Dear Teacher
It has been far too long since I last wrote to you; sincere apologies. I do hope you can make this out from wherever you are - my handwriting hasn’t improved with time, and neither has my game. I’ve thought about you a lot over the past few months, and you will be pleased to know I am managing to play a little more golf than in recent years.
I’ll admit to having lost my way a little, and slipping out of any sort of playing routine has perhaps been part of that, but I’ve taken some steps to rectify that, and have been getting out regularly with the few good golfing friends I have. My last missive contained details of that first job in golf, and I have moved about a little since then, but somehow along the way I got frustrated with working in the game, and so have taken the decision to have a short break from work - a midlife re-set, if you like. Or perhaps a crisis! We shall see.
It feels good to have the space to think long and hard about my career and life, and as you always told me, “there is no better place to find yourself than the golf course”, a phrase that I realise, whilst writing it, has a couple of equally important meanings.
I remain so very grateful to you for those wonderful, magical hours in the nets, every Saturday morning. I’ve always hoped that you were aware how much your influence helped me fall in love with this funny old game, and, all these long years later, that connection is still there, both to golf, our mystical goddess, and to you, and your kindness.
You taught me how to hit the ball - no simple task - and as we both know, golf will teach you everything else you need to learn for a good life - humility, patience, community. I’m becoming increasingly philosophical about the game and life in general in middle-age; the more I play, the more I realise it is like peeling an onion, revealing layer upon layer of complexity and meaning. And yet in those rare moments when we play well, it is also the simplest methods that get us there. We humans do like to over-complicate matters.
You also taught me how to speak up - I occasionally still catch myself mumbling, or not sticking up for my beliefs, such as they are, and can almost hear your voice gently pulling me back to clarity, and firmness. But you are decades older than me, and that generational gap means it would be awkward to speak up too much in person about this deep gratitude I have for you, and for those timeless hours of golfing study, in the dark room behind the shop, pulling old Dunlops back from the base of the crumbled nets. But this is a letter, so I will tell you after all, and it’s easier for us both this way.
You’d make me take on all those drills, like swinging back on a plane that caught the limp end of an old grip, suspended by a clamp from the mantelpiece to my right. Catch that, and feel a barely perceptible, deflecting nudge from it, and I would know the club was where it should be, and that it could go straight up from there. You wouldn’t believe the cash people spend on gadgetry these days (I imagine you saying “fools and their money are easily parted” with a smirk) , but nothing has been as useful to me as that simple set-up, or the cardboard box into which we chipped balls.
Goodness knows how much good chalk I brushed off that black rubber mat with your old six iron over time, but in those days I was playing enough that I could be that precise, and the demands of that practice, and the one where you left a tiny gap between balls and I swept away the nearer one with the toe of the club, left me with an action that, even when I missed, still put the ball near the centre of the face.
Mostly, it is your northern tone and those simple, repeated mantras that visit me on the course. “If you want to hit it further, learn to hit it better” comes often, and that emphasis on a slow, low takeaway with that phrase in mind must have saved me a few thousand shots and dozens of balls down the years. “Turn, lift, swing, through”, and the attendant thought of “swinging through, not at” always works, too…though I often forget, as I did back then. Too much of a hurry to hit the next good one, I guess.
This game has given me so much - in joy, friendships, even some semblance of a career if you can call it that - but it will also bring me to my knees and teach me a harsh lesson now and then, and that always happens when I’ve forgotten that incredibly patient rhythm with which you hit the ball, never missing a beat through all those hours of tuition. It was only the other day when I realised that we’ve not even met outside of that building - how extraordinary to have never actually played golf together. It seems criminal, that, to me. What a time to realise it.
I can’t tell you how much it all meant to me, and as I start to once again play a bit, those feelings come flooding back. My parents were thrilled to have found an outlet for my childhood energy, and they too thought the world of you, but we’re British, so we never say that stuff out loud. But when Dad died - about a decade ago now - one recurrent theme for me was that I’d never asked enough questions, or said the things I wanted to say, and I feel those same pangs of sadness with you, my dear teacher.
It was negligent of me to drift away to university and lose touch as I did, and when your dear wife replied to my last letter - in October 2002, I told you it had been too long - I’d missed you by 18 months. I worked out this morning that you were born just before the Great War started, and lived through so many interesting times, and yet I, in my childhood naivety, thought we were there just to learn about golf, or that there’d be time to ask questions later.
So I am left with this feeling of immense gratitude for all that we did share, and a determination to speak up for myself - to not mumble - and to find my way back to this game we both love so much. I’m out at 10am this morning, with a dear friend who reminds me of you, and as we weave through the heathland corridors of my favourite inland course, I will think of you as I draw the club back from that same expectant ball you spent your long life staring at, and know that while we never played golf together, and never will in this lifetime, you are out there with me. In every moment.
Yours sincerely
Richard
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