Don’t you just hate losing golf balls? If I hit one into the rough, I always seem to struggle to find it. And I don’t like giving up if I can’t see it. Golf balls aren’t cheap.

Maybe it’s a status symbol. If you don’t look too hard for your lost ball, people will assume you can afford to lose them so you must be rich. I’m not rich (yet) so I have to find them. Twenty lost balls every nine holes makes the gofing fees a little pricey.

This begs a question. Why can’t they make the roughs easier to find the balls in? I’ve hunted through roughs where there are sharp thorns, nettles, dense spikey bushes and other not-nice type things. It’s easy enough to find your ball when it goes in the sandpit, so why not the rough?

I think it’s so they can sit in the clubhouse looking at you through binoculars, laughing. I don’t think it’s funny. Golf is supposed to be about aiming a little white ball at a small hole, not beating a path through scratchy, stingy undergrowth.

Maybe the roughs are there so that the golf course caretakers don’t have to look after the whole area. Certainly makes life a lot easier for them. I might do that with a patch of my garden. I’ll not bother looking after it, and when friends remark how it looks untidy, I’ll just explain that it’s been carefully designed as an obstacle to make the garden more interesting.

Hitting a ball into the ubiquitous lake is another downer. Anything deeper than a foot, and you’ve no chance of retrieving it. There’s one course near me, where the first hole requires teeing off through a very narrow strip of grass, rough one side and deep lake the other. Even with a driver, I struggle to clear it. And as it’s the first shot of the day, and I’m not warmed up, I can lose 10 balls before I get a second shot. It’s also in full view of the clubhouse. They are taking the p**s I think.

Why can’t they make the balls float? That would save money. I’ve sliced a few floating balls before, so I know the concept works. Then you could have little boats moored up at the side of the lake and you could go and retrieve your balls.