ni.chol.as

One of the useful feeds I keep an eye on is Upcoming.org’s listings for events in London. I love the idea of social calendaring like this. Unlike Time Out, which has no crapfilter on what they list as well as missing vast quantities of bizarre but otherwise awesome events, Upcoming, alongside Tourfilter and Eventful is a good way of seeing what other people think is fun or interesting without feeling like it’s all a big advert.

Last week, one of the interesting things that popped up was just titled “Urban Golf”. All it gave in the way of a description was a URL which was frustratingly short on detail but gave just enough of a hint to make it sound worth checking it out. I dragged along some barely-willing Swedes visiting town for the week and hit the clubhouse, the Tabernacle Bar in EC2: Deepest Shoreditch.

Here’s what I could ascertain about the game. Urban Golf is sixteen teams comprising four people each. Sixty-four mentalists touring around a makeshift street-based golf course in which the holes are marked by flags stuck into little drains and the tee-off marked by a bit of duct tape across the road. Alongside the tape, a couple of paper-wrapped concrete markers sit, replete with “stroke index” and a woefully optimistic par. Each player has a caddy and a (sometimes) full set of golf clubs. They also carry a carpet tile to place under their golf ball which, for the purposes of not wanting to destroy windows and dent cars, is a small leather hacky-sack filled with goose-feathers. The same sort of thing that you see pretty, tanned Mediterraneans kicking around on beaches in a skilful way that fat pasty Englishmen can only dream of doing. There are eighteen of these holes, some of them with remarkable dog-legs, alleyways and unusual hazards. Tiger Woods never had to worry about twenty foot drops into darkened industrial-looking basements. Each hole has its own carpeted putting green to assist the golfers in their task which varies from actually potting the ball to “getting quite close to the flag”. Occasionally a man in a golf cart will careen wildly past, the back seat loaded up with trendy-looking media girls and even more occasionally a very sad looking pizza delivery man will try to navigate his way between holes interrupting people’s games to drop off his food wondering what on earth is going on. All in all, Urban Golf is almost exactly what you expected; chaotic, bizarre and lots of fun.

It really helps the entire experience that the golf course, as it winds its way around the abandoned streets, is buffered by the local pubs and bars which have opened especially for the occasion. This really is an event best experienced slightly half-cut. If you were lucky enough to find one of the replica golf-balls you could exchange it for a free glass of Jamesons and ginger – the official tournament drink. Jamesons reps were out in force trying to make sure their brand was being seen as being trendy as possible. You could see their fears in the sorts of questions the marketing survey person asked me. It was something like, “Do you associate Jamesons with old men drinking alone in their lounge shouting at the TV with a barely intelligible Irish accent?” I sort of felt her eyes pleading with me, “It’s not unfashionable is it? Tell me it’s not unfashionable?”

Urban Golf in London is not alone, it appears. Some time after the German invention allegedly sometime in the 1990s, the “Shoreditch Golf Club” who hosted this event seem to fancy playing in some more cities where, I’m sure, it’ll be greeted with the same good humour, so long as you’re not delivering pizza.