Pitchmarks #100 - “Not sure who's madder…”

The marker at the left edge of Machynlleth’s fifth fairway. When you get close, the arrow tells you to miss it right!

A 4.30am alarm for a drive of four and a half hours ought to feel like a burden; a cruel awakening. A difficult start to a long and busy weekend. But instead, the time passes quickly on the empty roads, as the sun follows me north west towards Wolverhampton then due west towards the Welsh coastline. The gloomy weather forecast seems to be a false alarm until the last few minutes, whereupon dark clouds gather and a tentative first drop turns into steady rain, shifting across the landscape in waves.

From a car park off the high street of Machynlleth, the ancient capital of Wales, I call today’s companion D, whose van is camped at the top of a nearby mountain, and can barely see beyond his windscreen. So we meet for some sustenance and then drive in convoy to the town’s golf club, just three quarters of a mile from the iconic town clock, once a gap in the rain presents itself.

On approach to the single-storey clubhouse, a cleaner smiles warmly as the next heavy shower hammers off the windows, chasing her rubber scraper down the panes. “I’m not sure who’s madder - me or you!”, she exclaims, water dripping from her brow. I daren’t admit what time I arose to get here, or that the primary reason D and I chose this venue was in order to take the photos I either failed to last time, or lost. It is clearly not an ideal day for photography, and I doubt many people would regard a nine hour round trip as a reasonable tariff for nine holes on a fairly unknown track in the shadows of Snowdonia.

“There are three out there already”, she continues, “and they said the Met Office predicted the rain would stop at ten, which it did”. I glance at the watch on my wrist while she pauses for comic effect, then bathe in her gorgeous accent as the punchline is delivered with glee…“thing is, it started again at five past!”

But here we are, and D even has some waterproofs, so we press on and are more or less soaked by the time we leave the first green, and more or less soaked when we shake hands on our eighteenth. For - wet or not - Mach is as wonderful as I remember it from my maiden soaking there a year earlier, and we couldn’t bare to only loop once. Perhaps that is the acid test of a nine holer - that you cannot wait to start all over again.

I remembered the holes well from my first rounds - another good sign - but it is a joy to watch D connect with this rustic and wonderful rendition of the game. At the first we struggle both times to envisage the right angle for that cunning dogleg opener, but manage to scrape two halves in bogey. The long second rolls up and over a couple of broad swales to a green tucked at the north end of the property, then the blind, short third beguiles us with bounces we can’t quite see. On the second loop we skip up the hill to the fourth in the hope of a half in aces, but mine has spun off the right hand ridge too soon, and D’s must have rolled by just on the high side. Two pars is a phrase we barely use today, but at the fourth it must always be a proud statement to make.

The fifth is just wonderful, and I remember from last time that the marker you see from the tee is not the centreline of this gentle dogleg left, but the point at which the rough encroaches from the hill we swing under. Up at the green, our balls chase in low, bouncing up and through to where the sheep casually graze. Six comes back down, then the long par four seventh follows a narrow runway between trees and the rocky outcrop on the right.

It’s exquisite golf, and from almost every point on the course you can gaze across the whole routing, but the view from the penultimate tee - a mid-length par three with the green way beneath us and over a little, diagonal ditch - epitomises this natural site and James Braid’s inspired path through it. Our tee shots hang above the distant hills for an eternity, then plummet to earth to settle beside today’s awkward pin near the right edge. Then the last delivers us to the back of the clubhouse, where we do our best to dry off and recover.

If it had been raining like this at home in Surrey, I’d probably have skipped playing one of the world-beaters down the road today, but somehow at Mach the rain doesn’t matter, for it can’t dampen our spirits or the appeal of this wonderful place. Somehow it has more of what I take for the game’s deepest rhythms - golf’s “warmest chords” to steal a phrase from the sublime Joni Mitchell - than any of the other places which are probably bathed in sun and rammed today. And it is not just the holes themselves, though they are so very lovely, and it is not just the panoramic views or the cool, fresh air. Not just the honesty box sign, or the practice ground that has more sheep than flags. It is somehow all of those things in harmony, and the fact that this little, modest loop - laid out in 1904 - is in this town and of this town. Run by volunteers, surviving on a shoestring, a hub for this proud community.

We call it a day at eighteen, but a tiny slip of blue sky starts to peer through just as we are driving out and it occurs to me that in some other life I’d like to live here, a few yards up the road, take my daily medicine of nine here with a dog or two in tow and never need anything more from this transcendent game of ours. But for now, I delight in the fact that D now knows this little wonder I call Mach, and drive home with more than a little of its charm anchored deep in my heart. And a couple of photos, to boot. I’m still not sure “who’s madder”, but I know deep inside that I wouldn’t change a single thing about today.

Love you, Machynlleth…Caru chi

A thing of rare beauty!