An Addiction to Golf That Led to ... Danger!

The addict in search of a fix is not a pretty sight. Smoking enthusiasts, deprived of access to 20 neatly-stacked, foiled-wrapped, filter-tipped pacifiers will contemplate lighting up an alfresco roll-up made from none-too-freshly fallen oak leaves; and hardened drinkers, separated from their liquid stash, will slug down anything with a bit of kick in it.


So it is with sports fanatics, especially those of us who spend our time "on the road." Show us any hotel room or apartment and we can turn it into an instant sports hall or practice ground. All it requires is a little foresight, cunning and a certain ambivalence towards the safety of the fixtures and fittings.


Soccer players have it easy. All the frustrated football lover need do when in Moscow is take a trip along to Detsky Mir, purchase a plastic ball for a few dollars and bear it proudly home to the apartment. Once inside, furniture can be rearranged to make goals (or somewhat stationary opponents to dribble around) and walls can become teammates who give unerringly instant return passes. For the more advanced, it is a wonder how much ball control can be improved with strategic placement of a few of the landlady's more prized knick-knacks.


The precise circumstances of other sports are more difficult to re-create. Ice hockey players, for instance, might have some success with a stick and tennis ball, but we would caution against trying too hard for authenticity. Flooding the kitchen and leaving the freezer door open does not, I am reliably informed, provide the hoped-for results.


Golfers might be thought to have similar problems. After all, the interior of the average Moscow apartment bears precious little resemblance to Pebble Beach. But that is a mere detail. Four walls may not a prison make, but, with a little ingenuity, they can make an acceptable practice ground.


The trick, as with the game itself, is all in the mental approach. Think of a business not as a period of enforced estrangement from your home course, but as an opportunity to hone your short game. For timid souls this will mean putting across the carpet. But be warned, most hotels look dimly at it. I have been warned off on several occasions and it is perhaps best not to draw attention to yourself by asking for a room with a green carpet "and a nice follow."


There will come a time, however, when you want, or are forced, to more adventurous indoor practice. In my case it was forced by the small matter of nearly killing someone with a nine-iron. I will explain: There I was one evening, reading a golf book when I was seized with the desire to put the author's theory of pitch shots to the test. I grabbed my club, stepped into the garden and, facing the house, made repeated attempts to emulate the expert.


On about the 27th swing, the club slipped from my grasp at the top of the follow-through and performed a perfect parabola over the roof and into the street beyond. Needless to say, I immediately set off through the house in pursuit, only to find a neighbor standing on the sidewalk holding the offending nine-iron and looking right, left, and up to the sky to try and calculate where this golf club had come from.


I approached sheepishly. "What happened?" she asked, understandably a little miffed at nearly being brained. "Well," I said, in a tactless attempt at humor, "I think I was holding my left hand a little too far over." No more was said. But from that moment on, my house practice was confined to chipping air balls and screwed-up pieces of paper from the carpet onto the sofa when my wife was out.


I was a little sheepish about this about this until I learned, from the great man himself, that Seve Ballesteros swears by such a routine. Except that he uses a wedge to hit coins about the size of a 50-ruble piece. Excellent training, he assures me, in making the correct downward strike to get the object quickly airborne. And if it's good enough for him, it certainly should be good enough for the rest of us.