From The Rough: Winter greens

What a glorious thrill it was to putt on my first temporary green of the winter over the weekend. For those of us cursed with a suspect putting stroke, the unpredictable nature of temporary greens is to be warmly welcomed. Just as the silky skills of Manchester United are rendered largely redundant by a sloping, quagmire of a non-league football pitch, so the smooth putting action of a single-figure golfer is comprehensively negated by the rough surface, worm casts and assorted arborial debris that accumulates on temporary greens.

Whereas the so-called better players are put off, we lesser talents embrace unpredictability as if were an old friend. For we recognise its propensity to nudge into the hole a ball that would otherwise almost certainly have slipped by. Because we indifferent putters expect to miss on decent greens, we ooze confidence on temporaries believing, as we do, that the Golfing Gods love struggling underdogs and will come to our aid.

Finally, these cute little circles mown in front of the regular greens also obligingly render redundant all those nasty greenside bunkers. Although nothing more than a mild nuisance to the better player, bunkers are proverbial minefields for the rest of us. So, thanks to temporary greens, the next few months offer the annual prospect of a golfing revolution when single-figure aristocrats can be humbled by the hacking prolectariat. It?s just too bad that these lovely winter greens are only temporary.

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