Golf at the Grove

David Woodward has his first golf lesson at the Grove, a countryside hotel and spa retreat for well-heeled Londoners

It’s quite fancy, the Grove. The whole place exudes an air of assured opulence, leaving me with the distinct impression I may not be, in actual fact, target market. The car park doesn’t help. It appears that in order to play a round at this 72-par Championship course, you need to own a BMW X5. There are more of these SUV behemoths dotted around the Grove than there are Pringle sweaters. I’m between BMWs, so I find a suitably secluded spot to hide my battered Honda, lest the hotel valet downgrade my golfing status before I’ve even had the chance to tee off.

On the driving range, my instructor Kevin Merry tells me to hit a few balls. “Let’s see where you are,” he says. Aiming for a raised, pristine blob of green, no more than 150 yards away, I squirt the first two balls to the right with a wild, slashing motion. After an ugly connection, the third travels dead straight but never rises above ankle height: a perfectly decent hockey shot. It seems I am nowhere.

My instructor has seen enough, confirming my status as “unconsciously incompetent”. This is disappointing. It means I’m rubbish at golf and have no idea why. Merry wants me to advance through “consciously incompetent” and heading towards “consciously competent”, the period in which you’re good enough to occasionally make par but must concentrate so hard to do so that you can’t walk and talk concurrently. The final stage is “unconsciously competent”, in which instinct takes over and your mind is free to concentrate on the finer points of golfing life, such as bedding blonde waitresses.

Merry tries to isolate my flaws. How do you get the ball to go up in the air? Hit underneath it, I suggest hopefully. Wrong. The aim is to strike down on the back of the ball with the face of the club. The resulting force shoots the ball up in the air and towards its target. Armed with this stunning revelation I try another swing, missing completely: air shot. Just relax, offers Merry.

Maybe I need to spend more time in the “think box”. Merry is alluding to my non-existent mental preparation. A golfer must visualise a winning shot before he plays it and consider a checklist of items, such as wind, distance, stance and weight distribution before every stroke. A full mental checklist is 60 items long. This seems excessive. I have trouble remembering where I left my seven-iron. Luckily, says my instructor, beginners can refer to a condensed checklist containing the key points, plus a few additional tips that should enable tighter control of the ball.

In the think box, golfers need to picture every aspect of the shot, tracing an imaginary flight of the ball to its target. First, line up the target by placing the club in the hand that corresponds with your dominant eye, says Merry. I’m right-eye dominant, which means my brain gets its priority information from my right eye. Left-eyed players should line the shot up with their left hands, right-eyed players the other way around. Finally, pick an intermediate target a couple of yards in front of your ball, charting a path towards your ultimate target, the pin or the middle of the fairway.

Once you’ve lined up your shot, step across the “decision line” and into the “play box”, says Merry. I appreciate that much of this is sounding like a self-help therapy session. But all this imagery apparently helps players to ritualise the necessary stages. In the play box, Merry tells me to place the club-face in line with my intermediate target, and directly behind the ball.

With your dominant eye focused on the back of the ball, he says, pivot from right to left in a fluid motion, shifting your weight from the balls of your feet to the left side of your body as you strike down on the ball. Finish with your knees “kissing” and right-shoe studs showing.

It feels like way too much information, but oddly enough, the connection is sweet and the ball pings off the club in a triumphant arc, landing 30 yards beyond the pin. It feels good. Merry has a list of flaws he wants to share, but the buzz of success is ringing in my ears.

It’s my weight distribution, he is saying. In my eagerness to achieve height, I’ve been standing like a tourist under Nelson’s column. “I could give you a prod and you’d fall over”, he says. Instead I need to stand like a goalkeeper facing a penalty: knees bent, flexed slightly inwards, ready to pivot.

I swing again. Success. And again. It’s addictive, to the extent that the odd failure interrupts the high without disrupting my motivation. The lesson passes by in a blur.

Back at the hotel, the valets are parking SUVs in a continuous stream. Manicured wives totter towards the spa, husbands ride buggies out to the first tee. It’s a beautiful, hazy morning. The Grove feels intimidating and accessible in equal measures.

A round of golf at the Grove, Thursday to Saturday, until March 2011 £110 per person; Mansion rooms from £440 per night; Spa treatments from £90 per hour