Golf is a cruel game.

It’s unfathomably difficult to do anything well, let alone to do anything consistently well, because every aspect of it – driving, approach play, recovery, putting – requires a different technique, all of which are unfathomably difficult.

Most golfers are terrible. They celebrate the one decent shot in ten, while trying to mentally overcome the baggage of the other nine attempts which range from wayward to catastrophic.

By this measure, anyone who makes themselves vaguely competent at golf ought to be lauded, if nothing else, for their perseverance in the face of endless embarrassment. To get the competency level required to play on a fully fledged golf course, you have to have put in hundreds of hours of work. Even then, you’re always one shot away from mortification in front of the better golfers waiting behind you at the tee, because you’re slow and bad, and they’ve put in thousands of hours to your hundreds.

It’s a cruel game, and it’s made far crueller by the fact that every non-golfer on the planet – i.e. the public at large – thinks you’re a reprehensible human being for attempting to play the sport in the first place.

There are a lot of deeply held prejudices about golf and what it means to play it, and these prejudices don’t appear to extend to other more expensive hobbies like skiing, or other so-called elitist pursuits like tennis or cricket. By professing your love of golf, you’re effectively badging yourself as a wanker, apparently deserving of all the piss-taking and animus destined to come your way.

We can argue the toss over whether golf over-indexes on middle-aged men succumbing to mid-life crisis, who have taken up the sport either to boost their status or to avoid spending time with their families, or possibly both. Such people exist – the proof can be found in the number of convertible sports cars found in my local golf club car park.

On the other hand, I haven’t bought a ridiculous car, nor am I trying to avoid my (mainly) delightful partner and (mainly) delightful child. I’m simply attempting to learn how to play a game I enjoy, and the learning takes effort and commitment, and because of the basic rules of the golf, combined with the innate difficulty, it invariably takes quite a lot of time.  

I suspect there are thousands more like me. Should we be castigated for the thing we love?

Personally, I think it’s utterly insane that people love bread to the extent to which they will – without question – spend 45 minutes every weekend queuing around the corner to buy overpriced baked goods from their favourite smelling bakery. In some cases, proximity to a great baker even features within people’s core house moving criteria.

Would bakery access ever supersede proximity to a great primary or secondary school? It’s hard to say, but I certainly sense that bread is more addictive than the national curriculum.

I have no wish to castigate bread connoisseurs or brand them ‘bakery wankers’ in the same way I am routinely branded as a ‘golf wanker’. I merely wish to suggest that the aspirational classes pursue many different objectives; that as we find ourselves with more disposal income and comfort in our lives, it follows that we transact in different directions, and that ultimately, all of these directions are as silly and inane and pointless as one another. Golf, or bread, or both, or neither. You’re free to choose – without retribution.

Photo by Mike Cox on Unsplash