Free Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia by Tom Cox Page A

London, NW1 3HP
    IF MY FIRST performance as a pro golfer had been something of a let-down, I at least felt I had made an impact. Obviously, being known as That Bloke Whose Golf Bag Smelled of Wee or That Bloke Who Played the Wrong Ball – or, more probably, both – wasn’t quite the sort of notoriety I’d envisaged the previous summer, but it was important not to be picky at this early stage. And while I’d hoped that my thirty-one minutes of legal play might have been commemorated by more than the ‘D/Q’ alongside my name on the Euro Pro Tour website, it wasn’t my fault if the people at Guinness were a touch on the fickle side (I wasn’t quite sure what made ‘Shortest Ever Pro Golf Tournament Debut’ any less of a record than, say, the officially recognised ‘Shortest Computer Instruction Manual’ category).
    I had been the subject of a freak sporting occurrence. I couldn’t blame myself for that, could I? OK, well maybe I could blame myself a little bit, but in the days that followed I found myself in a surprisingly positive state of mind. As Michael and Grant had told me, even as a non-qualifier I was still likely to get invited to other Europro Tour events. The hope of The Open remained, too. I would have a nervous wait to hear about all that, but I think I’d known, ever since I embarked on my golfing quest, that it was always going to be a matter of playing it slightly by ear. That was OK: I could ‘do’ flexible, as anyone who had watched my still somewhat undisciplined practice routines would testify. Besides, it was April – a golfing month when, even in the face of an uncertain future, it’s hard not to be optimistic.
    Not only is April the time when the golf season begins in earnest, it’s also when The Masters, the game’s most sumptuous tournament, is played, with its greener than green fairways and concordantly coloured winner’s jacket. The truth is that an archetypal April in British golf is a time of winter greens, muddy tees and hip flasks. But it takes only one look at Augusta National, where the US Masters is played – one snatch of its ever-present birdsong, one glimpse of its blooming azaleas or its legendary water hazard, Rae’s Creek – to give the most pessimistic, soggy golfer the deep-seated conviction that summer is here, and from now on everything is going to be OK. Even in my lost golfing years, the tournament had still excited me. My Best Shots of the Masters video had been one of the few survivors of my Great Golf Video Purge of 1996, and ten years on, as I fished it out of a box of other arcane golfing paraphernalia 1 in my loft, I gave silent thanks to my former self for his foresight.
    At the time of writing, it is not possible to buy a new copy of Best Shots of the Masters on the Internet, but you can get a used one on amazon.co.uk for £1.23. It is, all told, not the most sought-after golf video of all time, and I for one am not holding my breath for the lavishly packaged DVD reissue. Released in 1988 – the year I was first seduced by The Masters – and presented by the veteran golf pundit Renton Laidlaw, who could ooze more respect for Augusta only if he got down on his hands and knees and began to slurp gently from Rae’s Creek, it is peppered with such ‘Did-he-really-say-that?’ type statements as: ‘It was in 1983 that the club first allowed the professional players in The Masters to use their own tour caddies [cue shot of former Masters champion George Archer’s wife, Elizabeth, in a white boiler suit], even if, ahem , she happened to be a woman .’ In fact, let’s not beat around the bush here: it’s appalling. Fawning, muzaky, creakingly edited. My own copy is even worse, in that it’s so worn that it now features coverage of a rarely reported snowstorm that interrupted Seve Ballesteros’s victory in 1983.
    My illogical love of