The nearest I come to playing a chip shot is pretending I am about to play a chip shot. More than a little self-conscious about my inability to chip, I often take out my wedge or some other irrelevant club, swish it a couple of times in a quasi practise routine and then, to the bewilderment of my playing partners, put it back in the bag and remove my putter instead. I go through this ridiculous charade simply to give the impression that I could chip if I wanted to, which is, of course, a lie.

There are occasions - when the grass is more than ankle deep or a ridiculous bunker is in the way - that I am obliged to attempt something more ambitious even that a 50-yard putt. Although, for me, the percentage shot is probably still a putt, I feel slightly less foolish fluffing a chip than I do wielding a putter through long grass. Consequently, I almost invariably take four to get down. (Incidentally, my autobiography is provisionally entitled “Up and Down in Four” but is not yet available because I haven’t yet progressed beyond the title).

Unlike my playing partners, who chip with the intention of being left with nothing more than a short putt, my principal preoccupation is damage limitation. Instead, therefore, of hitting the ball with conviction, I caress it almost apologetically in the hope that it will appreciate this sympathetic treatment and respond by refraining from doing anything as diabolical as shooting right across the green and into the crap on the far side. In short, my chips are gentle sweeps rather than positive and committed shots.

But to be positive and committed you have at least to believe that you know what you’re doing. It’s no good standing over the ball telling yourself to be confident when every memory you have of that shot going back over the last 30 years is an unhappy one.

The only consolation in having a really dreadful short game is that it’s very unlikely to get worse … I hope.

Despite that, however, I love baseball. I must also confess to a fondness for bagels, jeans and Big Macs. Among my all-time favourite TV programmes are Cheers and, more recently, Friends. I never miss a Woody Allen movie and much prefer Elvis to the English equivalent, Cliff Richards. And when it comes to golf destinations, any one of the 50 states is more appealing to me than pretty well anywhere in continental Europe. (For the benefit of Americans, continental Europe excludes the British Isles. I hope I don’t have to explain what constitutes the British Isles!). In short, I am a huge fan of the United States of America.

My love affair with most things American probably has its origins when, as an impressionable teenager, I spent a year as an exchange student at the Bronx High School of Science in New York. On my return to the UK, while others were demonstrating outside the US Embassy against the war in Vietnam, I was listening to the Beach Boys.

However, there are very few things in life that give me greater pleasure than seeing the Yanks get stuffed on the sports field. One of my fondest sporting memories is when Russia snatched a gold medal in the dying nanosecond of an Olympic basketball final. The sight of the seemingly invincible Americans wandering shell-shocked around the court as their opponents indulged in an orgy of celebration is one that I shall always treasure. And this was at a time of acute international tension when the USA was Britain’s firmest friend and communist Russia was our worst enemy. How do you explain that? Whether it’s because America has taken over the top spot that – when Britain was the only nation to take sport seriously – was previously ours, I don’t know. But I have to confess that my suspicion is that there’s an unattractive element of jealousy buried in me somewhere. Still, who cares, just so long as the Yanks get their arses kicked at the Ryder Cup in September.

Golf, too, might have been a very different game had those early pioneers not chosen a windswept stretch of inhospitable looking dunes behind the beach upon which to footle about but had instead attempted to bash balls around a frozen lake or up and down a multi-storey car park. Those who are even now mocking this speculative musing might care to consider that the hole we so frequently fail to knock the ball into is only the size it is because that was the standard circumference of drainpipes at that time. Drainpipes, being both regular and readily available, were considered ideal templates. It’s a matter of great personal regret that manhole covers were not chosen instead.

All this contemplative reflection occurred to me as I wandered down Main Street in Tupelo, Mississippi to gaze into the window of a corner store from where Mrs. Presley bought a guitar as a birthday present for her young son Elvis. Apparently, he really wanted a gun but the peaceable Mrs. P wouldn’t accommodate him. Supposing, just for the sake of argument, that a persimmon three wood had caught his eye. Given his majestic hip thrust, it is entirely possible that he would have gone on to enjoy a glorious golfing career instead of wasting his time strumming a guitar and fending off women. With Elvis firmly established as the world’s greatest golfer, the way would have been clear for Arnold Palmer to enjoy a succession of number one hits.