Dumped, Actually(52)

‘So, let’s go grab ourselves a cart and get out there,’ Benedict tells me, striding off. This leaves me and the young Asian man standing with the golf clubs, staring dumbly at each other for a moment, before he picks up Benedict’s set and scuttles off after him. I have to carry mine, of course. I don’t get my own Asian slave. This is something I feel profoundly grateful for.

I’m going to need several baths when I get back from this place to wipe the stench of privilege and bigotry off myself, before it stinks up my flat.

I follow Benedict and his caddy over to a long row of gleaming white golf carts, plop my Callaways in the rack on the back and sit myself in the passenger seat.

‘Off we go!’ Benedict roars, and puts his foot down, transporting us quickly across a carefully tended grass expanse to the first hole of eighteen.

‘I’ll tee off,’ he tells me, climbing out of the cart. The young Asian man – whose name I really must learn soon – brings out a large driving club, a small black tee and a shiny white golf ball. He hurries over to the patch of ground next to a sign with a giant number one on it and busies himself placing the ball on the tee. All the time he does this, Benedict is staring down the course with a meaningful look on his face. The caddy then hands Benedict the club and steps back.

‘A good three hundred and twenty yards this one,’ he tells me. ‘It’s a fine way to start a round.’

He then spends a good forty or fifty hours repeatedly making practice swings next to the teed-up ball. At least that’s what it feels like. If England players took this long to take a penalty, they might win a few more of the shoot-outs, because the opposition would have died of boredom.

Eventually, Benedict whacks the little white ball with his big black stick and receives a hearty clap from the caddy. I join in, because it seems like the appropriate thing to do.

‘Straight down the middle, sir,’ the caddy says. ‘Well done.’

‘Thank you, Hung,’ Benedict replies, not actually looking at him for one second. Poor Hung might as well be invisible. Which, in a very real and deliberate sense – for the people who belong to this golf club – he absolutely is.

My turn.

Oh, fabulous.

I tentatively rummage around in the front pocket of my golf bag, retrieving a tee and a ball in much the same way as Hung did.

I then copy his movements over by the big number one sign, and stick my tee in the ground, with the ball lightly placed on top.

Then I go back and select a club from the bag.

I choose one of the big bulbous ones, feeling that a big bulbous one is the right one to pick for the first whack of the little white ball. The skinny metal ones are for later, and the short flat one is for the green. I know this, for I have seen it done thusly on Sky Sports.

‘Going with the big dog, eh?’ Benedict nods approvingly as I walk over to the tee. ‘Brave man!’

I look more closely at the club I have chosen, and it is enormous, of that there is no doubt. It’s like somebody has stuck a pole into a big black whoopee cushion. On it are written the words ‘Big Bertha’.

I fear I may have bitten off more than I can chew here. I’m sure Bertha would agree.

Just because I saw Benedict doing it, I take a few experimental swings of the club, trying my hardest to remember what I did all those years ago at the pitch and putt when I swung the tiny plastic club, on my way to that victorious fourth place.

Something about squaring your shoulders, rounding your hips, thrusting your bottom out and bending your knees, I believe it was.

Or maybe that was how you’re supposed to prevent haemorrhoids. I can’t quite remember.

After three rather half-hearted attempts at swinging the Big Bertha, I figure I’d better get on with it, and step up to the tee.

Right, then.

Bottom out.

Shoulders square.

Knees bent.

Hips round.

Was I supposed to do something with my elbows? I’m sure I was.

Are they supposed to be in or out? If it’s out, I’ll look like a chicken, but if it’s in, I’ll look like somebody in dire need of a toilet. We’ll go with out, I think. Golf people don’t seem too concerned with looking like plonkers, given the way they dress – I’m sure they have no qualms with resembling barnyard fowl, as long as it gives them a good drive off the tee.

And here we go, then . . .

One. Two. Three.

WOOSH.

I miss the ball completely – which is exactly what we were expecting to happen. Let’s make no bones about it.

Such is the weight of the Big Bertha, I am facing in completely the opposite direction to the ball by the time I manage to get my body to stop moving. Inertia is a bitch, in such circumstances.

Benedict Montifore looks quite smug. That’s got to be some kind of measure of a man, hasn’t it? That he’d take actual pleasure in the mistakes of someone he knows has no experience of playing golf. I am zero competition to him, and yet he’s completely unable to show anything but smugness about my lack of ability.

Hung is pursing his lips together and trying not to laugh. We’ll let him off, though, as he has it bad enough already. I’m only being forced to spend a few hours with Benedict. This poor bugger probably has to see him on a weekly basis.

Giving them both an awkward smile, I square up to the tee again, and take a deep breath. If I can just hit the damn ball, that’d be enough. Even if it only goes ten feet, at least that’s something.