Pitchmarks #158 - "Compound Interest"

At Worplesdon

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.”
Albert Einstein

“That’s a really good opening hole”, Mike purrs, looking from Worplesdon’s opening green back towards the tee — and he’s right. After dozens of loops of this majestic heathland, I suppose I take its quality for granted a little, and it is rewarding to watch someone absorb the effortless charm of this club and this course for the first time. A nice wide fairway, though trouble aplenty lurks on either side for the greedy, and then an approach up the steady hill to a green whose subtle borrows give an early indication of the putting challenges ahead.

We skip up the second, both our drives fading to where the tall oaks between that hole and the next impede our lines for the second shot, then suffer a little at the quietly tricky third. Worpy’s short holes are a perpetual and tremendous challenge, and they begin with the treacherous fourth, played in front of a packed, sun-bleached patio to a target carved from the hill before us. A cavernous bunker eats Mike’s ball, I three putt, and we move on.

On the fifth tee, we are waved through by the four in front, and - naturally - find the same flanks of heather that held up their group, though we make it through, admiring on the way the double valley that crosses the approach and another devastating green complex. After the gentle first loop of four holes, it feels as if this is where the course begins to bare its teeth, and if Abercromby later became famous at Addington for his half-par holes, he certainly learned a good deal of that craft while working with Willie Park Jr here. To average four and a half at the fifth would seem a good bargain to strike, especially when starting a round there.

As we stroll onto the next tee we are - as we have been in our previous games together, at Woking, and New Zealand, and Addington - deep in conversation. In the context of habits, physical and financial, Mike refers to compound interest as a key to most things, and we riff on that for a while as we negotiate the beguiling sixth. At a little under five hundred yards, the last quarter of which slithers down the hill towards the third, it is another half-par classic, but despite us each hitting fine fairway woods at the pines behind the green, we walk off unrewarded, via the rear bunkers.

That I only find my sandy lie via an over-enthusiastic eagle putt from near the front-right edge brings a furious silence for a while, as I berate myself. But as we make our way round to the seventh tee, I finally realise that the spot where my second came to rest is the safest place to aim, away from the heather and taking the rear bunkers out of play; from there, one might alternate between safe pars and happy birdies. It has taken a great many larger numbers to reach this understanding, and I wonder if this too is a form of compound interest: learning a course’s lessons over time, from bitter experience.

Mike is as delighted with his first glimpse of the wonderful eighth as I once was, with its disguised lines from the tee and the wild tiers of the green, rising up to taunt one’s short irons. Like so many great short fours, the number on the card gives no clue as to its beauty or challenge, and we are thankful for a front hole location, for neither of us seems equipped today for the tight plateau that awaits at the back. Then the ninth - a grower for me, with its gradual slide to the right and a sliver of a green that welcomes approaches from the tighter, left hand side. Repeated plays bring an eventual understanding, but despite my briefing on the tee, neither Mike nor I can execute, and Worplesdon wins another hole from us.

The tenth these days is magnificent - freed from the smothering rhododendron curtains that used to border it - and as the red flag silk reflects across the rippled surface of the pond we must carry, I reflect on how much the course has changed in the twenty-odd years since I first played it. Not in character, nor in the bare mechanics of the holes, but in the presentation of this masterpiece. By the careful management of the woodland, the heather has thrived, and with it the turf - simple agronomics, but beyond the vision of many a golfer. Today’s playing corridors give the width and options that the architects would have wanted, while the fascinating greens and careful bunkering - Abercromby’s brilliant contribution on his architectural debut - reward thoughtful play and punish all else.

As Worplesdon itself builds through the back nine, it occurs to me that it is not so much that the latter holes are better than the earlier ones, but that the course’s great strength is in its consistency: hole after hole that has stood the many tests of time, survived the whims of golfing fashion and equipment. The patch over the road - two very distinct back-to-back par fives, a staggering par three, then another softly sadistic two-shot hole - is one of golf’s finest little parcels of land, and the finishing stretch is as good as any I know, but they are built on the foundation of the front nine, the slowly growing drama of a sublime routing that chops and changes direction through pristine heath.

At the sixteenth, you must club up at least one, and not miss short or left, and preferably not right. Survive that intact and the seventeenth tee will interrogate you, with a string of bunkers out right and a pine limb or two wide left. From the fairway - as if Mike or I found it - the green taunts you, sliding up a steep ramp from which one last heather-clad bunker stares unblinking at your ball. Then you turn right, and spot the comforting clubhouse in the distance, one last par-four-and-a-half to go. It is a stunning finale, but Worplesdon deserves to end this way, for it is woven from such quality right from the start. Drive it in the fairway - heather lurks right and a fence-line hard left - and you must then carry the bunkers or chase one in through the front-left corner. For the flat-bellied youths, it is probably a drive and a flick; for Mike and I it is two solid blows, and that we share nine strokes between us seems about right.

Our drinks are well-deserved, and we return to this notion of compound interest once more. It shows in the club we are lucky enough to meet at today: day after day of thoughtful management, year after year of a respectful, articulate membership. Worplesdon is cherished by those who frequent her, but in the steady progress of the last few years it feels like a work of art whose canvas is being carefully restored. We talk too of our golfing journeys, and of this writing craft, and - as he has been ever since we first met - Mike is both a sounding board and a leader; his role as a coach not constricted to the day job. He is kind, and empathetic, and challenges me when I require it, and so the conversations flourish and deepen, eighteen holes at a time.

I recall, in writing this, that I actually walked way past my ball in the eighteenth fairway, despite having seldom found the short grass from that tee, and that sort of sums up how these rare days in Mike’s company go. We are there to golf, but also to absorb what goodness we can from our shared experiences, and our thirst for improvement. We talk and we listen, and by the end of the day it feels like one more hefty deposit into our friendship, and into the ongoing education - Stoic or otherwise - of this marvellous game that brings us together. As usual, I suspect Einstein was right: compound interest may well be the eighth wonder of the world. Which would make golf, as far as I can see, the ninth.