Golf is, I believe, the saddest of obsessions: perhaps the most cruel form of insanity. What pleasure any sane person could get from hitting that stupid little ball into a hole is something that I am entirely unable to understand. My house overlooks the new Point Wesley links and I see the poor idiots out there almost from first light quite clearly oblivious to everything else. Rain or biting wind, or both, it seems to make no difference. Healthy it is not and they have absolutely no other topic of conversation.
I am well aware that golf and money go together. There are ridiculous, and entirely undeserved, rewards for the few who have taken this obsession to the last extreme. Swingeing expenses for the rest. I can’t complain though. The mere proximity of my house to the new links has increased its value several fold. There is no shortage of fools in this world. I seem to be one of the very few with their heads properly screwed on.
Yet, having said that, I must admit to taking a particular interest in the exploits and successes of one golfer, Thea Brooks. Mainly because I have known her from her childhood. You cannot have helped hearing about her. The Brooks were our neighbours in Waikino and Athena, as she then was, went through school, drifted might be a better word, in the same class as my oldest boy. She was in and out of our house almost like one of the family.
But who would have thought that she would take up golf and that she would reach international status. The Brooks were probably the least sporting of families, part of the influx of earth-people and small craftsmen into the former gold-mining settlement in the mid-seventies. The Martha Mine had been closed twenty years, the stamper battery that gave Waikino its reason for existence was gone, the Ohinemuri, no longer a sewer, was again flowing clear and non-toxic. The resulting long- empty houses, cheap to buy and cheap to rent, were the lure for these people. They came all of a rush and most of them seemed to live on next to nothing. Suddenly we were outnumbered by a bunch of weidos as we thought. Those of us who had been there for years were not very happy about it but mostly they caused no trouble. Soon they became just part of the scenery.
The Brooks, like most of them, held a motley portfolio of new-age ideas and dabbled in the more esoteric reaches of alternative medicine. Don’t get me wrong, the Brooks were nice people, not into drugs like a few, do anything for you, but every bit as strange as the rest. And Athena was no different. Even in regulation high-school uniform, she managed to strongly suggest the offspring of John Lennon and some gypsy fortune-teller although that could be because her own mother looked exactly the part. Always bare-footed, tassles everywhere, pirate-size gold earrings, a jangle of cheap bangles, and the regulation head scarf to make the picture complete. Though I suspect that the dark tone of her skin was more from Polynesian than from Romany blood.
Athena’s penchant was for hugging trees. It was enjoying a great vogue at the time. I had her on about it on a number of occasions and her standard come-back was always, “ You talk to your plants, so what’s the difference?”
Of course I talk to my plants! She couldn’t seem to understand that talking to plants has scientific backing. Hugging trees doesn’t! I can’t remember where I read it but any number of trials have shown that plants grow much faster and are much healthier if you talk to them. And they like music too. I have run trials in my green-house and find that, while they respond to almost any music, their preference is for the Baroque. Mine too as it happens.
Most people find it hard to accept the idea of sentience in plants. Its hard to understand why that should be. Many plants have a dramatic and immediate response to touch. Acacia trees in Africa send a chemical alarm signal to the surrounding acacias when they are browsed by giraffes. These other acacias get busy right away manufacturing bitter substances to make their leaves unpalatable. Plants are much more aware than people generally realise.
Somewhere along the line, Athena has become Thea and her public image has been made over. She has clearly had lessons not only in golfing but also in deportment and grooming. She has acquired a tribe of hangers-on, a manager, people to handle her publicity, minders to protect her from an admiring public. They have tried hard to play down the fact that she plays bare-footed but that is the very thing that has caught the public interest. They claim that it is not an attention- seeking ploy but necessary due to an ankle injury in childhood that continues to give trouble. Athena in a careless moment said that it was kinder to the grass. I may be cynical but I find it hard to accept her as a golfing prodigy. Even I, who prefer to know nothing about golf , can see that she is no great shakes as a golfer.
You will be aware that she is being called ‘Lady Luck’. Luck seems to follow her and bad luck dog her opponents. While her drives from the tee do not cover all that much distance in the air they roll for a seemingly miraculous distance. Others on the same round tend to find that their ball stays put exactly where it lands and to have their ball land in the rough is for it never to be seen again. There have been protests, accusations that she has to be using non-regulation balls. Tests have always proved otherwise. The fuss simply keeps her name before the public. Some disgruntled players have asked her to swap balls with them during a round but it makes no difference to the outcome. I have actually seen this happen on television and noticed that Athena rubbed the exchange ball thoroughly with her hands as if to give it her scent.
There have even been charges of witchcraft with her unconventional family background dragged up and to see one of her longer putts change course seemingly of its own volition could easily give one that impression or again when her opponents, surely impossible to miss, putt stops at the very brink of the cup as if afraid to fall in.
Her behaviour before a tournament has given weight to these witchcraft claims. While every other player will take the opportunity to play a few pre-tournament rounds on an unfamiliar course, Athena\Thea simply walks once over the length of each hole, barefooted naturally, apparently taking the lie of the land and muttering to herself. She insists on doing this seemingly inadequate preparation strictly by herself. She is so secretive about it that many people are firmly convinced that she is casting spells at this time. They are wrong.
I am satified that I can fairly claim to have laid the foundation of Athena’s success. It appears that I sowed much better than I knew back in those Waikino days. Athena’s secret is, of course, the grass. Grass can make a big difference to the rolling resistance. It can help a ball along or it can hinder it. Grass can divert or stop a putt although a close-shaven green must find helping Athena a Herculean task. Athena is not muttering to herself. She is making herself agreeable and gaining the co-operation of the link’s permanent residents.
I myself, have achieved quite a good standing with the plants in my own garden, they’re family and naturally they love me, but Athena has taken communication so much further and has developed an instant rapport with complete strangers that I can only envy.
And I say, “Good on her,” although I feel that most of the credit should really be mine. I was the one who pointed her in the right direction. She’d be hard put to hug a million clumps of grass.