‘It’s golf, Jim, but not as we know it.’
If there were easily accessible game fishing off Singapore’s coast (which there isn’t) you would not do it from a 6m tinny. No, game fishing would definitely be a sport for the nobs and not the man in the street. You would drive up to the marina in your 7 series Beemer, and then stride a board your 65 ft Rybovitch in your Guy Harvey sandals whilst innumerable flunkies readied the spread of 80ws. You would almost certainly be required to wear a pink Ralph Lauren Polo shirt as you briefed your skipper where you wanted to fish. This would be a joke as you wouldn’t have a clue and your fishing knowledge wouldn’t extend beyond knowing that the best fishing gear was the most expensive and you were bound to catch more if you had your name engraved on your reels. You would then spend the day in the air-conditioned cabin eating food you had your man pick up on your way to the marina. Here the notion of money is strangely reversed. The best food is stuff cooked by some bloke at the side of the road in a sawn off oil drum because he had been there for forty years and you can remember eating his mee goreng on your way to school. You would then troll all day, catch nothing and put on weight.
So it is with golf. I play in Aoteoroa after having put my golf shoes on in the car park, hoisting my bag over my shoulder and stepping on to the first tee. If I played golf here I would first have to buy a BMW. I would then have to think it would be a good idea to have a large meal before changing in the lobby of the Ritz (complete with the fluffiest fluffy towels I have ever seen) and then repairing to the caddy masters domain. The caddy master is a being I had no previous experience of. He is presumably paid $10 a fortnight to reign over his charges (all of whom could afford to buy his family home every half hour) with a fist of steel. You don’t do anything without this bloke giving you the nod. We were due to tee off at 1.44pm and were on a course where you had to play from a cart. I hate playing from a cart. Two blokes per cart so two carts for us. Numbers J22 and J23, 1.44 on a sticker on the windscreen with a spreadsheet also pinned up telling you what time you were expected to arrive at each tee and what time you were expected to finish the hole. I didn’t see the part about the rotan if you failed to keep to this schedule but I assume it was in the fine print – I never read the fine print. The course is immaculate, the surroundings are silly, the players attired like wot you see on the telly and the standard of golf is crap. So, in order not to stick out like a sore thumb, I played very poorly. I was a guest so it would be most impolite to beat the host would it not? I also played poorly because after about the fourth I was barely alive. If man was supposed to play anything in 30˚ and 98% humidity he would have invented sauna shuff ha’penny.
No, I infinitely prefer both gamefishing and golf with the New Zealand hollandaise sauce as opposed to the Singapore chilli sauce. I could no more move back here to live, as opposed to exist, than fly to the moon. Sorry, Boulder, the free boat not looking a starter at the moment.
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