July 10, 2014. While the world is taken in by the charming beats of the World Cup, it is as good a time as any to explore the connections between Football and Golf. As it is, golf courses lining the expansive cities around the United States are beginning to cash in on a craze that has stormed the market in recent time. FootGolf, as they call it, combines the use of footwork to tee off and drop a regular football into an oversized cup on a golfing green. Several footballers have nursed their sporting aches on the lush green meadows, some even while they were chasing goals, running in spiked boots.
Andriy Shevchenko has been among the most popular footballers to take to golf. Last September, the one-time European player of the year was rubbing shoulders with Victor Riu, who was in action this past week at the Alstom Open de France. The two were paired at Kharkov Superior Cup, where the former AC Milan player experienced golfing agony over a first round 84, 12 over and bleeding badly.
Ironically, the very same men, who grow up believing that golf is for old hags with hanging bellies are chastened and humbled by their first experience with the game of golf. Soon as they wield the clubs, it dawns upon them that as leisurely as golf might seem, it is a game that requires immense skill and patient repetition to withstand the stern tests posed by an undulating 18 hole course.
It seems too that golf offers many footballers the peace and quiet that they are denied in their 90 minute hustle and scuffle to try and get a racing ball into the back of an elusive net. Fabio Capello, the former England manager was known to have an elaborate golf setup inside his office. Just last year, Jimmy Bullard, a midfielder Wigan and Fulham took to professional golf soon as he reached the end of the tether with his football career.
But one of the key challenges is the difference in temperament – football is a high octane contact sport inside a crowded arena, while golf is a relatively sedate pursuit. And as Julian Dicks realized, not everyone is cut out for the solitude that accompanies golf. Dicks is known to have smashed many clubs in sheer rage and agony as he struggled to come to terms with the vagaries of golf.
Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard, very accomplished English players are known to harbor a keen interest in the game too. Carlos Tevez was on the bag for Andres Romero at The Open last year. Safe to say that no matter their uninformed early opinion, many of them do turn to golf eventually for the peaceful sanity that it offers to every person that embraces it.
