19 Aug Vladimir

“My husband’s balls are not straight”?—-this comment was thrown at me even before my ‘kick start’ morning coffee. I replied that mine were not always in the middle—-and I was just priding myself on such a quick early morning ‘witty’ retort when I realized that this was the president’s wife standing in front of me. Her eye’s became wider and asked ‘undaunted’ if I could fix them?—-I was glad that she had not understood my reflex answer, and I bit my lip on pushing my luck with a further ‘flippant’ reply!

For a PGA golf professional there are two (make that three) individuals that you must win over if you are to survive a few weeks at any golf club—the Club Champion and the Club President & his wife—-the club champion was relatively easy as all I did was to wait for his form to disintegrate and then challenge him to a game in front of his comrades—-this done, he couldn’t back out and my ‘straight balls’ were the undoing of him!

Now Vladimir was a different story as he had filled me with fear & fright by stories told, even before I’d met him. I was dreading the ‘showdown on the range’—-one of post Glasnost’s richest men his presence made grown men quiver in their golf shoes. Built like Arnold Schwarzenegger and as stiff as a post, the inevitable request for a lesson to sort out his ‘mid irons’ duly reached me, for 7 in the morning!

It was not one of my easier coaching sessions but I got through it apparently with ‘flying colours’ and with half the club’s membership looking on, he nodded his approval for the guy from Thailand. During my sleepless night before his lesson I painstakingly went through my tactics and I told him right at the beginning that it was clear that ‘his way’ was not working and if he wanted to improve then he should just listen to me. I doubt if anybody had ever talked to Vladimir like that before—however, to his wife’s great delight, by the end of the lesson his balls were much straighter and may I say, a little higher then before.

Winning over ‘Eva’ (Mrs. President) was just a foregone conclusion given the fact that I had straightened out her husband’s balls—in fact her joyous enthusiasm at the new invigorating sight of Vladimir’s straight balls spread throughout the female membership like ‘wild fire’—resulting in many disparate golfing ladies requesting me to also take a look at their husband’s balls!