Lockdown golf Words Robin Bar wick
Challenged, but certainly not beaten. We spoke to three golfers who found their own ways to progress their game despite lockdown.
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any might presume that a touring professional must have a suitably expert-level practice facility at home. Yet, real life is rarely so straightforward. Take the European Tour’s Jordan Smith, who was admirably resourceful when lockdown struck last spring. “I ordered a net online, but it took ages to arrive, so I made my own makeshift net,” the 28-year-old Englishman tells us. “I had a clothes rack with a bed sheet over it, and I was hitting balls into it off a doormat. It got quite interesting.”
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Full marks for ingenuity. Fellow European Tour pro Oli Wilson took to re-arranging the furniture at the home of what sounds like very obliging in-laws in North Carolina. “I commandeered the basement and pushed everything to the back of the room to make way,” explains Wilson, 40, who played on the European Ryder Cup team in 2008. “As soon as we realised what was happening [with lockdown], I basically bought a gym and set it up, and I set up a net and a mat. I call it the dungeon.”
20 | upsWing | spring 2021
Except the first net Wilson bought wasn’t up to tour-level ball speeds. “I bought the first net online and it was terrible. It lasted about five shots before it started to fall apart. I kept folding it over to cover the holes, but each time I did that the net became smaller as a target. I made it work for a while, but then I ordered an archery net [pictured] and hung that up.” So, have you broken anything? “There might have been a couple of incidents, but I can’t go into them,” laughs Wilson. “Nothing that can go on record.” Don’t mention it to his in-laws, whatever you do.
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Meanwhile, Smith completed a house move during the spring lockdown, from Corsham – near Bath where he grew up – to Chobham in Surrey. At the old house, Smith had at least an artificial putting green in the back garden, complete with gentle contours. Once he moved into his new home, the lockdown putting practice was relocated to a 14-foot indoor putting mat, just like countless other lockdown golfers. And it turned out the sheet-and-clothes-rack combination was more resilient than expected.
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