All games are silly, I suppose, but golf, if you looked at it dispassionately, goes to extremes. — Peter Aliss

In line with the worldwide trend, golf is witnessing a heady boom in India

WELL, there must be much charm in a sport so quaintly perverse in its basic instructions. Hit down to make the ball rise. Swing easy to make it go far. Finish high to make it go straight. Imagine you’re about to sit down, as you address the ball. Look at the ball, not the hole, when you putt.

An exceedingly small ball is placed at a large distance from one’s face, to be hit with a long stick curiously curved at one end — the stick to be selected every time out of an assortment of some 14 clubs.

Add to it the anxiety of a poor golfer on the tee making his metal-driver swing; his head abuzz with a swarm of dimly-remembered "tips". No wonder, the number of shots that could embarrass you are endless: the duck hook, the banana slice, the topped dribble, the sky ball, the water splash, the ball disappearing deep into woods. "Golf", after all, is just "flog" spelled backwards, says novelist John Updike.

Yet, now and then every golfer hits a good shot. This keeps his hopes alive for a repeat performance. On the golf course as nowhere else, the tyranny of causality is suspended, and life is like a dream. Though the difference between a good shot and a bad shot is marvellously large, yet the difference between a good swing and a bad seems microscopically small — "the eerie effortlessness of a good shot, the hellish effortfulness of a bad round".

And what other sport holds out hope of improvements to a man or woman over sixty? You see men of seventy taking lessons from pros, and toiling determinedly at the practice ground.

No other game (lest it be polo) is as thoroughly associated with riches and privilege as golf. The game is associated with lush grass and impressive clubhouses, trim, middle-aged men in bright slacks and natty caps swapping tips and jokes in an exclusive atmosphere of having it all. The very length of time the game consumes implies lives rich in leisure, and its large space implies folks who are able to afford a playground the size of several public parks. Take the Delhi Golf Course, right in the heart of the city; it’s bigger than the Lodi Gardens.

Some golfers, we are told, enjoy the landscape. But actually the landscape shrivels and compresses into the grim, vivid patch directly under the golfer’s eyes as he walks up to his ball. The DGC, for example, encompasses quite a few historic monuments (some happily renovated recently) and is displaying prominently an illustrated list of birds found on the course. But most players trudging its fairways are so engrossed in the game, they rarely respond to the rich fauna and flora, except occasionally shooing off a peacock that strays on the green. Peacocks, incidentally, do golfers a favour by keeping the snake population down.

A popular impression persists that business deals are struck on golf courses, and the game is good for making useful contacts. Well, this may be partly true, but the most endearing element is the camaraderie of golf. Surely you can play it alone but solitary golf is barren fun.

A foursome meets, once or twice a week. The fun starts with jocular greetings in the locker room when they put on their cleats and walk to the first tee. Golfers, it seems, are at their happiest standing on the first tee, looking forward to the excitement of the game and its good cheer. And possibly at their worst when homebound on the 18th fairway, the foursome often return "like a thinned army pulling its own chariots".

In between, the five hours together may not be minus spats — over gimme putts, over option of a mulligan, or over a contested stroke-count. But these disputes are mercifully dampened by the necessary distances of the game and the traditional mannerliness of sportspersons. An elaborate niceness tends to develop: players repress coughs when others are swinging, they join in a hopeless hunt for lost balls. Their behaviour is often better here than elsewhere, because they are happier here than elsewhere. The good feelings that golf breeds are inseparable from the aura of being out in the open.

And then the pleasure of retrospect when the foursome gathers at the club cafe or bar, at the end of the round. Here they settle their bets and recollect the memorable shots — both good and awful. The joys of retrospect are an important part of the golf camaraderie.

Playing with your regular foursome, you see the same fussy preparations, the same mannerisms, and the same errors that had dogged their golf for decades. Indeed, you spend more time watching others play than devoting to your own game. But this "waste" of time is accepted as a part of the game, not resented.

Watching golf on television is another thing. No sport is as much improved for the spectator by television as golf. Rather than scurrying here and there among the ropes and marshals and straining for a peek over the heads of hundreds in front, one sits at ease and sees shot after shot in close-up. Yet, something is missing from golf as experienced on television — the third dimension is missing. Every shot appears to jump off to the right, like the worst of shank — but winding up right in the middle of the fairway or a few feet from the pin.

Golfers presumably watch television golf in hope of improving their own game. But one learns rather little watching the pros on television — they make it look too easy. There is really no substitute in golf, other than playing it.

In line with the worldwide trend, golf is witnessing a heady boom in India. The tribe of golfers is fast multiplying, with many more wanting to join in. Women are taking to golf in numbers, and so also a whole lot of kids. The existing courses have come under intense pressure, while new ones get crowded before they are complete.

The DGC, for instance, is now one of the most overplayed courses in the world. Even before the break of dawn, golfers start trudging its fairways and trampling its greens till it’s too dark to play. On Mondays the course stays closed to give the grass some much-needed rest. You wait on the starting tee, amidst a mob of impatient foursomes. Finally launched, you wait on every shot except the putts for the group ahead to clear. On some short holes the bunch-up at the tee is three foursome deep. And all this time, fellows behind you are pressing on menacingly.

Golf has surely progressed: superior courses, improved equipment, rising standards of play. Yet something has gone from the game for people like me who have been playing the game since many years — the sweet sensation of being alone amidst wide spaces, with playing problems to be solved at one’s own pace. Golf used to be a kind of breather, but now it is no more so. That way, golf has become a victim of its own success.