I’m clearly in some kind of Golf-Hating frenzy completely at odds with a rigid daily schedule ensuring the highlights represent the most important part of my day. But that’s because of some kind of skewed partiotism, rather than an enjoyment or respect for the actual game.

Golf is for the aged. Whether those participating can be defined by physical frailty or trousers fastened just under the breastbone is largely irrelevant. It is no more an athletic sport that crown green bowling or tiddlywinks. To charactorise it, think of crochet decked out with designer polo shirts, mobile phones and self-aggrandisement. It is as artificial and contrived as football is spontaneous and accessible.

Golf has no spontaneous moments “ no sudden stretching of sinews or head first lunges into potential bone crunching tackles. It is a self conscious process with technique taught by muscle memory instead of natural movement. Short of falling from a tall story told at the 19th hole, it is hard to imagine how anything other than vanity could be injured during the previous 18.

And that’s my problem with Golf. It’s not that it’s pointless “ many, if not all, sports are. It’s not that to improve, one must replace natural instincts with torturous process. It’s not even the ridiculous class-ridden rules and penchants for baseball caps. My problem is that to play, you must be old in the mind and terribly serious to boot. A ball and a stick “ hitting the former with the latter is hardly an endeavour on the scale of say World Peace. But that is how it is treated with simple club selection bringing a frown-ridden countenance to the search for the appropriate stick from the quiver of technology at the golfers disposal. I want to scream GO ON, TAKE A CHANCE, pick any old stick and just hit the bloody thing?

Age slows you down. It blunts the extremes of personality. It replaces impulsiveness with process. To play golf you need all of these things and none of their opposites. Whether you are 11 or 111, once golf appears a sensible pastime, your youth is over.

That’s why I hate golf.