27th July
I arrive at the green (we’re away) and I’m in a confident, dare I say, cocky mood following yesterday’s win. Ridiculously, I get a bit uppity because they have started the preliminaries even though there’s 10 minutes to go before kick-off.
This is a throwback to the days when I had to take my kids to the bowls, which would sometimes mean that I would cut it fine getting to the green on time, and then I’d get “looks” from blokes whose chief task that morning had been to decide whether it was going to be warm enough to go without a vest, and even then would have probably asked their devoted spouse: “Do you think I need to wear a vest, dear?”. Of course, they were just a little anxious that I wouldn’t turn up at all, and my guilt-ridden interpretation did them all an injustice. I don’t know why I got uppity this time. I need to drop it.
When we got under way, I was in the same form as the night before: I played the first few ends with control, verve and complete confidence. It was fortunate for us that I had found my form at last because my front two were dire – again!
On the 5th end I could feel myself start to wobble. My front two still hadn’t managed a half decent wood between them; my “third” was starting to mutter about them discontentedly, and his own form was suffering; and, worst of all, the bits of luck that are always floating around had chosen that moment to randomly collect on their shore. I bowled my first bad wood.
I’m not going to write about the rest of the game because it was too tortuously awful an experience – relatively speaking, of course. Suffice to say that we lost, and that my lovely, lovely form deserted me, leaving me feeling abandoned and bereft.
These are strong words, I know, but I think they accurately describe how I felt after the match and for a couple more days. Not for the first time I was intrigued at the strength of the emotional response I can have after undertaking what to all intents and purposes is a fairly gentle pastime.
On Tuesday I had a call from my golf pupil and so took the opportunity to ask if he felt similarly strong emotions after losing. Between us we managed to distinguish between losing, and losing and playing badly. We agreed that the trigger for the emotions to do with “loss” was not, ironically, losing but playing badly.
So why does playing badly trigger these particular emotions? I think it starts with the fact that competition tests your nerve, your courage, your reaction to pressure. And when you play badly, it is your nerve that has failed; the little boy in you has failed to be “brave”, and you have cracked under pressure.
Why this sense of failure should trigger feelings of abandonment and bereftness is more difficult to understand. For me, the phrase: “you have let yourself down” is helpful if you consider that the “you” and the “yourself” are separate. “Yourself” is the person the world gets to see via your deeds and words. “You” is the inner person who is responsible for choosing and then delivering those words and deeds. When you play badly, the outer person has to take the humiliation but it’s the inner person’s “fault”, so to speak. So you feel let down, abandoned and bereft.
Notwithstanding this psycho-babble explanation, all I really know is that they are strong emotions and that they go deep, to somewhere fundamental.
We had a match on the Wednesday against our local rivals and I was determined to use my ponderings on emotions to my advantage. I decided that I would remind myself continually through the game that I was good at this, that I loved being good, that I loved playing with a bit of swagger, and that I loved it most when I was playing well and the chips were down and I had the opportunity to be heroic. I tried to enrol my “third” in my scheme by requesting that he also played with a sense of fun and adventure. He nodded in agreement but looked a little puzzled and unconvinced.
For the first time this season my front two played well (a slight change of personnel helped) and we ended up easy winners.
The following Saturday we were again at home to the division’s top team and we thrashed them. I played like a dream and still haven’t stopped smiling.
The following Wednesday, I played a singles against my “third”. That’s for next time.
No comments yet.