“Northwesterly gale 7 to severe gale 9 veering northerly 4 to 6” Shipping Forecast for Fair Isle, issued 23/11/2023 at 21.50.
By now you know that detailed preparation is not in character for me. I don’t study rankings, nor really care for them; instead I place my faith in the sort of people who know and appreciative the sort of golf I love. Time and again this pays dividends, as these friends gently nudge me towards more and more remote outposts of the real game, the old game. Places where the ground is firm and the pace is fast, and where the success or otherwise is not judged by some nett score or points total, but by the result of a friendly match or better still, by how much fun we had.
So while Dornoch sings to me from the gorgeous prose of Herb Warren Wind and Lorne Rubenstein, what fast became a compulsion to visit Durness, more miles north of my home than I care to check, grew from the sort of conversation golfing nuts have. One friend urges me to go; another simply sends me a photo of the beach which melts my heart. And the final straw is when an email arrives from someone on the south coast of England, celebrating Durness as one might celebrate their own offspring.
“I love Durness almost as much as you love Rye”, it reads, and I feel such a thrill that there are other people - lots of them, it turns out - who love these places at the top and bottom of the country as much as I do. A little while later, a follow up includes the line “it is a place where it is wise to check the shipping forecast before you play”, and I realise that I cannot wait to get there and see this for myself.
So we wake up, and inhale a hearty breakfast and gallons of coffee, and in light of the persistent vibe from the locals that “it’ll be windy up there” I do check the Shipping Forecast. Those familiar sounds - “North Utsire, South Utsire” - were part of the soundtrack of my childhood, though they’d never really made sense. And even now, “gale 7 to severe gale 9” would be better understood if it said “it’s a four club wind”, so I shrug, and head off across the moors in search of the latest promised land.
Now, twelve hours and twenty-seven holes later, my legs hurt from walking and running (unable to walk away after the conventional eighteen holes - which at Durness means two loops including some sensational alternate tees for the back nine - I ran another swift loop to bemused glances from several hundred sheep), and my ribs hurt from laughing. We have hit shots from the sublime to the ridiculous through a landscape that defies description, on a course that features everything that is good about golf and very little else.
At Durness, there is no fuss or fluff. There are tees, and marker posts, and greens, and the turf that links the two ends of each question is firm and fast and, well, natural. One of our playing partners is the greenkeeper; the other is the President, and in this valued company we learn so much about golf up here in the Highlands. The simplicity of the game when played like this is almost as breathtaking as the mountains and the ocean all around us, and were it not for the fact that we’re blown away - figuratively and literally - by this day spent in devotion to the essence of the game, we’d probably waste time wondering how nearly all the rest of modern golf managed to get blown so far off course.
One day soon, when this adventure is over and we have dragged ourselves away from this timeless coastal paradise, I will try to make sense of what just happened up here, and perhaps write more of the actual details - like the glorious split fairway fifth & fourteenth, or the heroic finishing hole, with its “Rafferty tee” carry over the crashing waves. Or the thrill of a dozen long chip and runs, or of knocked down persimmon three woods that manage to stay under the breeze as it “veers northerly 4 to 6” or whatever. I could go on. And I will, one day.
But for now I just want to pass on the secret, for I know that among the millions of people who own golf clubs there are more than a few who prefer the game served this way, and I’d love for some of you to see what we just saw. For now I know, I wouldn’t have wanted my lifetime to pass without heading this way. It’s that good…
The Shipping Forecast is just beginning to make sense to me, and so is this strange addiction to Scotland’s ancient game. For it helps me to find meaning and fulfilment, keeps me out in the great outdoors, and connects me to the most wonderful people and places. It’s early days, of course, but I think I might love Durness as I love Rye, and I’d be hard pushed to find higher praise than that. But I don’t need to decide on this, for I can simply celebrate them both. Simply connect to them both…
On the Durness website, there’s a tagline that says “Exceeding expectations”. Today, it managed that a thousandfold. So I will close this tablet, and close my eyes, and hope that - gale or otherwise - the inshore waters of both Fair Isle and Cromarty will provide as fabulous an experience for the next three days as the one that we’ve had today. But it’ll take some doing…
Portmahomack is great fun close to Tain and you would love Covesea beside Moray/Lossiemouth,
Thank you, Alan. Two mentions of Covesea in a day, after not hearing the word in the previous 49 years...that's the sort of intel that catches my imagination. Heading off to Google now...