I WOULDN’T go as far as saying, “it’s cancer,” but it is a disease.
Maybe it’s a blight. At the very least, it’s a potential embarrassment with possible catastrophic, long-term consequences.
And it’s not like it’s terminal … I’m not going to die from it, anyway.
Ladies and gents, I am a hoarder. I’m a collector.
At first it was just chairs for the outside table. When people threw their chairs out in council clean up, I’d grab them, paint them different colours and we’d use them. If there were better chairs on offer than the ones we had, I’d get them and toss the others. Now we’ve got lovely, colourful outside chairs.
Then one glorious day, I noticed a golf bag.
Being a golfer, clearly I had to stop and check it out because as my Mum says, “There’s no harm in looking.”
It turns out there was harm because that little peek opened a whole new world. Forget Pandora’s Box, this was Pandora’s bag! And inside was a putter. A PING. Left handed, a PING is a trophy to a collector like me, especially if it’s the patent-pending Anser 2 variety.
So I polished it to within an inch of its discarded life and admired my warped self in the reflection. “Why?!” I cried. “Whyyyyyyy had God made me right handed?!”
In the end, it became a gift to my cacky-handed brother – though I didn’t tell him it came from a rubbish pile.
One day there was a council clean up in one of the more affluent suburbs nearby, so I trawled. If I had a more generic, modern vehicle it wouldn’t be so memorable. But I don’t. Mine is a 1966 Holden station wagon with venetian blinds and a one-piece roof rack I found on someone’s rubbish pile. People remember the car.
As I cruised past a significant pile, this old woman walking her dog said to me, “Back again, are yers?” It was humiliating. Thankfully, there were no old golf bags on that pile because I would have had to stop. There was a beauty a couple of streets over, though. Not one, but two flatsticks. Two! A Power Action (which pulls to the left a bit) and the inimitable Knox [below left], which is exactly the same as the Power Action, but pushes to the right. They’re beautiful, especially once they’d been loved up with the Brasso.
But they didn’t even compare to the day I went past Vinnies in Cooma, New South Wales. It’s a big one – bigger than Brookvale, even. In the bin of golf clubs out the front was a putter. This thing sang to me, it’s the only way to describe it. There were two others in the bin, but they were like trolls compared to this beauty hidden behind a lifetime of neglect. Remember when Annie Jones was on Neighbours and she was Plain Jane Superbrain, but you knew she’d blossom? Well that’s how this was for me. Wow. Wowsiewowowowowow!
I couldn’t wait to get home and get some polish on it [above]. On the way home, all I could think about was a night on the buffer. The wait to use it on the course was unbearable.
Oh, my. What a day it was. It was Long Reef Golf Club on the edge of Sydney’s northern beaches. Conditions were perfect, the course immaculate, and greens like freshly waxed tabletops. It’s how golf should be.
The three-putt on the first was understandable, as was the one on the fourth. The three-putt on seven was probably user error, but then she sang to me, this un-named beauty. She glowed and she shined and she didn’t actually get any long putts in, but she will. Eventually.
Unless I find another to replace her, and the way things are going, there’s every chance of that!
