US Edition
Golf is good for your mental sharpness, especially when you get older, and playing the game can even stave off dementia. That’s the conclusion of a new report from no less an authority than the University of Eastern Finland.
Indeed, these new findings on golf as a health activity rather than simply an excuse to get to the golf club bar are part of a growing body of evidence that the game is at least as good for your psyche and your body as porridge or a wee dram, probably a lot better.
Circle Health, Britain’s biggest private hospital group, says there are ten major health benefits to playing golf, including boosting your vitamin D levels (from spending more time in the sun), improving concentration and mental health and sleeping better.
In Melbourne, Australia, the Department of Health promotes golf for fitness, weight loss, stress reduction, meeting new friends and even “developing a sense of community connectedness”.
You don’t have to spend long on the internet to find that there are apparent physical and mental health benefits to all kinds of activities, even darts and tiddlywinks. But the golf stuff rings a lot truer than the claims for other less strenuous games. There’s plenty of walking in the open air – unlike darts and tiddlywinks – and hitting the ball with the extraordinary precision you see in professional games must take a bit of doing.
All of which makes me wonder if golf could be the sport for me, because I quite like the idea of living longer and not going bananas before I croak. Sports-wise, I love watching football, cricket, a bit of tennis, once played some rugby and in later years, archery, which I rather liked, but not enough to take it up.
As far as golf goes, even though I was quite good at mini-golf as a child, the real game has always seemed to me terribly static and boring, as well as having an irritating language I don’t understand along with unappealing connotations of stuffy golf clubs full of too many older men like, well, me. I even have a standard dad joke about golf – “That’s the one with the long rackets, isn’t it?”.
A metaphor for life
Prompted by the University of Eastern Finland findings, I book a meeting at a nearby golf club, Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham, London. Soon I find myself in a refreshingly unstuffy clubhouse chatting with Aaron Grantham, the club’s pleasingly thoughtful and unstuffy chairman. He is even kind enough to smile slightly when I crack my long rackets joke.
Aaron, whose day job is as a chief information officer in a City financial technology company, listens to why I’d come and nods sagely. “I agree that golf is wonderful for any of us, especially those over 60, but I do rather think doing anything is quite a good thing,” he says.
With that caveat – that anything you do when you’re over 60 is better than watching daytime TV – Grantham continues: “Golf is a fantastic game. It’s a good way to get to know people. And for me it’s a good metaphor for life, as well. The weather isn’t always good. The ball might look like it’s in a good position but when you get to it, it’s actually not and you’ve got to make the best of it. Sometimes you’ll do a rubbish shot and it ends up being really good, sometimes you’ll do a good shot and it ends up being really bad. And that’s a bit like life. Sometimes the best things you do don’t turn out quite right.
“Mentally, I feel good playing golf,” he says. “When I was a younger player, I’d get quite angry – I did a brilliant putt and it didn’t go in… I did a fantastic drive but it went into the trees.’ But now I think, you know what, that’s the game. So I think accepting that is very healthy. In terms of fitness, I also feel it’s very good. By the end of a round, you feel you’ve achieved something. Even the worst game of golf is sometimes better than the best day in the office.”
A satisfying thunk
On the course, we are joined by the club’s full-time pro for the past 40 years, Peter Buchan, who in his playing days was a real golfer – the type you hear about in incomprehensible sport reports on Radio 5.
It still isn’t easy for him to appreciate the extent of my cluelessness about the sport’s lingo. “This course is very tight,” he says as we traipse out through the November drizzle. “You don’t have a lot of room for offline drives. The drive up the first is a par five, so you’ve really got to get it on the fairway.” Sorry, I almost say, I’m hearing a lot of words, but I’m not sure what they mean.
I have to admit that at this stage I am getting nervous. I am physically strong – the descendant of generations of large Ukrainian farmers – but my hand-eye co-ordination is rubbish. I remain haunted 50 years on by missing a crucial open goal while playing hockey as my stick failed to connect with the ball by about two feet and making contact instead with the jaw of a teammate.
We get the ball on the tee. The very relaxed Buchan slightly adjusts my stance and gives me some calm advice on how to swing the club. All the same, this is surely going to be about 8 on the Richter scale of embarrassment. My main concern is missing the ball and lofting a chunk of Strawberry Hill towards the heavens.
Which is exactly what happens on the second swing. (The first time, I made no contact with anything. “Have you ever seen worse,” I ask Peter. “No.”)
But Grantham and Buchan don’t seem too worried as I hurriedly tread in my kilogram of divot. “Have you ever had to throw somebody out for being too clumsy?” I ask as I line up my third attempt. “We have had incidents of people who perhaps expressed a bit too much emotion at a particular golf shot and they’ve had to be spoken to. But nobody has been thrown out for being too clumsy, no.”
So I take my third swing, and to my absolute delight – I truly don’t understand how – it whacks the ball with an unbelievably satisfying thunk, which vibrates right through the long racket thing as I watch the little fellow fly at serious speed down the fairway. “Wow, that’s really good,” says Buchan. “That’s about 100 yards. Perfectly respectable. Well done. Now let’s try again.”
Which I do, and blow me down, the exact same thing happens. It is utterly thrilling and I feel I could stay all afternoon. I have a lot on my mind the afternoon I try golf, and what is interesting is that I forgot every bit of it while I am so focused on the game.
“Yes, you’re concentrating on the ball and it’s always the case that you forget all the other dramas in your life,” Buchan says as we return to the clubhouse. “All you think about later is the balls you did hit, not the ones you didn’t, or the lumps of turf you churned up.”
Later, I ask Grantham how long before you don’t make a fool of yourself.
“I’ve been playing for 15 years and I’ve yet to not make a fool of myself every now and again,” he says. “But you could come in cold and within a couple of months be able to pick up a golf club, hit the ball reasonably regularly, get round the course and play a game of golf. You wouldn’t be very good, but you could get round.”
Generally in life, I feel I’ve had enough of learning curves. I like doing things really well or not at all. But in the case of golf, my afternoon at the very friendly Strawberry Hill club – which has no waiting list for membership, incidentally – I think golf could be a rare exception to my rule.