If you must learn to play golf, learn in luxury. A sceptical Louise East is converted on a trip to Gran Canaria.
Angel has buck teeth, a deep-crowned baseball cap, and a belt buckle in the shape of two crossed golf clubs. Taking an iron from a stuffed bag, he stares me in the eye, says "You look," and swings at an imaginary ball, with such verve, I find myself pointlessly scanning the far reaches of the driving range.
"Bravo," I say, and reward him with a little round of applause, before doing my damnedest to imitate his moves exactly. Angel looks horrified and sucks in air through his teeth. "No, no. I show you the wrong way to hit ball."
Nobody was more surprised than me to find myself on a golf course in Gran Canaria. I have always hated golf, not because I've ever tried it, you understand, but because, well, because of the lemon-yellow sweaters and the braying voices, and because women are not allowed in certain club houses. The lingo is twee (a birdie?), the professionals are hardly sexy, and frankly, I'm suspicious of golf courses. Continued on page 26
Lately though, I keep meeting people who have taken up golf, people with the audacity to suggest that I, too, would love golf, if only my mind weren't as narrow as a wafer-thin mint. Shockingly, these are people I consider friends, people with puny bank balances, interesting footwear, and i-Pods containing track titles easily mistaken for the names of food additives.
Faced with their passion for the game and their lack of qualities such as arrogance and bigotry, (not to mention, one friend's very enviable white knit flat-cap) my anti-golf stance was becoming a bit of a burden. So when the opportunity arose to take a few golf lessons in Gran Canaria, I performed a neat volte face and, with my equally golf-suspicious friend Hannah, signed up.
As a teacher, Angel proved, if not celestial, then certainly saintly, at least where patience was concerned. Again and again, he adjusted my hockey-player's grip, guided the club in the correct arc and demonstrated the subtle twists of hips and hands.
Again and again, I swatted the ball as though it was a big-bottomed mosquito, lifted my heel in a kink-kneed charleston and generally chipped, chivvied and harassed the ball towards previously undiscovered areas of the driving range.
Then, suddenly, it all came together - the turn, the up-swing, the gently looping of the club, the satisfying follow-through - and the ball soared well past the 70-yard mark. Angel nodded solemnly, sucked his teeth and said "Correcto," and just like that, I fell in love. Golf was clearly a game for gods and angels, and here I was, a natural at it all along, a diamond golf-ball in the rough.
With Hannah experiencing her own Road to Damascus-style conversion beside me, rocketing the ball towards the 100-yard marker, I placed another ball on the tee and, all confidence now, took a swing. The ball popped two foot in the air and came to rest beside Angel's foot. The next dribbled towards the lockers. The third stayed firmly on the tee. But the fourth, the fourth was a darling of a shot, skewed to the right, of course, but a belter as far as distance was concerned.
Far too quickly, the lesson was up, and we shook Angel's hand and headed straight for the golf shop to try on peach-coloured sun visors.
If you're a golf virgin, you could do a lot worse than head to Gran Canaria for your own private crash course. Renowned for its year-round sunshine, the island (the largest of the Canary Islands) has six golf courses, five of them top-class, and with a bit of negotiation, it's easy to get a high-quality, hour-long golf tutorial for less than €25.
Until now, there has been little choice but to stay in one of the legion of high-rise resorts wedged along the coast like beached cruise ships, but in 2001 Seaside Hotels, a German-owned company, cleverly filled the hole in the market with the small, but very luxurious Grand Hotel Residencia in Maspalomas to the south of the island.
After our lesson, Hannah and I retire to the hotel's "rasul" to mull over our new-found sporting passion. Just as golf has gained a new legion of hip admirers, a rasul is the new-generation steam room, aimed at the kind of folk who know how to pronounce echinacea and the whereabouts of Essaouira. Onion-domed and glittering with mosaic tiles, the tiny bath house contains just four jewel-coloured thrones and a stove wafting fragrant steam.
A brisk woman issues us with bowls of different coloured mud, each one to be applied to the appropriate shakra (arms, legs and chest, to you and me) and a big sea shell containing flakes of salt. Once daubed all over, you settle into your throne, and watch as the fluted ceiling slowly becomes a night sky, peppered with tiny stars. Twenty minutes later, just when the steam is getting too intense and the floaty flute music too irritating, the skies open and the softest, warmest "rain" rinses away the mud. Magic.
Our next lesson was at the Salobre Golf and Resort, an astonishing Roland Fauré-designed course carved out of a lunar landscape of dust and stone. Our instructor this time was a laconic Canadian called Cameron, who declared himself impressed with Angel's work and let us loose on a bag of different clubs.
Soon, we were so immersed in golf culture, that when Cameron declared he was "going to grab his big wood", we only smirked slightly and politely asked if we could have a go. After an hour or so, we had tried out all the clubs with varying success and Cameron moved us to the putting green. Once again, I whacked the ball as though I was killing vermin, sending the ball pinging towards the club house, but once again, experienced a flush of pleasure when I finally managed to nudge and coax the ball correctly. Golf, I thought. I play golf.
Back at the hotel, it was barbecue night (think lobster, six kinds of steak and suckling pig rather than hamburger patties and charred sausages) and Hannah and I crowed so loudly about golf, our neighbouring table got involved. "You girls had a good game, huh?" "Great," we said, "just great." "So what handicap do you play off?"
We looked at each other aghast, and that's when it sank in. We hadn't shifted off the driving range or the putting green, and while we might have been able to hit the ball, the direction it took was anybody's guess. We had just gained an addiction, and it might be years before we'd reap the rewards, years of worrying fashion choices, green fees and humiliation.
"Handicap?" I said. "Only starting too late."