What do we want? Fame and fortune. When do we want it? Now … right NOW. In fact, we want it quicker than that. What’s a quicker word for right now? Everywhere you turn, it’s celebrity this and superstar that, reality shows here and sing-athons there. We now live in a quite staggering society where all and sundry appear to have the kind of bewildering sense of entitlement that used to be the reserve of an unhinged Babylonian Prince. Personally, I blame the ruddy internet. Twitter, Facebook? You name it, everybody is consumed in their own little world of self-adoration and spend their days and nights drawn to the light of a touch-pad screen which at least proves, once and for all, that we are actually descended from moths.
Instant gratification is almost viewed as a basic human right. Of course, those of us who spend many an hour battering, clattering, howking and heaving at a golf ball know fine well that gratification in this game is far from instant. You may as well spend four hours tilling a field.
Here on the domestic front, we spend many an hour debating the future of the Scottish game. Where will our next touring player come from? Why does the amateur-to-professional transition continue to be riddled with perils? Do we give our youngsters too much too soon or do we not give them enough? Do young amateurs actually realise how hellishly difficult it is to make a career in the professional game in an era when the temptation to make the switch has never been greater? There are plenty of questions but not many answers. There is no magic formula, no secret to success and no one way to make it. It’s not the system, it’s the individual in this very individual pursuit. There are many ways to succeed and probably more to fail. Andrew Coltart, the former Ryder Cup player, and Catriona Matthew, who continues to carry the saltire on the global women’s stage at the age of 46, both made it to the top and, in their roles as members of Scottish Golf’s performance committee, they are keen to pass on countless pearls of wisdom to the next generation coming through. That’s if they are prepared to listen, of course. Coltart and Matthew both deal in straight talking and hard truths. Others can be blinded by a distorted sense of reality as eyes peer through rose-tinted spectacles.
“There is still too much of an influence on people from those who have no idea of what it’s like as a professional; the parents,” said Coltart. “It often goes back to parents and club members. They are stroking the egos. It’s often ‘you are wonderful, you are plus five, you’ll make a mint within a couple of years’ but when they are thrust into the real world they are not breaking 75. The members or parents know what the kid can do on their home course but they don’t know what it’s like to play a championship course in championship conditions. People do live their dreams through their children.”
We’ve probably all witnessed that at some point. A fidgeting faither on the touchline bawling remorselessly at his son playing football while turning the colour of a freshly creosoted fence is more the stuff of nightmares than dreams. In golf, meanwhile, there are plenty of overwhelming parents who scrutinise their offspring’s every drive, chip and putt like some lab technician gazing at a microbiological culture in a petri dish but only succeed in heaping the kind of pressure on shoulders that would have had Atlas reaching for some soothing embrocation. In all sports, the expectations of the misguided can become stifling while an inflated sense of a player’s ability is, more often than not, deluged by a monsoon of cold, driving reality eventually.
“They (parents and golfers) have to be realistic,” added Matthew, who is very much an advocate of keeping more players in the amateur game longer. “They seem to think if they are the best in Scotland then they will make it. But Scotland is a very small part of the professional golfing world. You have to be dominating at a British level and at a European level. If you are not, then you are kidding yourself if you think you’re going to make it. If you are not used to winning in the amateur game, I don’t understand how people think they will be able to beat these people in the professional game. It’s harsh but that’s the reality.”
It’s tough at the top … but it’s even tougher at the bottom. In a world where the fast-track nature of television’s X-Factor is worshipped, there are only a few who have the necessary X-Factor required to make it in the truly global game of golf.
And on that sobering note, Merry Christmas a’body.
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