“Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big”
Umberto Eco
In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that long. We departed for the campsites of Ireland on 17th August, but as I’d left most of the packing until the eleventh hour - a trait as familiar a personal trademark as my collapsing leg action through impact or the inclusion of long sentences - my last actual game of golf concluded six days earlier, on the vicious multi-tiered 18th green that sits beside Jessie’s Pond at Woking, on Hook Heath. And by the time my next game takes place, it will have been almost a month “off”, though I will make up for it in the coming weeks.
Such breaks are important for me; a chance to re-set, slow down, deepen my thoughts. And while I took the opportunity to leave behind the various screens through which we seem to conduct modern life, and pretty much left the half-set of clubs in the roofbox where I’d put them - that element of the packing didn’t get forgotten - it seemed that, playing or not, golf was coming along for the ride.
As we moved across the Emerald Isle, soaking up staggering coastal views, I would peer at those brown road signs with flags on, and wonder what delights and devastations lay along those routes; by night I was plunged into the sort of confused humiliation only golfers know, all restricted backswings and rubber-shafted clubs. Why the nighttime shots don’t fly straight for a change annoys me, so I pick up a book about lucid dreaming, as if that might help.
One day a sign announces the threshold of the town of Waterville, and I am awakened from whatever daytime reverie I was in to glimpse the impossibly fine fescue carpets far away to my left, upon which the rainbow that appears to be following us up the Wild Atlantic Way is cast, as much a symbol of this glorious journey as the ubiquitous shamrock.
But apart from a little pitching practice on our final stop, during which I discover that my flawed technique is as rusty as the Bridgestone wedge I left under the van overnight (Ireland needs to irrigation system(, this will not be a golfing trip and so I must wait until September arrives to come home to this game I love so much, and longer still to properly explore the links pedigree of Ireland.
I’ve been away from golf before, of course. A broken scaphoid meant a couple of months out maybe two decades ago, which I recall being deeply frustrating. More recently, of course, we had the small matter of national lockdowns, during which my observation of the desperate measures that the members of the aforementioned Woking Golf Club would take in order to cling on to this shared pastime was intriguing.
I had all but lost my own passion for the game, buried under paperwork and deadlines. This love affair of thirty-odd years was furloughed, the various sets of irons in the shed cruelly neglected, but reading about the various means through which my isolated members sought to dissolve their own game’s rust - old mattresses set up against garage doors; elaborate putting courses through kitchens and gardens - seemed to awaken something dormant within, and I started to write about them, to them. To somehow close the distance that this virus had enforced in a golfing community.
The whole experience was stranger than any dream could have been, but this absence from the game and from our liberty was both awful and instructive. Every morning, I would compile some nonsense or other, drawing on the responses of the previous few days, and little by little I remembered not only that I too loved golf far too much to live without it, but also that, deep down, I’d always wanted to write. And so this blog began, and I felt as unsure of what I was doing as I would over a downhill six-footer, and much of that remains.
But it is wonderful to be back at home, and within reach of some golf, and to sit at this old wooden desk and let some words stumble - and occasionally tumble - out. Ireland was wonderful, too, but there is something magical in the familiarity of the places we know well that matches perfectly the thrill of the new; we need some of each to maintain a good balance. And as I peer at the calendar ahead, I see such a blend lined up for September - a first look at both Western Gailes and Prestwick, and return visits to Liphook and Coombe Hill.
And I look for a little gap for another mission to the Kent coast, for each time I take a copy of Grass Routes, to place it in a sleeve and send it off to a fellow golf lover, the cover - Jason Livy’s photograph across North Foreland - makes me smile. Today’s post is really all about coming home, and though the place where I sit is really home, this world of golf has a few dozen other campsites that have the same effect on me. So here is the final chapter of Grass Routes for you, in case you fancy a few ideas of new horizons to explore, or old haunts to return to.
And if you would like to read it with an accompanying, glorious smell - not quite the smell of grass after rain, but that of ink on acid-free paper, you know what to do. This home of mine has a pile of boxes full of them. Perhaps one has your name on!
Reading, Listening, Watching
My inability to pack effectively meant I travelled without anything in the way of golf books, so while the text on lucid dreaming was interesting, I doubt you’ve much need for it here. So I will instead mention the latest McKellar magazine, which I was thrilled to submit a small piece for, and am still Reading and loving. Issue number seven is full of gorgeous stories and photographs, and the opening piece, on Lee Trevino by John Huggan, is worth the ticket price alone. So support fine, independent golf writing at its best and subscribe to McKellar. Details here:
Listening was an easy one for me this week, from the archive. The Golfer’s Journal podcast is often excellent, and since I left host Tom Coyne’s “A Course Called Ireland” on the settee when we left to explore that same landscape, it felt appropriate to tune in to this one on the topic of the book I read instead, in which Tom talks to dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg about the nocturnal torture we golfers go through: https://www.golfersjournal.com/editorial/dream-on/
And finally, for today, another one from the archive, and one that strikes a chord with the above reflections on those interminable lockdowns. From the Cookie Jar Golf stable, I have been re-Watching “We Will Play Again”. May we never forget what this game offers us, beyond any score or result. Enjoy!
What a truly magnificent piece of writing. We know you love the 2nd at Tandridge. Would you -as our guest- come back and wax lyrical (or otherwise) about the other 17?
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