Pitchmarks #36 - 10th March 2024 - In the Vale of Pickering
From memory, my Saturday morning golf lessons petered out in about 1989, or thereabouts. So the sound “Ganton” must have first landed on my eardrums at least thirty-five years ago. And although even our strongest intentions drift in and out of consciousness, I think I can claim that I’ve been meaning to go for that long.
My teacher, Dick Kemp Jr, was retired by that point - a former Welsh PGA Champion and a participant in the 1960 Centenary Open at St Andrews, though he never mentioned either fact, and I had not the foresight to imagine a world without him, or without my father, and so never asked. I’ve no great regrets, but given my time again, I’d probably ask a few more questions of each of them.
But life offers few mulligans, so I am left to piece together fragments in order to understand both men. One such moment, in the dusky light of Mr Kemp’s studio at the back of a suburban golf shop in Cardiff, was a brief mention of Ganton, but I can’t recall anything other than that single word. But it was the same sort of mention - offered without any real explanation - that I have sensed in others when whispering of Brora or Shiskine, and it meant I would need to one day find out for myself why that place mattered to him, or imagine what appealed to him.
February’s incessant rain meant a cancellation elsewhere, and it was only in the studying of a local map that I realised we were within reach of Ganton. Until that point, I’d just had it down as some vague “north” location, as unreachable in the normal course of life as Mr Kemp’s workshop of nets and mirrors, but here it was just half an hour away, after all that time. So emails are exchanged, and an alarm set, and as the sun creeps over the lobster pots of Bridlington harbour far behind me, I am indicating right into a long drive, swinging left into an empty car park, and pinching myself.
In the changing rooms I find Duncan, the starter, whose welcome is so warm that he might have been expecting me since those late eighties, and he lines me up with some range balls, and a card, and a sense of how special this place is to those “in the know”. His father was once the Professional here, and to have returned here for work is something he regards as a privilege, and that comes across in his manner; “the cycle of life”, as he puts it, as I push my peg into the opening tee.
And when the greenkeeper’s mower leaves the first green, I drive off and follow him around the course, and feel - for the thousandth time - blessed to have found this game, and Mr Kemp, and at long last, Ganton. It’s been a while since I played alone, but somehow I don’t feel lonely here, for I walk in the footsteps of the greats.
The course sits in the Vale of Pickering, once a glacial lake between the Yorkshire Wolds and the North York Moors and, when the glaciers finally melted, the sedimentary layer left behind was the kind of sandy soil upon which golfing grasses thrive. Ganton is often called “an inland links” - an oxymoron in most cases - but nowhere else apart from Sand Hills have I felt quite the same tug from fescue turf away from the shoreline. Once, at the end of that short period when England were champions of the world, the old Wembley took from here a whole swathe of turf from the back of the practice ground, and I imagine those sods being laid in the grey shadows of that dank stadium and pining to be back in the Vale of Pickering.
As I approach the second green - already utterly smitten - my connection to this landscape gets deeper still as the resident barn owl that Duncan mentioned takes another silent pass, landing gently in some pines to the evident disgust of the local crows. At the third green, I stop to chat with Matthew, a member of the greenstaff, and we marvel at the conditions here - when “the rest of Yorkshire is shut”. And as his truck pulls away, I feel some hint of a pull back to that life of tending grass, come rain or shine.
The course continues to impress - the raised plateau of the fourth green a marvel right before the teasing beauty of the fifth - and false fronts and little hollows provide a delightfully natural challenge. I take endless photos of the bunkers - the magnificent bunkers - and wish that other courses dared maintain such a glorious, eclectic collection as this. Some are small, revetted hard against the green complexes that spill into them; others sprawl across fairways and approaches with clumps of heather and gorse as a garnish.
And then there’s the “Pandies” - not the clumsy scrapes of this latest wave of fashion, but vast expanses of wilderness that I will later see in the grainy photos of the club’s rich archives. Duncan suggests the name comes from pandemonium, and that makes sense but no-one is quite sure, for they have been part of this Vale as long as Ganton. They are the sort of spaces where I could imagine not losing only a golf ball or two but also a year or a whole childhood, roaming around with a few balatas and a wedge in my hand. Except that it wouldn’t have felt like a loss; instead time well spent.
Barely two hours after I began, I approach the clubhouse via an extraordinary final two holes - the demanding seventeenth taking every last ounce of energy - and gaze over at the first, and wish I could go again. But instead I head indoors, and Gary’s welcome is as warm as Duncan’s, and he shows me the clubhouse itself. The gold leaf of the honours boards tell the story of both the amateur and professional game, and I wonder how many of these legends Mr Kemp played with, or knew. And we peer at pictures of Harry Vardon, who won the first three of his six Opens whilst the Club’s professional, along with a US Open trophy that he carried here all the way from Chicago Golf Club.
And then I come to understand just how many gifted hands have worked on this layout - not just Vardon and his peers in the Triumvirate, Taylor and Braid, but his successor in post, Ted Ray. And Colt, and Mackenzie. And Tom Simpson. So Ganton is not only “one of golf’s historical shrines”, as John Hopkins so artfully described it, but a collaborative mural of some of the finest architects to grace this game of ours. And I feel so lucky to grace this property, and to step into history in this way.
Gary Player once said of Ganton that it was “the one inland course that could hold the Open”, but of course the ball now flies too far for the elite to test themselves here. But while the manufacturers count their fortunes, and their lawyers prepare for another lucrative bout of foul lawsuits, I can only think how much poorer is the game, and the schedule of those touring pros, that places like this are no longer an option at that level.
But for us mere mortals, Ganton remains a beautiful and brutal test of golf, and a sublime place to be, and as I return up that drive, already missing the barn owl, I know that I now have a chance to pass on to others the same coded message that dear Mr Kemp passed to me in another century. If you hear me say “Ganton”, and you see my eyes light up, don’t waste your time with questions; just get the map out. You’ll find out why when you get there. If the Vale of Pickering really is the middle of nowhere, I don’t know why anyone would bother trying to get somewhere.
Oh, and take your “A” game…
With a stomach stuffed with dates and a head full of sunny thoughts, I just happen to be in Tunisia. But your well-chosen words instantly transported me to a place I'd never been before without the stress of Gatwick or guilt of warming the planet. Perhaps I should take my next golf break at home simply reading your book. Thanks.
So close & yet so far. Sounds like a double winner, memories of your teacher & likely one of his favorite places. 👏