you. Well, mostly…)? Jokes
are ways to dispel tedium and wrestle with the utter ghastliness of life.
There are entire joke-books about golf. Lots of ‘em.
Tennis makes almost everything else look very dull indeed (ball-girls
excluded). The only thing that doesn’t make golf look boring is BBC
Parliament.
Sadly, the horrors of golf do not restrict themselves to the field (or
woods, or ponds) of play.
For example, if you are a tennis player, people will not routinely buy you
a tube of Wilson balls for your birthday, or a pair of sweat-bands for
Christmas. If you are a golfer, however, no birthday, anniversary, leaving
do, house-warming or great-nephew’s bar mitzvah will pass without
someone giving you a plastic ‘wine’ bottle full of tees, or a little towel
with which to clean the business end of your Pitching Wedge. This is
particularly touching on Valentine’s Day.
Also, tennis rackets cost about £50, and thereafter the most you’ll ever
have to part with by way of accoutrements is a fiver for one of those
gizmos that picks the fluff out of the strings. But no self-respecting golf
club will let you step onto the first tee until you’ve spent the best part
of a grand in the pro shop, even if you did bring a full set of clubs.
[Note: you will never need that retractable pole for fishing balls out of
water hazards. If you can see the damn thing, your ‘friends’ will expect
you to play it. Dropping the ball is for sissies.]
Now, astute readers will have noticed that I have referred once or twice
to ball-girls. This is because the whole point of exercise of any kind is to
make oneself attractive – or even more attractive, in my case – to
members of the opposite sex (in order that you might graduate to
exercise of an altogether different kind). Hence ball-girls… ****
Alas, where our poor friends the golfers are concerned, dressed up like
so many shortbread advertisements, the only member of the opposite
sex they’re likely to pick up is one who sees absolutely nothing to laugh
about in ‘threesome’ or ‘four-ball’. Sure, she’ll be a mean golfer: but what
of the camaraderie?
There’s a simple and evident hierarchy at work here.
It’s true of the pros… Tennis clubs have pros who look like Paul Bettany.
These pros have girlfriends (pl.) who look like Kirsten Dunst. Golf clubs
have pros called Barry, who look like car-thieves and wear the same
hats. They have wives who look like night-shift employees at Primark.
And it’s true of the club members… Playing golf is a sure sign that that
your marriage is so hellish you desperately need to spend 8 or 9 hours of
each weekend in the trees, looking for your balls. Playing tennis is a sure
sign that you’re about to get in a hot-tub with no fewer than three 19-
year-old blonde ball-girls.
And if that’s not an argument for taking up tennis, I don’t know what is.
Right. See you out on court. Don’t forget the juleps.
---
* He once accurately predicted the end of Huckleberry Finn.
** Edward III
*** Narrated by Gavin Hastings. Price: 4 tam-o-shanters.
**** There is, after all, usually a fence surrounding the court; some
might say the ball-girls were technically superfluous.
© lizardmagazine.com, 2008
Also by A S H Smyth:
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