If it’s difficult to talk about our sons because we either talk too good or too bad about them, it is not said that it is easier to talk about our godsons especially when the name is Emanuele “Peppo” Canonica: in other words a name is a guarantee.

But if the world would be made of people with only good sense, mental equilibrium, etc. could you imagine what a bore!
I had Peppo in the Boys Team in Lyckorna at my debut as Captain and it was immediately…. “quarrel”; the last, the one on iron 2 at the 72 of ….we still have to make it.
And still, as the years go by, I notice more and more that the objective impossibility to enter into Peppo’s wavelength is more a lack of mine than his.
Lets begin from Lyckorna though.
When Carletto Grappasonni and I saw for the first time that hole 18, it came spontaneous to say: and now, who’s going to tell Peppo not to play the drive on the green running the risk of remaining impossible to play in the pine-wood and loose the hole against a wimp that with a drive and an iron 7/8 puts it in green in regulation?

Furthermore, the hole was designed to “disappear” behind a hill and from the green of hole 17, only going to the tee of hole 18, you would end up loosing all the links with the games that followed, and furthermore a strategic crossing point which allowed us to see: the arrival of the drive and the green of hole 1, green of hole 13, tee-shot 14, nothing of hole 15, second and green 16, not to mention all the delicate par 3 hole 17. Consequently, hole 18, if necessary to play, we would let it be played...alone.

After the two medal rounds where Peppo was “obedient” at hole 18, the last match-play day had arrived.
We were playing pretty depressed because the day before, due to the usual bad luck, we lost the possibility to enter the finals: this doesn’t mean that we were not eager to go back home with at least a bronze medal, actually we were determined, very determined.

In fact, Peppo comes out from the green of hole 17, 1 up, it is so that I didn’t even bother trying to guess, picking it up with my eyesight midway through its trajectory, where his tee-shot would land: everything was just...normal routine.

Instead, I ran up along hole 14 to closely follow a very tight match which was the key to the bronze medal.
Coming up once again after hole 15 with the match even tighter, from far away I saw Peppo on the tee of hole 17 together with other colleagues; with some gestures I made my compliments to him, which was the usual left handed “thumbs up” with an up and down motion, which kept on rising more and more.

Not only, I also asked him the score, which was our usual right handed closed fisted raised middle finger, and according to the number of...
times showed, the meaning was 1, 2, 3 up etc.
I choose two times, and see Peppo pretending to ignore me while Grappasonni was putting his hands through his hair indicating with the raised index, which he would pass on his forehead, the green of hole 1.
I then understood that Peppo had made it at the 19th.That night during dinner, after having overcome the disappointment of having lost the bronze medal, I break the ice with those still depressed faces: “Well Peppo, tell us why you had to go to the play-off”, “What a clever question,” he replied, “that wimp had to invent a birdie inserting a pipe all in coast.” “Excuse me (being scoundrel), just trying to make the Prophet and I seem silly, hadn’t you lost your will to hit the drive in the green?”

At that point Peppo, being caught by surprise of the fact of not having been assailed for playing the drive, tells us of having had the bad luck of a bounce that ended up in the bunker where under the ball there was, almost invisible, a little rock that inevitably forced him to hit a socket. etc. etc.

In order not to seem gullible, I immediately cut the argument saying: “O.K. Peppo, now you don’t have to tell everything in detail; anyway I‘m glad that you were able to get on track…leaving your bad luck behind at the play-off.”
In that same instant he understood that I knew that his drive had ended up in the pine-wood from where either he lost the ball or he had to hit three shots to reach the green.

From that day in Lyckorna, between Peppo and I began the fun of wrecking each other with course management.
I would exaggerate in refining the visualization of shots of which I had the mathematical certainty that they would get his disapproval; and to him it didn’t seem true to exaggerate in being contrary Joe up to the paradox of making the choice….of the right shot….at the right moment, something that on the other hand, as a young boy, happened to him only at…his birthday and at some other parties.

I’m telling you about this “bad habit” of his in order to show you how much Peppo is a perfect example of “let me make mistakes on my own because I don’t trust your experience”.
Actually, Peppo is not a “natural born rebel and disobedient”, but only an absorbing cloth that doesn’t want to show the others how much he is absorbing.

Peppo cooks, goes fishing and hunting (and I’m not sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he even sows) and also speaks English, French, Spanish and all this without even opening a book.
As a paradox, if Vissani would explain him to prepare a dish, Peppo would say that the recipe sucks.

I met Peppo when he was a young boy, whom even though already had a list of crazy jokes long enough to make an encyclopedia.

I didn’t even tell Peppo because I honestly couldn’t pretend that a 30 year old could already have that major experience of understanding that in that moment when he was cooking the…..“roastpork”(in other words, beating Westwood) the spit could have only been cooked from……behind.

At hole 12, “porcellino” (piggy) had just been able to take out the pierces that Peppo had placed between hole 9 and hole 11; ergo at hole 13 Westwood had the honor and placed the ball perfectly on the fairway; at that point Peppo had to break his scheme playing first the second on the green; ergo to stay behind him would have had to play an iron 1at most; instead “the inexperience” and the hole which allows it or better said claims it, made him hit a drive that surpasses Westwood, even though it ends up on the right rough from where, as we all know, you need to be careful to the flyer, and which in any case, complicates ,by a lot, the backspin which is absolutely necessary on that green.

And it was sot that “porcellino”(piggy – referred to Westwood) playing first and putting it in green in regulation spit a small bull (Canonica). Peppo does not like this nickname because even though he knows (thanks to his self-taught French) the story of the physic du role, he affirms to be……..a bullfighter.

And since I am his supporter……..I forgive him everything, I believe him.