Hallelujah, all is right with the world once again, I have emerged into the light at the end of the tunnel. The annual lads’ golf trip which had been such an immovable fixture in my calendar in my thirties and early forties is finally back. Costa del Sol for three nights and three rounds of golf, yes please, sign me up and see you at the airport. Did it matter that I hadn’t played regular golf for close to five years or that I would be paying back the brownie points to my wife for the rest of the year / my life. No sir it did not, golf in the sun is my happy place!
Still there was a part of me that wondered what the hell I was doing when my alarm went off at 5am on a Monday morning to catch the early morning flight to Malaga. That part of me was still unsure about the whole escapade when I carved my first tee-shot into the Andalucian out-of-bounds area some eight hours later. Then the banter started and the realisation dawned on me that I didn’t have to cook meals, tidy clothes, hoover floors or generally deal with the constant strain of managing four kids and their multiple activities from sports to ballet, to learning to play the tin whistle! Suddenly the standard of golf didn’t really seem to matter so much.
After the first round was over, we headed for the club-house bar for some analysis and general discussion about pressing matters from swing planes and putting strokes to wokism and positive discrimination. Spurred on by a couple of beverages, we had almost come to the conclusion that middle-aged, white males are currently the most put upon members of the human race, until we looked around and spotted that we were surrounded by middle-aged, white males enjoying themselves, drinking beer in the Spanish sunshine having just completed a round of golf at 6pm on a Monday. Hmm, maybe our analysis was flawed somewhere.
Now the less said about the standard of my golf game the better but I will forever cling to that 9 hole stretch on the second morning where the ball actually went in the correct general direction and I was only 3 over par for those 9 holes. This was in stark contrast to the rest of the week where the only thing likely to register as exceptional was the amount of golf balls I lost in the valleys and streams around the verdant golf holes of La Cala.
On the subject of golf balls, I had gratefully received a box of monogrammed balls (“DOYLER” proudly emblazoned on the side for all to see) from my in-laws shortly before my duties as a father overtook my prospects as a golfer. These 12 balls had been gradually whittled down to 2 by the start of this trip. I launched the first of these out of bounds with my opening tee-shot of the trip but kept the second in reserve for the last day to improve its chances of survival.
As I approached the first tee I had a quick word with my golf ball and just like Daniel Day Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans I uttered those heartfelt words “Stay alive, I will find you!” Miraculously I was still holding the same ball as I teed it up on the 18th hole. I say miraculously because it had been far from the perfect round of golf, but mishit shots had always managed to stop short of the bad-stuff, collisions with trees (and there were many) resulted in a favourable hop away from danger and onto a fairway or the semi-rough. Even a drastic over-clubbing managed to rebound off a wire fence. So you can imagine my relief upon reaching the par 5 final hole with its ample fairway, this relief was turned on its head as I hit my worst tee-shot of the day and I smashed my beloved DOYLER into the dense scrub on the right. There was one last kick in the teeth as the ball that I spotted as I searched the undergrowth turned out to be a unmarked Calloway golf ball. The last of my Mohicans was no more.
Having played golf on the Tuesday morning, we were left with a free afternoon. One of our gang had spotted that the resort where we were staying had three padel tennis courts. Padel is a cross between tennis and squash with the reduced playing area supposed to be more suited to those with less athletic / youthful physiques. So four of us signed up for 90 mins court time. However after one hour of playing in the Spanish heat I was certainly not feeling anything less than exhausted, in fact when I returned to my room I received a notification from my fitness tracking watch to confirm my “emergency contact details”. The free afternoon on the Wednesday was spent reading a book by the pool!
For some added spice, there was a minor competitive element to the golf with everybody paired with a team-mate at the start of the round and better score on each hole counting. These pairings were generally good natured but not without controversy. Somewhere in the midst of the second round, my partner hit his ball into a group of elm trees and was unlucky to have lodged his ball halfway up the trunk of one of these trees. We both agreed that a penalty drop was the correct decision and I suggested that he take it back onto the fairway and hit an iron down towards the hole as it was a par 5 which meant a better chance to make up the penalty shot. But oh no, my partner thought he could drop near the tree and swerve a 3 wood through a five foot gap to get him near the green. Now Seve Ballesteros would not have attempted this shot and sure enough the ball ended up out of bounds on the far side. There were a few frosty holes after that, particularly when I smashed my own ball out of bounds seconds later from the middle of the fairway! Suffice to say we did not win.
Away from the golf, we did what all old friends do when the get together, we reminisced about the olden days and caught up with a few new stories such as the time one of us almost had a colonoscopy after a case of mistaken identity. Most of all, we celebrated that we are still physically able to do this kind of thing and more importantly that our wives let us! This blog is dedicated to my lovely wife Niki!
Dublin Dad 