The wild west saloon style capers of the Insane Championship Wrestling series have been described as ‘brutal, riotous chaos’ by wincing observers. Combatants are flung from balconies, hurled into bars and clattered by dustbin lids, while baying mobs bawl, bark and bellow amid a heaving, hollering environment of beer, sweat and blood. It’s just like an afternoon conference on The Herald sports desk to be honest.
Shuddering bell claps here, shattering body presses there, grapples, gouges, guddles and gropes everywhere? It’s a world away from the gentle decorum of the golf course. Then again, it does bear a striking resemblance to the boisterous bear pit of the mixed zone interview area during Open Championship week. Having been bitten by this wrestling bug, Lanarkshire golfer Ed Wood was probably branded insane for going along to one of the training schools put on by the organisers of the Glasgow-based series. “Golf and wrestling don’t really go hand in hand,” conceded Wood, whose stint in the training ring may have left his battered body “in bits” but strangely gave his golf game a new sense of focus.
These days, Wood is back competing on the domestic amateur scene after making a spontaneous leap into the professional ranks in 2011. In his very first event on the PGA EuroPro Tour that year, he was actually leading going into the final round but sagged to a closing 82 and plummeted down the order. “It was a dream start really but I was very ill-prepared for what was to come as I’d never experienced anything like that before,” reflected the 34-year-old. “I’d never achieved anything on the national amateur scene. I was made redundant at work and had a bit of spare cash from the pay off. I didn’t know what to do career wise. The job market wasn’t great and I didn’t have a heck of a lot of options so I decided to give the pro game a go. I didn’t have a plan and that was a big failing. It was more of a throw caution to the wind approach and there was no real structure.”
As finances dwindled, results tailed off and confidence eroded, Wood was walloped by a devastating personal blow when his best friend, Adam Bain, collapsed on the football pitch and died while playing for Gartcosh United amateurs. “The death of Adam took a lot out of everybody who was close to him,” said Wood. “I was so disillusioned by that and by the way I was playing at the time and the burden became too much.”
The professional life was binned and Wood was re-instated as an amateur. The wrestling, meanwhile, became an eye-opening, educational and occasionally excruciating experience.
“My back took a pounding from the throws and there were times when I couldn’t turn my head properly for three days,” added Wood. “When I was doing the wrestling training I quickly realised that you have to put so much trust in yourself. If someone is running at you and they are going to jump on top of you, you have to trust that they will do it properly and trust that you will react properly so you don’t hurt yourself. It led to me realising that one of the biggest failings of my pro career was that I simply didn’t trust what I was going to do. Nowadays, I never hit a shot unless I am 100 per cent committed to it. That outlook stemmed from the wrestling.”
Having notched his first order of merit win in the prestigious Cameron Corbett Vase at Haggs Castle last summer, Wood, along with former fellow professionals like Barry Hume and Euan McIntosh, is enjoying this second amateur coming. Those two aforementioned players have both secured a return to the Scotland international fray and Wood is targeting a similar elevation in 2017.
“There are probably 20 guys who the Scottish Golf selectors would want to pick before me but if I play to the level that I know I can, I have no doubts that I can get in the team and be an asset,” he said. “I don’t deserve to be in a team just because I was a pro. It has to be on merit.”
And what about the wrestling? “No more,” he declared. “There was a definite fear of hurting myself properly. I’m much safer on the golf course. But then again, people don’t shout fore these days do they?”
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