Home Comforts -- Number Nine: Golf

Virginia, 2011: a rare opportunity to grip-it-and-rip-it.

Not for nothing have I been compared (by myself) with the late, great Severiano Ballesteros. Like dear old Seve, I am possessed of a furious desire to win and an uncanny ability to drive the ball pretty much anywhere. The comparisons, alas, end in the car park, whence I require rather more shots than the man from Pedreña to get the ball within sniffing distance of the hole.

Though I suppose we do share one other characteristic, perhaps the single most important weapon in one’s armoury in this harshest of sporting pursuits: an unbounded optimism. Boy, have I missed the intoxicating aroma of freshly-cut grass and its promise of new and better things to come. The open arms of an ocean-wide first fairway, beckoning me to come hither, before walloping one off the pro shop. The never-fading hope standing over every ball that this, yes this, will be the one. And that magical, once-in-a-round elation when it is.

I’ve only had four opportunities (two of them here in Bolivia) to open that door and step into that invigorating, dangerous unknown since landing here in 2010. I fully intend to make up for lost time. Motorists of Dornoch: don’t say you weren’t warned.