A SAD DEPARTURE

Our golf correspondent reports..

I`m sure it has not gone unnoticed that I have not been reporting on Snopper`s golfing exploits for some time now.   There are two main reasons for this.  The first is, of course, the global pandemic which has had its effect on the sporting life of the nation and the second is that Snopper has simply been unable to play any competitive golf for some time now.   It all began a few years ago when he was walking up the stairs in chez Snopper when he felt a twinge in his left knee which never went away.  

What really made that problem worse was falling down a bit of a cliff on the north Cornwall stretch of the south west coast path.  He landed, knee first, on a particularly aggressive lump of  Cornish granite.  The paramedics arrived despite the remote location, sorted him out and sent him on his way.  Ever since then the problem has got progressively worse - X-rays, visits to the Doctor, knee supports - and it has reached the stage when he cannot sensibly venture on to the fairways and greens of the royal and ancient game without bringing the game into yet more disrepute.

So it might be the end of the line by the look of it - at his age the prospects of getting it fixed are twofold - slim and none and so we may finally be saying farewell to this icon of the game, one who over more than half a century has brought a new meaning to words like mediocre and dire.   But he can look back on a golfing career that has brought so much disaster and so little triumph.  His highlights have included going round the infamously gentle Poult Wood course in under 90 on at least two occasions and achieving no less than seven birdies - not all in the same round of course but spread over a number of years and a number of courses.

So it`s looking like a sad departure and for those of us who follow the game all we can do is look back on all those years of ineptitude and think of what might have been. Time will tell whether this really is the end of the line but I will be looking out for tell tale signals, such as his eclectic mix of clubs being put up for sale, along with his trolley, his Argos bag and what are left of the 1100 golf balls scavenged from the out-of-bounds areas of local courses by a former, much missed Golden Retriever.  I doubt there will be much of a take up for his offer of a tuition course of lessons however.

Henry Shorthurst