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Sports

Golf from the 'other' side
For centuries now, ever since Noah launched his ark, folks have been doing all kinds of things from the wrong side and some find a whole lot of fun in it. Golfers all over the world have a tendency to do things backwards as well, starting from which side of the ball they play.

Interestingly, The Royal Colombo GC is reported to have more left-handed golfers than any other club in the world. More than 25% of us play golf standing on the 'wrong side' of the ball. The scientific explanation of this is that some of our babies, instead of growing up with diapers, teething rings, and rattles, grow up wearing jock straps for Pampers, bails for teething rings, and sawed off bats as substitutes for rattles. Due to a high percentage of these toothless wonders growing up with, you guessed it, booming left-hand cover drives, there are a correspondingly high number of left-handed golfers who end up terrorizing the fairways.

Just so you know, I'm not making a case for people playing the game left-handed. It all depends on their reasons for doing so. Things like gene mutation, cricket, alcohol, and sexual orientation have all contributed to people playing the game left-handed. These according to my golf pro however, are not good enough reasons (or tactics) to play golf from the oppressive side of the ball. A club champion once told me and rather unkindly I thought, that a natural right hander swinging a golf club from the left side looks like he is forcing a grumpy one and having trouble getting it out.

These same experts claim that only a few of the people that play the game left-handed actually need to play the game left-handed. How do you know if you need to play the game left-handed, you ask? It all depends on what you would score right-handed. If it's less than 120, you should play from the right side of the ball. More than 120 and you've got to stay put-that is, stay on the left side. (The only stipulation being that if you score between 100 and 120 you should also pack along three bottles of hard liquor that should be entirely consumed during your round.) How do I know all this, you ask? I don't. It's just my theory.

Early golf history is little sketchy regarding lefties. It appears as if those who did play the game from the left side before the 1940's couldn't break 100, couldn't actually find left-handed clubs, or died horrific deaths from small pox, rabies, or German measles.

In the lefty's defense, there have been a number of world-class players who win championships from the left side. Bob Charles, Phil Mickelson, and Mike Weir might be the most prominent golfers to win from ""he left."

Colombo too has its share of prominent southpaws. Doc Thurai continues to be a champion. Old timers Michael Dias, David Gyi and Sarath Silva are still as elegant as ever. Young guns Sanjeewa Wickremanayake and Murad Ismail blast the ball miles and are amongst our mightiest of ball strickers. Senaka Senanayake was and Arjun Fernando still is a regular winner in the top division whilst others like Saliya Silva, Haren Udeshi, Tayeb Akberally, Harris Weerasekere, Sumal Perera and Wasantha de Silva can be pretty hot on the links.

Some of us though, having coughed up considerable money on lessons, sliced through countless buckets of balls in the range and having suffered repeated attacks of 'Golfers Elbow' are sadly no closer to that elusive 'swing'. We still have more trouble than Moses did in getting out of the sand and the lob wedge in the bag is as useful around the greens as a soup spoon. When we do manage to contact the ball and not the air it curls viciously to the left and a shank into the marsh on the 13th is almost par for the course. Breaking 90 of course can be orgasmic.

But hey, don't get me wrong. We still have as much fun as the guys from the other side. And a sad statistical truth is that, for all the money, time, and emotional distress recreational golfers devote to the game, next to no one ever improves substantially at it. Oops, the truth hurts. Yes, it appears as if the left-handed golfers are here to stay. With left-handed talent on display from the likes of Mickelson and Weir, lefties will continue to attack our courses. That is, until the next flood.

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