North by Northeast #4

Plan B, for Brora…

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety; other w̶o̶m̶e̶n̶ courses cloy the appetites they feed but she makes hungry where most she satisfies” William Shakespeare, altered slightly for Brora…

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” Robert Burns

The gate to another dimension; image courtesy of Simon Pope

It would be daft to expect things to go without a single hiccup. Playing golf in the north of Scotland at the end of November is a risky business, if you care about staying warm and dry more than you care about searching for the heart and soul of the game. But we are here to play golf in, and be accepting of, whatever the vast sky we move under throws at us, so hiccups are nothing more than a sauce to add flavour to the trip.

Overnight, Jack Frost has been at work on the Dornoch links, so our tee-time vanishes, along with everyone else’s. But plans are only there as a guideline, and we accept this turn of events with an equanimity that would serve us well in other walks of life, and on the course itself. We stroll around the Championship course, admiring its contours through a ghostly white blanket, and on a morning like this, it at least enables our hands to not sting as we pass through these sacred corridors. This is no day for thinned five irons…

Royal Dornoch x Jack Frost; image courtesy of Simon Pope

Soon we are on the road, for Brora is thawing out, and this long awaited visit moves twenty-four hours nearer. By midday, the frost has gone and the course is more or less empty ahead, so we open the wrought iron gate and enter another realm, or so it seems. From the opening tee shot, we are enchanted by Brora - by the simple cunning of the holes; by the gloriously simple presentation; by the firm, fine turf. Angles and slopes; humps and hollows.

Between the deep red and brown cushion of the hills and the rolling white breakers, this gentle green carpet is at once welcoming and mischievous. A sense of open space is enhanced by passing geese, though the Arctic terns have gone for now, only remaining as the club’s logo on unusually still flag silks. Through the front nine, with the sunshine at our backs, there’s some strange sense of serenity today and we smile and laugh as we stroll, our long bobble-hatted shadows showing the way ahead.

At the tenth, we turn around, and spend the next hour and a bit firing shots into the setting sun, and our rhythm seems to fall in step with the developing majesty of this routing. Somehow, we are both clipping the ball from this heavenly sward in an effortless manner, the energy transfer from hand to sweetspot to ball the source of much satisfaction and more than a little confusion. But we daren’t think too much about it, lest the spell - perhaps cast on the seventh hole, “Witch” - be broken…

By the fourteenth, I have stopped looking where the ball lands, for I am somehow in a state where that feeling of forged blade on urethane - or even more sublime, of persimmon on urethane - has rendered irrelevant the actual result. I have stopped striving for - and caring about - the outcome, and instead I am swinging free from fear. Alongside me, Simon is playing the golf of his life, too, and without keeping score we are operating on another level, above or perhaps behind that of the ordinary.

The course, full of charm and character, continues to build until the final test, which seems - with its long and daunting tee shot alongside expensive property windows, leading to a viciously perched green site - like the punchline to a magnificent three hour lark, and yet we both rip our shots at the flag, and smile in delight as they only just fail, for we have done all we can to succeed, and have perhaps succeeded despite what came to pass.

We shake hands, aware that we have shared a rare slice of eternity, and I can feel my legs resist the climb that will deliver us back out of this delectable golfing diamond. I simply don’t want to leave - not this hole, not this course, not this strange, blissful state - and so as we head down the A9 towards the same setting sun that our golf balls were firing at, we are silent, in contemplation. Every now and then, a smile, or an unexplained laugh, or an admission that we don’t know what to think; what to make of the finest of golfing days. More than once, Simon admits feeling bewildered, and if we were hard drives, we’d be corrupted by now.

I came on this trip partly as a retreat - a chance to try and think deeply about my future, and how writing might fit into that - and yet of the many lessons Brora offers me on a day when we thought we’d be occupied next door, it is that anything is possible when we get out of our own way. Normally, I golf like I write - concerned with the outcome; worried about what people might think. Perhaps governed by fears that are not even conscious, though they impede progress nonetheless.

But at Brora, I somehow left all that behind, and what emerged was an energy that I never want to lose; something to implant in my heart and bring away with me from this marvellous, marvellous links. Simon and I became friends through another place that feels mystical, to me at least - Cleeve Hill. And as we’ve made our way across the Highlands, from the wild rollercoaster of Durness through the calming welcome of Reay, we’ve talked about how such golfing landscapes - Cleeve in particular - have changed us.

But tonight, as I try to explain what is more than anything a feeling, I have come to regard Brora as not only a space but an attitude - perhaps a state of being, and one that I wish to inhabit for evermore. There was life before Brora, and it was very good. But life after Brora already feels great, elevated. So we’ll be heading back just as soon as we can…

With the sun on our backs; image courtesy of Simon Pope