To the uninitiated, understanding golf is like learning a foreign language – arcane, technical and with an idiom all of its own – yet the sport has undergone a spectacular renaissance in recent years, and, as the nation’s sporting attention turns to The Open Championship this week, it is a game no longer redolent of the middle classes and the middle aged.
It is not difficult to work out why: golf offers the opportunity for low-impact, outdoor exercise, mental refreshment and safe social interaction. It is also, as AA Milne observed, “the best game in the world at which to be bad”. Interestingly, its appeal has endured, and indeed grown, well beyond the days of Covid.
For me, however, there is an attraction to golf that goes way beyond its somewhat esoteric sporting qualities. If it weren’t for golf, I wouldn’t see most of my friends. One of my regular playing partners is a titan of the entertainment industry, whose diary is packed with work commitments and business trips. If I suggested to him that he should carve out four hours or so in his schedule to spend time with me, having a five-mile walk while chatting about nothing in particular, he’d think I had taken leave of my senses. But if I venture a game of golf, he’s there in a shot.
A Harvard report this year stated that the number of adults in the US who say they do not have close friends has quadrupled since 1990, while those with 10 or more close friends decreased by 20 per cent during the same period. Globally, the human race has become more atomised, and the rise of social media, digital-only friendships and working from home has exacerbated that. There has been a generational movement towards individual endeavours, and while, in one sense, we have never been more connected, we engage in fewer communal activities.
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I find that golf is a guilt-free way to spend me-time, and I can only speak for myself in recognising that, uniquely, it gives me the chance for companionship, exercise and a tiny modicum of sporting achievement until relatively late in life. In record numbers, others are finding the same.
For the devoted, this week’s Open promises high drama and exciting storylines. Non-golfers may be watching and wondering what the appeal of this long-winded, complex game might be. Consider instead its contribution to social cohesion, public health and your correspondent’s mental equanimity.
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