ARCHIVED GOLFHUMOUR

Kate, a poultry farmer, gave me a couple of egg sandwiches with my cup of tea before our interview. As I finished eating, she took me out to the lawn and gave me a 5-iron and a golf ball and told me to 'let fly'.

Readers, I hit the longest, straightest 5-iron of my life!

"There's your answer," smiled Kate, "eggs." She winked and tapped her nose. "But not just any old eggs. My special eggs."

Kate has developed these eggs over a number of years after carefully observing the hens' characteristics and noting which ones looked like they'd pass on useful traits for golfers. She then fed the selected hens a special vitamin-enriched formula so that they'd produce 'wonder-eggs'.

The idea came to Kate after she read about eggs which enhance brain power. If it was possible to produce eggs to fix such an easy problem, she theorised it would be possible to develop a similar product for a truly serious problem such as bad golf.

She separated 100 hens for her experiments and immediately noticed a change in their behaviour upon being fed the special pellets.

The selected hens had better aim when laying their eggs in the chute. They kept their heads down longer and didn't come up off the egg too soon.

With the addition of a binding agent and a pinch of cement, the egg emerged dimpled and round rather than oval. This was a vital stage in adding to the psychological value of breakfast for the golfer.

From first thing in the morning, the golfer's brain is absorbing golfing images. Which is why, for maximum effect, you should boil the eggs rather than frying or poaching. The action of dipping toast into the yolk mirrors the action of putting.

The extra effort required by the hens to lay these eggs is passed on to the golfer. Kate noticed that after offering her special egg sandwiches to her partners at the 10th hole, they all released their power at exactly the right moment and developed a full follow-through. And not one of them came up off the ball too soon.

Unfortunately, they had a few problems on the next nine greens. Due to the rain, many worms wriggled to the surface and the women had to fight an urge to scratch them up with their sprigs.

Flying insects also proved distracting, with the women darting after them and stomping over the other players' lines.

Kate remains confident that she can fix this alarming side-effect. And with the women scoring the best rounds of their lives, they decided the side-effects were worth it.

It has already taken years of research simply to get the amount of cement right. The first hens laid eggs so hard that they were impossible to crack. However, from that recipe Kate now has a profitable sideline in tee markers. She merely switched from hens to turkeys to produce a better sized marker.

The logical conclusion is that if a golfer targets the right foods, their golf score will improve dramatically. For instance, egg sandwiches with bits of egg shell mashed in are exactly what you need if you have trouble in bunkers. The extra grit provides the fortitude needed when stuck in sand.

Egg and sliced carrot sandwiches are popular amongst those who spend a lot of time searching for their balls in the rough.

Kate says that the good old bacon-and-eggs breakfast is a grand start to a golfing day if your problem is a fast tempo. Lots of saturated fat will clog the arteries and slow the swing.

Another breakthrough emerged when Kate got together with Pat, a golfer who is a commercial garlic grower. She has also undergone a phenomenal improvement in her golf over the past six months.

Garlic is a marvellous purifier and Pat finds that ten cloves for breakfast clear her senses and enable her to focus fully on the game. The fact that her playing companions never get within thirty feet of her possibly contributes to this.

Kate and Pat have joined forces to fuse the two products for maximum effectiveness. (Garlic acts as an insect repellant so might be the answer to the disturbing side-effects the eggs presently produce.)

P.S. Kate also tells me that she's got a couple of lines of special eggs for other sports people. Anyone interested in high-jumping would do well to buy her HJ eggs. (I'm afraid they're not available as free-range as Kate couldn't keep them in the two-metre high fenced enclosure.)

Long-distance runners should buy the free-range eating fowls. Kate says they show incredible stamina when she appears with an axe in her hand.