For many footballers, golf provides the perfect getaway from the stresses of the beautiful game. Some players even turn pro after hanging up their boots, such as former West Ham United and Liverpool hard man Julian Dicks.
Yet the defender soon discovered that 18 holes could be just as stressful as clashes with the Crazy Gang. "I started when I was 22," he tells FourFourTwo exclusively ahead the launch of his new book Hammer Time (Headline, £22), out now. "I’d done my knee with West Ham and I was out for 14 months. I felt sorry for myself. I was bordering on being an alcoholic. I was down the pub every night, drinking, so I went into the training ground and spoke to a physio. I said I had a problem and I couldn’t stop drinking.
"He told me to take up golf," recalls Dicks. "I said, ‘Fuck off, that’s an old man’s game’. He told me to try it – it would do me good. I went to the driving range and borrowed some clubs and I enjoyed it. Now, I’m the sort of person that, if he’s going to do something, he has to do it properly. So I went and bought some clubs.
"I was hitting probably 500-600 balls on the driving range every day. Then I started playing at least nine hours every day, most of the time on my own. That was when my handicap started coming down. I was playing off four and started having some lessons with Colin Montgomery's old teacher."
Working with a proper golf coach proved a setback in the short term. "I showed him my swing and he said it was s**t," laughs Dicks. "It wouldn’t do, so I started from the beginning and re-learnt a proper swing. I went up to an 18 handicap. Then it started to come down again from there.
"I turned pro in the end," Dicks tells FFT. "But I was never really good enough. The other golfers were good with me, despite my reputation. People were expecting me to throw and snap clubs, but away from football I’m not like that. The only time I lost my rag was when I played football. I could be horrible but, off the pitch, I’m not that person.
"So when I played golf, of course I got the hump and snapped clubs, but never in tournaments. I had bad rounds and lobbed things around, but only by myself. I can’t play now as my knees are shot to pieces. I don’t miss golf, but I do miss football every day."
