I don’t say golf is ‘a good walk spoiled.’ I say it’s much, much worse than that, but I
know that other views are possible.
The earliest appearance of that ‘spoiled walk’ quip, according to Quote Investigator was in a newspaper article in Enniscorthy, Ireland in April 1901. The author was only identified as ‘a northern Gael.’
In 1905, they say, Henry Leon Wilson tweaked the expression and used it in his novel The Boss of Little Arcady. No, of course I haven’t read it. The line there apparently runs ‘This new game of golf that the summer folks play seems to have too much walking for a good game and just enough game to spoil a good walk.’ It’s a much better line.
However since golf dates back at least to the 15th century, and the first18 hole golf course was laid out in St Andrews in the 18th century it’s hard to understand how golf is ‘this new game,’ but perhaps it’s poetic license.
I’ve never play ‘proper’ golf and I know I’d be no good at it, but there was a short phase of my life when I had a taste for crazy golf.
Obviously the great thing about crazy golf is that it doesn’t spoil a walk because there’s really no walking in it to speak of, and there’s no real golf either, which is a real plus.
My idea, not one of my best, was that I’d turn my crazy golf interest into a TV format ‘Playing A Round With Geoff.’ We’d get Ian Botham or Helen Mirren or Salman Rushdie, and we’d putter around together and they’d be relaxed enough to lower their guard and say something wonderful.
Well, you can imagine how well that went down. But as ‘research’ I did play a certain amount of crazy golf, mostly in East Anglia, with anybody I could get interested. And I did take some photos – above and below.
And then a couple of weekends ago I went for a more or less proper walk in Felixstow, not at all in search of crazy golf, and if you’d asked me if I’d ever played crazy golf there I’d have said no, but it seems I did. See below, Then and Now: the obelisk doesn’t lie. Unless it’s been moved.
Which brings us to Bing Crosby who died on October 14th1977. He’d finished a round of golf at the La Moraleja course in Spain, with three other golfers, and he said to his partners ‘That was a great game of golf, fellas, let’s go have a Coca Cola’ which sounds a little unlikely to me. The picture below is obviously from a different time.
But anyway, he was walking back to the clubhouse, full of the joys of the links, had a heart attack, fell over and died.
It must really have really spoiled his walk. It probably didn’t enhance the walk for the other guys he was playing with either.
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