Pitchmarks #127 - “B-sides”

“There’s a time for certain ideas to arrive, and they find a way to express themselves through us” Rick Rubin, from “The Creative Act”

It is early July, and a chance emerges to join an old friend and former colleague in a quick spin around the spare nine at St George’s Hill, known as the Green course. I say “known”, but it isn’t exactly well known, for the predominant custom is to play the Red and Blue nines in that order, and anyone who’s felt their pulse race as they plot a route over the many humps and hollows of this perch above Weybridge will attest to the magnificence of one of Harry Colt’s greatest endowments to the game.

Colt is famously quoted as having described Swinley Forest as his “least bad course”, but even a cursory glance at the wealth of historical images that the pending restoration project will take as reference suggests that perhaps among these rolling hills and spell-binding views, he worked here without restraint. It is already majestic; goodness knows what word we will use when the work is complete.

But today we instead walk between the flanks of the normal starting tees, and clip down towards the Brooklands Road, and by the time we reach the Green’s first putting surface, we are away from the hustle and bustle, with our very own Colt course to play upon. The second taunts us, a green perched above a hellish shelf on the left, with a sea of heather to the right and two menacing bunkers for good measure. It is a short hole that could slot into any one of Colt’s many masterpieces, and worth the journey alone, though the Green doesn’t stop gleaming there.

Our third turns left, daring us to attack though the contour screams “defend”, then the fourth plays from an elevated tee down past the practice ground - as deserted as the Green course today - to a target in the far corner of the property. From there, we must trust a marker as the fifth slides right to left round some beautiful old birch, its shimmering leaves dancing in the early evening light. A band of bunkers cut a diagonal mask for the ditch that drains this parcel of land, but though they look much closer to the green than they are, the firm conditions permit us to bundle our approaches in along the ground, threading between the fourth and fifth hazards to another immaculate target.

The Green’s sixth is a further reminder of the architect’s brilliance, with a wicked approach and green that fold effortlessly into the ripples of the landscape. It is well under three hundred yards, but the second half of that measure is packed with mischief, and with the ground as dry as it is, a four seems a devilish ask. By the time we reach the seventh green, I am two balls and a good deal of confidence lighter, but I can still marvel at Colt’s confidence - and the trust of the founders here - to build this green where it sits. From the tee, one plays over a sea of heather to what seems a narrow spine of fairway, in order to attempt the heroic second over a cavernous valley, with another heather-clad wall standing sentry over the right edge.

We are the only pair to stray onto the Green in a whole summer’s day, and it seems criminal that such superb golf goes unseen, and absurd to leave after only one loop. But leave we must, via another fine short hole and the rollercoaster ninth, and we shake hands and pledge to do this more often. On the way home, the radio chucks out two classics in a row that were first released as B-sides - Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” rumbling through its melancholic loops only to be followed by “How Soon is Now?”, a darling of mine from The Smiths’ heyday. And some theme, some idea germinates about golf’s B-sides, and off I drift into sleep, dreaming of getting a ball to actually reach that seventh green at last…

Roll forward to November, and I leaf through the latest volume of The Links Diary to find a gorgeous piece by an American golfer, Brian Bauder, which stops me in my tracks and makes the world around fade out. He writes about a rediscovery of the soul of the game through writing and reading, and of abandoning the headline journeys, “drawn instead to the B-sides of golf”, and all I can do is smile and write to him, to thank him for his blessed prose, and for reminding me of this germinating seed of a theme. Early on in “The Creative Act”, Rick Rubin talks about how cultural movements might lurk in wait for a conduit to discover them - “ideas and thoughts, themes and songs and other works of art exist in the ether and ripen on schedule” - and when I then see someone else mention B-sides in the context of golf, I know we are onto something.

I find a list of those tunes that weren’t meant to - or expected to - catch the waves of fashion, but which sprang from the flip-side of some other single to become iconic in their own right. “I’m Not in Love”, by 10cc, Van Morrison’s “Gloria”, and a whole handful of timeless Rolling Stones and Beatles numbers. But I have - along with Brian, I suspect - another list, which is of the courses that are the golfing equivalents to these unexpected gems. Not the quieter places down the road, this time, but the spare holes or loops that get missed in the hurtling chase to tick boxes. And much of the past few years, plunging back into golf and chasing “Common Grounds”, has included such explorations.

The River Course at Aldeburgh made it into the book, though I’d never even heard of it before. It is nothing like the main course there, but on a quiet afternoon it has all the charm and intrigue to satisfy any level of golfer, and that seems important to me, for we all must start - and end - somewhere. Rye’s reclaimed Jubilee somehow didn’t make it in, but you could post me down on those holes - or even just the fifth green, slung into the dunes as if transplanted from Carne - in perpetuity and I’d be as happy as Darwin in his nearby, eternal pulpit. And that the first time I played the Jubilee my host, a member for many years, said “Sure. Any idea where it is?” just makes that B-side even more precious to me.

At St Enodoc, you might wonder “who in their right mind would play the Holywell when you could go to Church?”, but - having played it to avoid a cascade of rather serious looking fourballs before then hammering through the main course at sunset - I tend to see it the other way round. They are both wonderful in their own way, and the peaks and troughs of these twinned sisters are like the gentle rhythms of life, somehow. And the Warren course down at Littlestone is another strangely charming footnote, tucked in beside the famous links. Somehow they complement each other perfectly, these tracks - the full spectrum of golf side by side, and joy to be found in abundance on each.

And on the cover of Common Grounds - though I realise only in typing this that nowhere in the book does it tell you this - my most treasured B-side of all, though in truth these days it is probably more like a G-side in a town as rich in golf as Downings. A few months and a few hundred miles from St George’s Hill, a good piece of my heart and at least one tatty Pinnacle are left behind on a few of Colt’s other forgotten charms, rising up the hill past the old Coastguard cottages at Rosapenna.

These are the sort of places where people might first learn this blessed game of ours, might suddenly catch one in the middle of the bat and spin around enchanted, and for evermore think in terms of yards and carries, divots and birdies. And maybe we’ve seen and heard enough of the A-sides for now, with all their might and their stripes and the endless grasps at perfection. Maybe the B-sides’ time has come, and an appreciation of the simpler, more sustainable forms of golf might - as Rubin put it - “appear like a wave…in this great unfolding”. That’s a movement I could support…