My brief stint as an aspiring golf writer and reluctant golfer

I was meant to be a golf writer. I actually started out as one, several years ago when I got my first job as a journalist.

The irony, though, is that at the time I wasn’t enthusiastic about covering golf. My disinterest in the sport was multifaceted.

To begin with, I had zero knowledge of the sport, I knew not a single Kenyan golfer by name and, worst of all, I didn’t have any sources within the golfing fraternity.

However, my biggest handicap – excuse the pun – was that I would have had serious trouble finding my way to Kenya Railway Golf Club, which is merely a tee shot away from Nairobi’s CBD.

In short, I was ill-prepared to cover the beat.

But having knocked on the doors of too many newsrooms for so long, I gleefully took the chance when the then People Daily Sports Editor Alloys Muganda, who is now deceased, offered me the opportunity.

The late Muganda (may his soul rest in peace), was a kind-hearted gentleman, who although ailing at the time, remained convivial and charitable. Ever the scrupulous editor, he offered me a few important contacts before dispatching me to my first assignment.

Thus began my brief, yet memorable, stint as a golf writer.

Within a short time I established useful contacts of my own at Kenya Railway, Royal Nairobi and Muthaiga Golf clubs, where I covered a handful of events, including one edition of the Kenya Open.

It was also around the same time that I tried my hands on golf. Back then, when Airtel was still known as Zain, the telco used to organise a fun tournament for journalists every first Saturday of the month at Golf Park in Ngong Racecourse.

It’s at the free-entry Zain Media Golf Challenge that I picked up my rudimental and now badly rusty golfing skills. But I know of a few journalists who, unlike me, passionately embraced the sport from those initial encounters and still actively play the sport for fun.

At the 18-hole tournament, the host club would assign caddies to the players at no fee with each leg’s winners receiving golfing equipment and individual players’ points being tallied to determine the overall winners at the end of the year.

Needless to say, the tournament gave scribes the much-needed occasional break from the daily pressures of the newsrooms. But for the reluctant golfers amongst us there was one particularly irresistible enticement to at least just show up – the “19th hole” at the club house, where a sumptuous buffet and an open bar awaited many a parched throats.

There were in fact a few characters who were notorious for snubbing action on the golf course but would be the first to arrive and the last to leave the “watering hole”.

Short-lived stint

It was also during my short-lived stint as a golf writer that I was exposed to the exotic golfing culture, more so the strict club house rules. Some of these lessons were dispensed in brutal, if not comical fashion, like in one incident when a certain reporter – a notoriously shabby dresser – was thrown out of Muthaiga Golf Club for setting foot inside the club house in his threadbare outfit.

I must, however, state that my most valuable golfing memorabilia is the Rules of Golf and the Rules of Amateur Status (2008 - 2011) booklet that I was gifted by a certain SK Mwaura in 2010.

To my final confession. I will certainly be keenly following the action at Karen Country Club this weekend as top professional players from around the world and in Kenya battle for the Magical Kenya Open title.

It is sad that this European tour event is closed to fans because of Covid-19. It would have been nice to catch some of the action, particularly at that "19th hole".