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players. He lifted the chequered metal lid on the floor of the bay and poured the balls in. There was the faint grinding of underground machinery and–magically, comically–a white ball rose up out of the ground, trembling on its rubber tee peg. Gary slipped his golf glove on, took off his sweater and pulled the four-iron from his bag. He threaded the club through the crook of his left elbow, across the small of his back, and then through the crook of his right elbow. He rotated left and right, loosening up the muscles, and then repeated the exercise with the club across his shoulder blades and his arms hanging over the ends–a parody of crucifixion. In his head he ran his new swing thought over and over, ‘Relax and release, relax and release, relax and release…’
    The swing thought–a simple key phrase that golfers mantra to themselves as they make the swing–is designed to calm the mind and to simplify the many variables of the swing down into a single essential. Gary had read widely of the swing thoughts of the professionals: ‘No stop at the top’ reminded you that, although there is a slight lag, or pause, at the top of the backswing, there should be no definite stop.But Gary didn’t like the negative connotations of the word ‘no’. He’d read an interview with the huge-hitting American tour pro Cyrus Cheeks where Cheeks said his swing thought was: ‘Let the clubhead be the first thing to move away from the ball.’ What a mouthful! By the time Gary got all that out his ball was often already well on its way. ‘Back and through’ was simpler, but a wee bit dull. When he was playing particularly badly the swing thought would sometimes morph into ‘You. Fucking. Cunt.’ Or–on truly terrible occasions–‘I. Am. A. Cunt.’ But, again, this really was very negative and, having recently frowned his way through top golf psychologist Dr Emil Koresh’s new book Banish Negativity , Gary was trying to, well, banish negativity. Koresh recommended ‘relax’ on the backswing and ‘release’ on the downswing.
    A warm, clear afternoon, a fresh ball on the tee, the afternoon off work, shirtsleeves. Could there be a finer feeling in the world? Gary was glad to be alive, almost smiling as he stepped up to the ball, waggled the clubhead and settled his breathing.
    Relax and release.
    He brutally shanked fifty-six balls in a row.
    They bulleted diagonally rightwards across the range–the last one ricocheting off the wooden frame of his bay and nearly killing the astonished schoolboy a few bays along. Gary bit his left hand until his teeth went through the glove and drew blood and then ran to the car fighting tears, leaving the remaining balls unspent in the underfloor chamber. He’d gone from glad-to-be-alive to a gnashing, weeping madman in a little over twenty minutes.
    Only golf can do this.
    As Gary ran for his car (ignoring the stares and chuckles of his fellow players), high above him, above the clouds, abovethe vaporised jet trails, above the sky itself, the Golf Gods roared with helpless laughter as they tossed another shrieking corpse onto the blazing pyre. The pyre was fashioned from the wretched souls of the fools they had damned to live as golf spastics. It was a thousand miles high and hotter than the sun.
     
    The shank–the amateur’s biggest nightmare, golf cancer–is caused by the ball being struck not with the clubface, but with the hosel of the club: the point where the blade joins the shaft. This type of misstrike causes the ball to fly off to the right (for a right-handed golfer) at the most violent angle imaginable. The shanks come in bouts, striking the weak, the tired, the feeble-minded, the careless. Like the hiccups, once in the grip of a bout it is impossible for the afflicted to do anything else: no matter what modifications are made to the swing the end result remains the same–the sickening misconnection followed by the ball rocketing off diagonally to the right.
    It is said