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09 September 2012

Statements of the obvious #9: Ivan Lendl on golf





So Ivan Lendl (Andy Murray’s coach, and ex-world tennis Number 1) is “having a ball playing golf”, as the Independent in London tells us in the middle paragraph pictured above.
     What is so amazing about that? Everyone who plays golf “has a ball”. Indeed it is hard to imagine playing the game without a ball. How might that work? You step up on the first tee, select the appropriate club and address the space where the ball would normally be sitting on its peg, waiting patiently for onward transmission down the centre of the fairway. Then what? Do you hit an air shot? Or pretend you are playing virtual golf, or head for the 19th for a well-earned pint of beer without bothering with the intervening eighteen holes?
     No, when heading out to the golf course you just make sure you “have a ball”.
     The same is true of rugby. Try playing that without a ball. Likewise with tennis, croquet or billiards—or even sex, as Goebbels presumably discovered from personal experience (unless, of course, he was actually female). As every British schoolboy who has spent time in the locker room after games knows (but perhaps Russians don’t, since they seem to prefer sport to games, so I will repeat it):

     Hitler had only one big ball.
     Rommel had two but very small.
     Himmler had something similar,
     But poor, old Go-balls had no balls at all.

(To be sung loudly and in company to the tune of Colonel Bogey)
    

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