When a chap’s marriage goes into the bunker

Press, 24 July 1987, Page 16

When a chap’s marriage goes into the bunker

By

W. F. DEEDES,

of the “Daily Telegraph”

There can be no married man in Britain, whose hobby happens to be golf, who is not twitching a little over recent proceedings in the English High Court Family Division. As one newspaper put it with brutal clarity: “Mr Kenneth Lane’s passion for golf lost him the passions of his wife ...” "Golf was his mistress,” she said, and won her divorce. Around the hearths of Britain now shy voices — and some not so shy — are seeking to shape into words the unmentionable. “Fred? You won’t mind my raising this, but there is one thing about our marriage that I have been wanting to say to you ...” Fred goes very red, but he is quite mistaken. It is not that she wants to talk about, but his golf. Unless one or two of us keep our heads in this crisis, there are going to be sorry gaps in the four-balls — "yes, we always play the same four, just Sid, Jeff, Ted and me” — going off the first tees around Britain early next Sunday morning. It is an

exceedingly difficult round to play; one cannot afford to three putt on any of the greens. Before panic sets in, there are one or two suggestive factors in the Lane case. He was a night worker. It has, I think, to be conceded that a man who goes to work by night and plays golf by day may well afford his wife less than total satisfaction. Again, there was a murmur in the court about “excessive drinking.” We write here for an adult readership, acquainted with the ways of the world. No glossing the fact, therefore, that after a round of golf, some golfers like a drink. If four of them have been playing, four drinks. A round of golf sensibly played should take three hours. That is not what upsets married life. It is the remains of lunch, Sunday lunch at that, hauled from the oven after 2 p.m., that starts the proceedings. That, and what the younger children call “Daddy’s golf club kiss.” “My dear, he comes back

reeking.” Yet, if only Mr Lane had known, there is a formula by which golf can be played repeatedly, indeed almost perpetually, and the marriage kept sweet. The key is crystal. Crystal? Yes, bring her back crystal — any old crystal: claret glasses, port wine glasses, even avocado dishes, or if you can land the big one, a decanter.

I have the honour to be President of a golf society. On President’s day the prizes come from me. And what am I asked to present? Crystal all round.

The man who walks soberly through his door, waving at his wife the Ping putter he has just won on the golf course, is heading for trouble. If he can enter, even a degree less soberly, and lay a well-lined box of crystal sherry glasses in her lap — “They took a lot of winning for you, dear” — then that couple are on their way, at the very least, to a ruby wedding.