As one Irish sportswriter once wrote 'Golf isn't the Masters. The Masters is better than golf. The Masters is a television programme.'
Here are the five most annoying people you'll encounter on a golf course.
The lad who was always shite at pitch and putt but insisted he was much better at golf
During the formative pitch and putt phase, this guy was invariably the whipping boy among your party of regulars. However, he had an explanation for his failings which was simultaneously bold and self-aggrandising.
Pitch and putt, he insisted, was too much of a rinky dink sport for a stick-man of his power and booming long game.
He is, moreover, forever being foiled by those tiny, pock-marked, unkempt greens.
Give him a driver and a long par 5 and he'll leave the rest of you jokers standing. Also, give him a pristine, expertly manicured surface and he'll morph into Brad Faxon and will start rolling them in from all angles.
This hypothesis rarely survives his first game of actual big boy golf.
After his 100+ round, he may try another excuse, suggesting that the golf course in question wasn't to his liking. Its conditioning wasn't up to the scratch for the likes of him.
He'd prefer somewhere like Augusta.
Quote: 'I'm not used to these greens. Prefer them much faster.'
The old man who practically lives at the course and is always eyeing you suspiciously
After asking you your name, he'll inquire as to the identity of your father. You're convinced he's worked out that you're not a member.
You spend the round trying to avoid him and his gaze.
Unless he's a bollocks, he'll let you play out the round. You never actually see him hit a shot. He seems to divide his time between relaxing in the club house and whizzing around in a golf buggy.
Is a retired solicitor.
Quote: 'Does he (your Dad) work above in the Department of the Environment?'
The shite player who is forever losing count of how many shots he hit
Penalty shots, fresh air swings and unsuccessful attempts to escape bunkers tend to be forgotten about/deliberately ignored when it comes to totting up his scores.
If his playing partners are in a charitable mood or significantly ahead of him on the scorecard they may choose to indulge him.
Quote: Put me down for an '8'.
Your obsequious playing partner who is so paranoid about holding people up that he lets through some of the slowest groupings imaginable
The issue of 'playing through' remains one of the most contentious in the field of golfing etiquette. It causes untold frustrations and no doubt is responsible for most of the incidents of fisticuffs on a golf course.
There's the slow lad who stubbornly refuses to let the people behind through. Always annoying.
There's the quick lad behind who grows impatient and drives into the group in front. Not merely but potentially dangerous.
But one character who has slipped under the radar is the overly chivalrous and polite playing partner, who lives in abject terror of slowing anyone down.
He ends up waving everyone through. Ye spend more time leaning on your clubs watching groups pass by than ye do actually playing golf.
In the majority of cases, the people you have agreed to let play through, who had been both hitting the ball like Rory McIlroy when chasing ye down, will morph into low-level hackers when passing through.
Quote: 'We can relax once they're in front of us'
The lad who has to leave after the 14th hole because he's lost all his golf balls
If you rely solely on TV for your sense of what the sport of golf is about, you might presume that losing golf balls is a rare event.
When you've played low level, high handicap golf as a teenager, you know it is an integral part of the golf experience.
There is always one lad, usually cursed with either a violent hook or a debilitating slice, who is prodigious in the field of lost golf balls.
There is usually a dispute between playing partners as to where they should be fishing about for the elusive Titleist.
The hitter of the errant tee shot will invariably assume that his drive went a veritable mile and was also, despite its current elusiveness, reasonably straight - or at least not that far off the beaten path. If only he could find the damn thing he might be in a good position.
His playing partner will adopt a much more pessimistic attitude and will start ferreting about for the ball in deep, deep rough in an area which is depressingly close to the tee box, ignoring his fellow player who argues, somewhat plaintive, that ' it surely went further than this?'
Wishful thinking is central to his downfall.
Quote: 'It was a yellow one'.
