"I have three daughters and I've always cautioned them to choose golfers for boyfriends," said Jim Sullivan, "because they will have a higher set of values than somebody who is a non-golfer."
He delivered his punchline with not a trace of a grin or a hint of a smile, but that's the hallmark of a truly great stand-up comedian. Except by the time the non-golfers and daughters amongst the audience of Channel Four's Tee Time last Tuesday evening stopped rolling around their living room floors in mirth, the awful realisation dawned: Jim was being . . . serious. Sitting in a room surrounded by golf clubs, one of which he appeared to be stroking with a toothbrush, he claimed that golf had helped him recover from post-traumatic stress disorder after 20 years in the US Army, a spell that included a trip to the Vietnam War. "Playing golf helps put your mind in neutral," he said, a claim few of us would challenge. "It helps your mind process things, instead of just shutting down," he added, a little more controversially. "You narrow your friends down after you've been through something like that, you become a little insular," he said, in what seemed to be a reference to his post-Vietnam experience but could just as easily have applied to what happens people after they take up golf. So Jim wasn't joking when he said it would be a good thing if his daughters started hanging out with golfers and their higher set of values. In fact one suspected that nothing would make him happier than if his three daughters married three golfers, even if they are the only people, apart from Jackie Stewart and the Bay City Rollers, who think tartan pants are attractive.
We never saw Jim's wedding video on Tee Time but you can bet if we did his vows would have gone something like this: "I take thee Big Bertha as my lawful wedded wife, to have and to drive with from this day forward." Golf really has the strangest effect on people's minds. Take Derek Lawrenson, the Sunday Telegraph's golf correspondent. As part of the build-up to Saturday's match between England and Saudi Arabia ("They Think It's Oil Over," as one English paper summed up the 0-0 draw) Sky Sports brought us a report on the English squad's day out at the Mill Ride course near Ascot, where they took part in a pro-am tournament.
Lawrenson joined in on the fun and while everyone was busy chuckling at Gazza's dodgy swing (one Kebab too many) he hit a hole-in-one, the prize for which was a £200,000 Lamborghini. His playing partners, Paul Ince and Steve McManaman, looked on in admiration and were all the more chuffed for Lawrenson when they discovered that he was an Anfield regular.
"I've been a season ticket holder at Liverpool for 25 years," he told the Sky Sports' reporter. "So I think we're going to go on and win the Championship next season after this," he declared. Bless him. Ince and McManaman couldn't even bring themselves to nod in agreement. See? Golf can unhinge the most balanced of individuals. Now that the Royal and Ancient Golf Club are threatening to strip Lawrenson of his amateur status, because he won a prize worth more than £200 for his hole-in-one, he could always sell the Lamborghini to Roy Evans who might choose to play it in the centre of Liverpool's leaky defence next season. Just £200,000 for a new recruit with plenty of style and pace and a good engine? A snip. Poor old Eddie Jordan dreams of having a car that produces a bit of pace these days. "My mother could walk around this circuit faster than my cars," he told ITV's Louise Goodman as the Jordan team had yet another miserable weekend at the Monaco Grand Prix. It's getting to the stage where you wouldn't accept a lift from Jordan if you were hitching, 'cos you'd reckon you'd get there quicker walking. RTE's pit reporter Declan Quigley should be awarded a Victoria Cross for valour at the end of this Grand Prix season because he has the unenviable task of approaching the Jordan garage at the end of each race to ask for the results of their postmortem. In fact it's getting to the stage where Declan thinks that the owner of the team is called `so what went wrong Eddie'?
No such problems for Mika Hakkinen. He won the Monaco Grand Prix, but we knew that on Saturday, 24 hours before the race began. Even Murray Walker sounds bored these days, but perhaps not as bored as Bill O'Herlihy and Johnny Giles looked at the end of Saturday's friendly between Ireland and Mexico at Lansdowne Road. At full time the lads were close to nodding off in the studio overlooking the pitch. "A non-event," said Giles, who's had enough of watching Ireland act as a pacemaker for World Cup qualifiers, like Mexico. That's the problem with being a pacemaker, you have to pull out of the race just as things start warming up. I hope Luis Oliveira, the Belgian striker whose goal in the play-off in Brussels sunk our World Cup hopes, is happy. Spencer Oliver's happy, by all accounts. Happy to be alive, that is. Only a few weeks ago the 23-yearold was in a coma, following an operation to remove a blood clot from his brain after he was knocked out in the 10th round of his title fight against Ukrainian Sergei Devakov in London. So, the most heart-warming sight on television last week was a fully recovered (we hope) Oliver giving an interview to Sky Sports' Ringside programme. "I woke up after three days, looked in the mirror and saw all my hair shaved off and 48 staples from one side of my head to the other - `bloody hell', I said, `I'm in a bad way here'."
His worst moment? "When Jess (Jess Harding, his manager) told me in the hospital that I'd never fight again - it destroyed me. If I could do it all again I would, I tell ya, I wish I could still box now - it kills me to think that I can't," he said. "You seem remarkably well," said the reporter. "Yeah, y'know I think it's done me a favour - a knock on the head and it's sorted me out," he said. And he was being serious. He now hopes to go into business, either opening a bar or a restaurant. He never mentioned taking up golf, though. "A man with a lower set of values," Jim Sullivan might conclude.
