11th May 2013
So, what am I saying? It’s my last wood of the match. We’ve won our game easily. The team have won the match. It’s cold and wet. The jack is full length and we are six down. If we stay six down it will not make the slightest difference to anything or anybody. Except me, it seems. Because, standing on the mat, I can sense a determination come over me.
About half way through the game, I had come up with swing-thought No. 4,365. This one is about getting a whole sense of a successful swing. All the bits, and none of the bits. In the thought there is the distinct feeling that the hand is at the bottom of the swing and that it needs to describe the full curve. No cords.
Also in the thought there is the rhythm. A strong sense of the rhythm; and a strong sense that the rhythm is not only the right rhythm but a lovely, lazy version of the right rhythm. So, no bits except the thing about the hand describing the full bottom of the curve, and the rhythm, of course; but no other bits, just a sense of the whole thing. And a sense that this is the swing that is going to make the wood do exactly what I want it to do.
And since having swing thought No. 4,365 the woods had started to do exactly what I wanted them to do, and we had pulled away to establish a commanding lead. It wasn’t just me, of course. The whole squad had played well, in that effective way when at least one of them plays well every end.
So, it’s my last wood of the match and we are six down. My first wood had hit the spots and the rhythm had been good, but I know that because it was a long way and it was wet and I was desperate to reach, I had added to the natural amount of oomph in the swing. But even so, it hadn’t gone that far through and so this time I knew that all I had to do was to re-imagine the sense of the whole thing . . . and “trust”.
So, I’m on the mat and I immediately get a sense of the whole swing: I’m in a bubble. It’s the first time this season. I’m standing still and relaxed. I can see the spots, I can see the curve, and I can sense the rhythm. Just to make sure, I take a breath (apparently, your muscles can’t tense on the out-breath!)
It is not until after the game is over – we’ve shaken hands with the opposition, smiled conspiratorially at each other, and I’m wandering alone around the green picking up the “furniture” – that I start to wonder why I cared so much about putting that wood close and killing the “six down”.
It’s complex. Both elements of the “six down” phrase matter. If it had been one or two down I could not have mustered the intensity. Three down might have done it. Four, definitely. Any amount “up” and I would have gone through the motions. A skip has a pride in preventing a big score.
Wanting the dejection afflicting the opposition to find no relief is also there; as is giving your own squad one last reason to smile. These are to do with the future: the next game; the next time we play this lot.
And once the intensity starts to muster, there is the intense pleasure of playing a good shot, of playing the “perfect shot”. This is to do with the past. The past that is full of now undistinguishable memories of failed shots, of countless humiliations, of the anguish of not knowing “why” the wood won’t go where you want it to go – the misery of being “no good”. Every time the wood goes where you want it to go and you know that it wasn’t a fluke it is another victory over the past: that horrible, incompetent past.
And when the wood lands near the jack – and the disaster is averted, and the smiles are back, and there’s a sigh and a slump in the opponents – there’s the dawning pleasure in realising once more that now pressure is a good thing. Granted, the pressure on this occasion was of the gentle variety, but you only have to consider for an instant the consequences for your peace of mind of not putting the wood close and averting the “six down” to know as a certainty that it was, nevertheless, “pressure”. And the pressure is now a good thing. It used to be a hated thing, the thing that made you crack, the thing that made you hate yourself for being “no good”, for never ever being “any good”.
Back in the changing room I’m swapping banter and get that feeling of being ridiculously pleased. It’s my birthday and I have an engagement to meet and I am so relieved that I’ll be going to dinner simply feeling pleased. Later, I ask my daughter if she notices when I’ve lost. She says she doesn’t, except to say that I talk about being moody after losing without ever being moody. I like that. It makes me feel grown up to realise that after losing it feels inside as if I’m sulking miserably but on the outside I am at least affable.
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