Richard Osley

Published: 20 June, 2013
by RICHARD OSLEY

PURISTS shall not agree and will probably think me something of a pleb.

They will talk about storming comebacks through the leaderboard, impossible putts and mesmerising approach shots plucked from the sky.

But golf, for the armchair viewers who looked at the cost of going to a golf club and went to the pub instead, is usually at its most exciting when somebody is choking as the final hole approaches.

The enjoyment at a moment of extreme failure may be cruel – the Germans have a word for it, Bernardlangerfreude. It’s like giggling at your buddy for spilling blueberry squash on a prized suit.

But it’s true: there’s nothing quite like seeing someone miss the cup by a fifth of an inch, their whole championship collapsing in front of their horrified red eyes. That’s full technicolour, 3D, sporting drama right there.

 And yet this miserly attitude was all of a sudden blown apart by Justin Rose at the US Open on Sunday. His serene takeover in Pennsylvania was almost a thing of beauty and executed without the need for an opponent’s humiliation.

It should be the kind of event which inspires young people, the ones who have yet to develop the cynical strand which makes them rewind sporting bungles until the VHS gets speckled.

But if it does inspire them, what do they do? If there is a 10-year-old on a council estate in Somers Town who watched or read about Rose right now, what do they actually do? Chances are the closest they will get to golfing glory is clocking it through the windmill by Southend pier on a seaside beano or thwacking it around Alexandra Palace pitch and putt, taking a mulligan at the tricky slopey third next to the bus stop.

This is not to say that all golfers went to Eton; there were too many future cabinet ministers to get in there. Clearly the odd golfer has known tough times. But if Rose – and for that matter Rory McIlroy, who has shown us that winners can spend their days living all of life’s dreams: lifting golf trophies, starring in mindless banking ads and watching Wozniacki grunting – is to prove an inspiration, there needs to be an avenue for it. Golf is not taught in PE, presumably because it does not get the kids lungs blushing. And  it’s too expensive for most of us beyond that.

Close your eyes and you see footballers on the course every afternoon and bankers, lawyers and successful retirees there on a Sunday morning. And that takes us back to the first sentence.

Golf needs more plebs. We might be a bit loud, we might wear the wrong shoes, but we want to play.

Somebody needs to go up to the hedgerows that keep us out and shout: “Tear down this wall Mr Golfychov.”

Until then we’ll keep watching from the sofa, locked in a negative spiral, rotting our sanity while hoping to watch the drama of something going wrong, waiting for a drive into the lake, a ball hitting a tree or the special prize, the holy grail: a missed two-foot putt.