Ever heard one of your fave surfers come out with that little beauty?

“I like to play golf coz it’s so similar to surfing in many ways. I mean, it’s really difficult…”

Ah! OK, yes I can see the similarity now. Difficulty. Wow, there are a lot of things similar to surfing, thus. Cubic close packing of spheres on a molecular level. The Middle East peace process, nuclear fusion, The Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword. All of these difficult things are so similar to the surf shred. It’s all so clear to me now.

I’ve been watching the golf on BBC2 (I live in France, but I gots SKY as a humanitarian concession to my soul). The US Masters. It’s pretty good to watch, even if it’s not really anything at all like surfing (…?!?!). Some of the main differences are that a) It has massive TV audiences of millions upon millions b) massive live audiences and c) the ‘athletes’ are actually pretty charismatic and interesting.

One of the best things about the ‘sport’ of golf is that you can do it smoking a cigar, and dont even need to break into a jog at any point. There’s a guy, a legend actually, competing in the Masters this year called Gary Player. Player is 73 years old! That is just fantastic, I mean, how many elite level ‘sports’ events are there where geriatrics come compete with the whippersnappers on a level playing field? Play on Player. I reckon there should be more ‘sports’ where really old people play at the highest level. You know the story about the Battle of the Somme in WW1 where the British and German soldiers stopped fighting and played footie on Christmas day? If any of those guys are still alive they should roll em out for the next World Cup finals in South Africa. Messi passes to Arthur Godfrey Crabtree, Torres lays off a nice flick to Albert Eric Picklethwaite, you know, a real mix of generations.

The Tiger and Mickelson pairing was well good. I dont know about you, but everytime I see Tiger swing the club I want something to go horribly wrong. I just can’t help it. Every time he hits the ball I shout ‘Get in the fucking bunker!’ at the TV. These two, the world 1 and 2, actually hate each others guts, which is just great. Personally, I’m with Phil. Tiger gets right on my tits.

What was also pretty rad about the Masters was the Japanese golfer who nearly won, Shingo Katayama. What was great about him was that he played the entire event wearing a cowboy hat!!! How good is that? The only other ‘sports’ event I’ve seen where you can wear a cowboy hat was a rodeo I went to in Salinas, California in 1987. Shingo’s one of the good guys.

Probably the best thing about the Masters though is the spectators. Look closely, and you’ll notice that they are all wearing golf shit, as if they are actually going to play. They’ve all got the classic s/s cotton polo shirt tucked into tailored chino shorts. All of em! Why’s that? Are they hoping for a late call up into the squad? ‘Get yourself warmed up son, Tiger has been caught by poachers and sold for his pelt/made into Tiger Balm. You’re on.’