My dad plays golf four times a week and is impossible to buy for. This is the only present he has ever rung me about.
Ten years of Christmas guesses for a man who says he does not want anything. Here is what failed, and the one that did not.
My dad is 68, retired, plays four times a week, and has everything. Ask him what he wants and he says "oh, nothing, don't be silly", which is the least helpful sentence in the English language.
So for about a decade I have been guessing. Badly. What follows is a fairly humiliating list of what I have handed him on Christmas morning, and the one thing that finally worked, which I only found because I stopped thinking about golf.
He rang me about it. Twice. He has never rung me about a present.
The club I thought he needed
A hybrid, because I had heard him moan about his three iron. What I did not know is that a club has to fit you, that he had already been fitted, and that the one I bought was the wrong shaft for him in a way he could tell within two swings.
He used it for a season out of politeness. I found it in the garage last year.
Worked
- He could tell I had listened
Did not
- Clubs have to be fitted and I cannot do that secretly
- Expensive enough that he felt obliged to use it
- Garage
A day at a course he had mentioned once
A proper day out, two hours away, the kind of place he talks about. He was genuinely delighted on the day and we did eventually go, fourteen months later, after I had chased it three times.
The lesson is the same as a voucher. An experience is a thing you both have to organise, and he will not organise it because he does not want to be any trouble.
Worked
- Genuinely great when it finally happened
- Time together, which is the real point
Did not
- Took over a year to happen
- I had to chase my own present three times
The premium golf jumper
Safe, nice, correct size, he wears it. This is a perfectly good present and I am not going to pretend otherwise. It is also the fourth golf jumper he owns, and if you ask him about it he will say it is lovely, which is what he says about everything.
Worked
- He genuinely wears it
- Impossible to get badly wrong
Did not
- He already had three
- Nothing about it is memorable
The one he rang me about
I gave up on trying to buy golf. Instead I thought about what I had actually watched irritate him, and the answer was immediate and slightly stupid: he spends ten minutes at the boot of the car after every round, banging his shoes together and picking mud out of the spikes with a tee, complaining the whole time.
Air Caddy Pro 2.0
A cordless blower, about the size of a hairdryer, that lives in his golf bag. He points it at his shoes and the mud comes off dry in about three seconds. No water, no towel, no banging anything against a kerb.
He rang me on Boxing Day to tell me he had used it. He rang me again in February because one of the men in his group had asked where it came from and he wanted to know what it was called so he could tell him properly. That is the only present I have ever had a follow-up phone call about.
The reason it works, I think, is that a man like my dad will never buy this for himself. It is not essential, it is not a club, and it is exactly the sort of thing he would look at and say oh, don't be silly. Which is the whole definition of a present.
Worked
- Fixes something I had actually watched annoy him
- He uses it every round, not once
- Nothing to book, fit or organise
- His playing partners asked about it
- Arrives in a proper box, nothing to wrap
- 30 days to return if you get it wrong
Did not
- More than I usually spend on one present
- He now insists on doing my car as well
They sold out before Christmas last year. At the time of writing there were under 200 units left on the current run.
If your dad is also impossible
Do not buy a club. Do not buy an experience he has to arrange. Do not buy the fourth jumper. Think about the ten minutes of the day where you have actually seen him annoyed, and buy the thing that removes it.