Recent Jan: THE INDOOR GOLF SEASON

Golf has, recently, been indoors. It’s January and for a golfer in Northern Europe that has traditionally meant either the limitations of mats and winter greens or courses closed for snow and ice. If you do venture out it means so many layers you can barely swing and hands so cold you long for those expensive mittens you see the pros (and the best equipped amateur) handed by their caddies. And a tee time if you want one will need to be early, as the darkness hounds you off the course by four in the afternoon. And it makes me wonder what it is that we really like about golf - the feel, the soft effortlessness of a purely struck ball is as intoxicating when hit it into a net strung up in a garage as it might feel from a fairway at Augusta.

I had an extended hiatus from the game from my late teens until my mid-thirties and, like many, took it up again during the pandemic. Things had, it turned out, changed in the intervening years. I promised whoever would listen that I would only play found balls, that I would use the clubs I had found on eBay, and that I will continue to avoid ever having a lesson. The teenage golfer who played Kilspindie with his friends for a fiver would continue in the same spirit he enjoyed when an extended cigarette break at the 10th Tee and an underage pint of Tennent’s in the clubhouse were as important as your score. Well, since then I’ve had lessons, bought fitted irons, and had my putting stroke analysed by the club putting pro, so things can change. But the innovation that drew both my scepticism and curiosity was the growth of simulators. How could an expensive couple of hours blasting balls at a screen compete with the joy of evening sun, splitting the fairway from the tee, or chipping in to save par? Surely the nagging feeling that golf is a drain and an indulgence would start to ring too loud, shaming me back to work or domestic duties.

But as I have alluded to, the golfer evolves and the hunger deepens. So this winter I have found myself training and playing on a simulator a few times a week - alone or with friends, with a sense of purpose or abandon - to an extent that I think I can now consider a season in itself. In fact such is its popularity that in South Korea ‘screen golf’ is played by more people than ‘field golf’. I was rusty at first, readjusting to the astroturf mat and confused by the numbers. But then you find a rhythm, and you find things to focus on. You can analyse your spin rates and launch angles and a clubhead speed which stubbornly refuses to get much faster. And then you can play the Old Course and suddenly you find yourself 2 under after 16 holes (in favourable conditions…) and your hopes are soaring and the spirits high. And then you blast it onto the hotel roof (just as you did irl) and you ‘sign’ for a 74 and it is all so golf. And with Golf it is the hope, interrupted by the slice or the hook or the chunk, that keeps you coming back.

Spring will come and the numbers and the data will be replaced by the real stories of ‘field’ golf, the lucky bounces and tricky lies that make it so compelling. But for now we are indoors and whether the grinding yields any improvements come the real season or we keep just cementing bad habits, indoor golf is its own season now and we should probably start to enjoy it.

With thanks and respect to @gpi_fitting and @indoorgolfclubberlin