The Swedish Golf Experience/by Corden & Oberto
Golf anyone? Despite Annika Sörenstam it just doesn’t strike me as a very Swedish thing to do. Two to four hours of energy expenditure without any tangible result goes against the grain. There are walls to paint, bulbs to be planted for next spring, boats to be cleaned and lifted out of the water, and the harvest to be dried or pickled to last us through the winter. Or maybe I’ve missed something and golf has become very Swedish. Is this just my Lutheran island mentality that cannot quite comprehend how one can make time for such frivolity?
Despite my not-so-short list of reservations, including the fact that I hadn’t hit a golf ball in over twenty years and the feeling that all of the pesticide required to keep greens a luscious green don’t fit in with my planetary vision, I did accept an invitation this past August to join a golf tournament based on the knowledge that the proceeds went to a most worthy charity (check Linas Livsglädjefond). It must have been the first time since the birth of my twins that I spent four hours – in fact more – doing something that would not result in my task-list getting shorter. Being a modern working mother isn’t a golfing sort of lifestyle.
I admit it. I had a wonderful time and was struck by a few things. Despite my very lovely golf swing, I mis-hit most balls which flew flippantly and frequently into what seemed to be a golf-ball-devouring species of grass. When a golf cart suddenly appeared, courtesy of the tournament organizers, I realized I’d been spending too much time enjoying this long, silvery looking grass which I thought would fit perfectly in a wildlife reserve. One could almost imagine the lions crouching in it. I became so engaged with this long grass, that it is no small miracle I finished the tournament with a mini bottle of champagne and a free session with the pro.
My curiosity aroused, I asked my friend Gene (http://www.swedishgolfonline.com/), who has an irrepressible love of Swedish golf courses, what was with the grass. Gene rapidly explained that most likely I was experiencing Swedish eco-golf. This deliberate effort to make golf clubs modern, in the sense that they in themselves become a service of nature, encouraging natural diversity rather than simply wiping it out, is something that researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Center have been leading the way on. The golf clubs of America and Europe have even chosen Stockholm as the venue for their 2009 conference addressing how golf can become an environmentally and socially responsible sport. I heaved a sigh of relief: I could now call my game eco-golf rather than just plain lousy golf.
I’m beginning to feel so good about my adventure out into the wild grasses of Swedish golf courses that I might just start including them on my list of ’islands of wellbeing’. Isn’t life full of surprises?
