BRING UP MY MASHIE

Covid-19 has put golf off our calendars. After more than 55 years of an average twice a week golf barring seatime or inaccessibility to a course, my golf came to a stop on 19th March this year with the closing of clubs. Golf courses are opening up now though with a lot of constraints like compulsory prior booking, no caddies and catering facilities and the now normal conditions of face masks, social distancing etc. Add to that the mental resistance caused by 4 1/2 months of lockdowns and the 'unlock' process becomes harder to execute.

The itch to get back to golf is slowly developing and I hope I can soon return to the fairways and greens, not bunkers! To get in the mood, I picked up P.G.Wodehouse’s 'The Golf Omnibus' and some of my previous pieces on golf. Here are some musings which I have put together before I eventually make my way back to the golf course.

In the Preface of the 'Omnibus', I read PGW's lament about the vanishing  of  “the names of most golf clubs so dear to me”, something I have myself felt quite often. He wrote, “I believe one still drives with a driver nowadays, though at any moment we may have to start calling it the Number One wood, but where is the mashie now, where the cleek, the spoon and the baffy?”

Where indeed and why? Would it not be infinitely more romantic if we were to tee-off on a tight fairway with the brassie, pull out a mashie to put the shot in the hole and get an albatross rather than a soulless 2 wood and 5 iron to get a double eagle? What fun to send a ball soaring over trees with a spoon and lovingly coax it towards the hole with a niblick instead of the bland nos. 5 and 9! Wodehouse surmises it might have to do with ‘Progress’ but it was “a pity to cast away lovely names like mashie and baffy in favour of numbers.” 

Was Wodehouse trying to lay the blame of progress on the Americans? Undoubtedly, they are strong on numbers as seen by their fondness for marking streets and avenues in their cities. But this contrasts with their very imaginative naming of golf courses. They have courses named after alcohol such as the Bootleg, Rum River and Scotch Pines; after animals eg, Crumpin’ Fox, Kissing Camels, Rat River and Possum Trot; descriptive like Whispering Pines, Singing hills, Argue-ment and Useless Bay (perhaps named by someone driving a lot of balls in the sea); and tongue twisters like Ngaruawahia, Pauatahanui and Kaitangata. Good luck to golfers asking for directions to get there!

A lot of courses have a story behind their names. Frank Wisner, former US Ambassador to India, took me to a club a couple of hours' drive from New York City. The story goes that some golfers from NYC were looking for a place to swing a club and having driven a considerable distance, stopped to ask a Chinese how far the nearest course was. The answer, "Morefar" earned the club its present name, "Morefar Back O'Beyond". 

Then they have a club named "A Lil' bit a Heaven" which golfers could justifiably call any golf course in the world.

We have shown a singular lack of imagination in naming our golf courses which are mostly designated after the city of location. So we have Delhi Golf Club, DLF Golf Club, Royal Calcutta Golf Club, Bombay Presidency Golf Club, Noida Golf Course etc. We have numerous Army Golf Courses all over the country called just that! Surely, we can break out of the mould with some exotic names.

Indian caddies are more ingenuous. They have apt names for golfers in their club. I stumbled upon this fact in the Delhi Golf Club when I overheard a caddie tell another, “Kachua (tortoise) has arrived.” Not seeing any creature of that kind, I asked the caddie what he meant. It took some persuasion for him to tell me that he was referring to an individual famous for his slow play. 

Subsequently, I coaxed the caddies in the Army Golf Course to open up and give me some names.  They came up with “Putt-to-half” for one who never counted his strokes and made this declaration to his opponent on finally arriving at the green, “Mogambo” for a player who terrorised his caddie for not finding his ball in the rough, “Rahu-Ketu” for the duo that always played together but fought on every hole, 'Puch-puch' for one who always made a kissing sound when drawing his caddie's attention, and so on. 

The caddies do not spare there own tribe too. They have a Naagin and a Sapera addicted to drugs, a Ganapati fond of laddoos and a Dasehri for one very fond of mangoes!

No amount of coaxing would make them say if they had a name for me. I suspect, though, that they call me a ‘Javelin-thrower’ given my habit of often hurling my club like a javelin that would put Odin, the Norse god, to shame!

So bring up my mashie, niblick, spoon, some guttapercha balls and plus-fours and help me find my way to the golf course for auld lang syne.