For Alex Hammond, golf and driving simply don’t mix.
I am a very keen golfer. There’s nothing better than getting out in the fresh air, with the sun on your face (for the two weeks the big yellow thing in the sky manages to poke its face through the clouds in the UK) and playing a little competitive sport with your friends. It’s a frustrating game, for every shot that has you thinking you could be the next Tiger Woods, you’ll hit another 50 that will leave you scratching your head in amazement that you could hit a ball so poorly. But that’s why golfers adore the game, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
So, of course I’ll be watching the HSBC Golf Championship with great interest this month, and reminiscing about some of my greater achievements on the greens of south east England. Of which there are none of course, save one fine afternoon four years ago.
Three amigos and I took to the course with two golf carts, looking forward to an afternoon of banter and ‘legend in your own lunchtime’ on-course heroics. By the time we had reached the third hole, however, the children inside us has taken control of proceedings – which of course meant that the golf cart races had started.
Having putted out and returned to our cart, my partner and I noticed that our adversaries were sitting in their chariot at the bottom of a very steep hill, staring up at us bearing Cheshire cat grins.
‘How did you get down there?’ asked I, in bewilderment that our opponents had made it to the next tee so quickly.
‘We just drove down here’, was the highly unoriginal response that came back at me. ‘But don’t try it yourself; you’ll never make it down in one piece.’ The smirks grew even wider as the trap was set.
Less than a second after the front wheels of the cart had gone over the brow of the hill I knew I was in trouble. What my chums had neglected to tell me, of course, was that having felt the extreme moisture of the long grass (this may well have been summer, but it was still England after all) and the lack of traction it offered to the threadbare tyres of our vehicles, they had inched their way towards the next tee at a snail’s pace.
In great mirth they had also not pointed out that from the bottom of the hill, the intended path from green to tee was much more visible (surprise, surprise it wasn’t down a sheer slope) or that some six feet behind them, ran an obscured river.
I’m sure by now you can imagine what happened next, especially if you happen to have watched any 1970s sitcoms or Only Fools and Horses re-runs this holiday season. I frantically slammed my foot onto the brakes and turned the steering wheel back up the hill, but this only resulted in the cart veering up onto two wheels, seemingly destined to tip over on top of me. I leapt from the vehicle, determined not to have the words ‘he was squashed by a golf cart’ penned into my obituary.
To my amazement the cart righted itself and completely stopped, motionless on the side of the hill. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, before observing the cart wasn’t quite perpendicular with the slope. The cart, with no brakes on, and no driver, wasn’t perpendicular with the steep, slippery slope.
By the time I’d lunged forward the cart was already inching backwards down the hill, mere yards from the river. I jumped back aboard and slammed my foot on the brakes.
But did I make it on time? Did I pull off the world’s greatest ever stunt trick in a golf cart? Or was I too late, and did in fact cause thousands of Dirhams of damage by sinking the cart in the river with two sets of golf clubs attached? See my Twitter (@TimeOutADEditor) this week where I’ll post a picture with the answer.
