Seán Rice gets back in the swing again

A SIGHT TO BEHOLD Play resumed at golf courses all around the country last week, including Castlebar. Pic: Conor McKeown

IT is good to be back. But there was a nervy edge about setting out, about flaws in a swing gone rusty for want of use, about knocking the ball off the first tee, or shanking it, or swinging it deep into the rough and holding up those behind while you searched for it in deep grass.
It was our first day back in Castlebar Golf Course after the lockdown. Months away from the game had deadened somewhat our early urgencies to get back on the course. Now that we were back, the search for that special shot began again to gnaw at our aspirations.
We had become so accustomed to our twice weekly visits to the club before lockdown that closure found us wrestling with boredom and something of interest to fill the void.
Gardening and walking seemed somehow less fulfilling.
Golf ought to have been classified as a sport least likely to spread the coronavirus. The very nature of golf, confined to two or three players, ensured distance would always be maintained.
 And with balls spilling in various directions, driving players wider apart in alfresco, the danger of contracting the disease paled in comparison to that surrounding people gathered and walking on the streets of towns.
When we returned after the first lockdown great care was taken by the club administrators to ensure members abided by the restrictions. The clubhouse, where we met for a coffee after each round to discuss the topics of the day, was closed. That was the hardest bit, the afters where friendships were cemented and comparisons drawn.
But harmless though it seemed, rules are rules, and to hand one sports group the reins throughout the restrictions, was to open the door to a clamour of requests for similar privileges for other sports. ‘One closed, all closed’ was the sensible motto.
Having adjusted to life without golf, having settled into a new routine and found a new niche, the appetite to return to a sport that can drive you to distraction became less appealing.
In time we discovered we could manage without it.
But with the lifting of restrictions came the phone calls, the cajoling, the prompting, the urging, the advice that to give it up now would hasten indolence and apathy. And this old fossil, who on a good day might have one good shot and two bad ones, succumbed.
So, gingerly on Tuesday morning we approached the first tee on the beautifully remodelled Castlebar course. The man before me had already driven straight and true.
Could this old-timer follow suit? 
The fairway seemed narrow and intimidating. The new ball looked up smilingly. The chestnuts were in leaf. The sun shone. The birds were in full voice. By their silence, due deference from those standing around was offered to the driver.
You wished in a way they hadn’t bothered. It only added to the pressure, the fear that all would go wrong, and that after a faulty swing the ball might have to be replaced on the tee.
The few practise swings had loosened the joints somewhat. And the actual strike was true. Relief all round. It did not have the distance of the man who went before me, or that of the 20-year-old whose drive off the tee a day earlier reached all of 330 yards.
Nevertheless, the pleasure of getting that first shot away was immense as we walked down the fairway. For the remaining holes muscles that had lain idle for months got stretched, and ached for days afterwards. But no pain could outweigh the joy of that first shot.

SeΡn Rice