The Notion Of "Character" In Golf

I recently set up a page on the social networking website, myspace, for my new book, Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia!. This is what a lot of writers and their publishers do these days, in an attempt to maximise exposure in the long tail of the publishing world in an era when slots on the front display tables in bookshops have never been harder to come by. It’s time-consuming, but the thinking is long-term: with a bit of luck, sometime in, say, 2013, the ensuing word of mouth will have bagged you thirteen or fourteen more sales.

Sure enough, as soon as www.myspace.com/bringmetheheadofsergio was born, it was proving something of a hit, particularly with the opposite sex. A nice lady from LA called Cassandra with a very small vest messaged my book to say she was bored, and wanted to know if my book was interested in “bedroom fun” and also if it wanted to buy a mobile phone. Casey, Chaka and Emily all quickly wanted to be my book’s friend too. In amongst this avalanche of evil spam were a few messages from real people who liked golf. One of them was an enthusiastic man called Pete. “You sound like a real nutter,” he wrote. “Can’t wait to get the book!”

I’m sure Pete meant this in a nice, “I bet you’re a right laugh after four or five pints” way rather than in a “you’ve got a borderline personality disorder” way, but I think, were he to meet me, Pete would be disappointed. I could not, in any way, be described as “a nutter”. I tried being a nutter a couple of times when I was sixteen, quickly realised it wasn’t for me, and settled for being “fairly ordinary” with occasional forays into “something of a div” territory. But had I been kidding myself? I scanned the synopsis of Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia, wondering what could have brought Pete to his conclusion. Was it the bit about my “trusty 1980s putter” or my “whippy wrist action”? Or maybe that I had mentioned I owned some checked trousers? None of it seemed to quite qualify as bona fide nutter behaviour, but then, Pete was clearly a golfer, and in my experience, golfers have very different definitions of words like “nutter” and “Character” than the rest of the universe.

There have been several authentic Characters in golf over the years, but nowhere near as many as golf itself would have you believe. John Daly, Lee Trevino, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Jesper Parnevik – these are all people who, whether on the golf course or off it, could probably be described as unique, off-the-wall personalities. But is Ian Poulter really a Character? Or just a bloke from Hitchin who happens to wear some very loud trousers? A few years ago people started calling Darren Clarke a Character when he wore some checked slacks. Admittedly, Clarke smokes big cigars, which is slightly Character-like behaviour, but that in itself is not exactly enough to qualify you for a slot in The A-Z of Irish Eccentrics.

It’s not just the top level of the game where these overestimations of personality occur. All over Britain, there are people written off as merely “a decent bloke” or “an average sort of guy” during the week who, come the Saturday morning threeball, are magically transformed into “totally spanners”, “a right card” or “f-in’ mental”. Even more magically, these men are not having to drastically modify their behaviour for this change to occur. They are the golfing equivalent of the people immortalised in Sister Sledge’s Lost In Music: the folk who were released by disco from the drudgery of their 9 to 5 and could suddenly be who they wanted to be.

There’s no mystery about what makes millions of people sacrifice their weekends in order to spend several hours alternately hitting and shouting at a small white ball: golf assays character like no other sport, is the ultimate sado-masochistic tease and a balm for the spirit. But I wonder if it’s not just the game itself that draws some people back, but the way the game allows these people to be a larger-than-life version of themselves. Golf’s uniquely regimented social environment can repress personality, but it cuts both ways: in such an environment, unusual behaviour, when it occurs, seems to occur in Technicolour. Back at my first golf club, the most notorious Character was a man called Dave Halewood. Dave was a terrific, unserious sort of bloke, but his reputation as one of the game’s nonconformists was largely based on the fact that he had a loud voice and a penchant for putting bits of dead tree in people’s bags. I think, even in a non-golf context, putting branches in bags qualifies as suitably daft behaviour, but who’s to say Dave could find branches in his everyday life, as manager of a medium-sized sporting goods store? It’s entirely possible that, away from golf, he was written off as merely “a good laugh” or plain “loud”. Golf – and, more specifically, its profusion of branches – elevated his status.

I have to admit to having dabbled in a bit of branch-hiding in my time too, but I certainly didn’t do any last year, when I was playing the bottom rung of the pro circuit and researching Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia!. I was actually very well-behaved. Nonetheless, during the GMS Classic, a Euro Pro Tour event at Mollington, near Chester, I overheard two fellow pros talking about me on the range and the word “Character” came up. Perhaps I misheard, but I’m still trying to work out what I did that was so outrageous, or if it was just the fact that I was in need of a haircut and wearing non-golf-brand trousers. I certainly didn’t make much of an impact on the money list, but it’s nice to think I made something of a splash on the circuit – even if it was probably only in the form of the milk stain that was clearly visible on my shirt in the “funky dressers on the Euro Pro tour” segment of Sky Sports’ coverage of The Bovey Castle Championship. As nutty behaviour goes, it wasn’t exactly Hunter S Thompson or Steve Irwin, but I’ll take it.