Pitchmarks #48 - 2nd June 2024 - Aldeburgh

It’s been far too long since we played, M and I. A lousy winter, too many commitments, etc., etc. But at last we find a date that works, and we guard against all intrusions. We shall head to Suffolk, where M will show me Aldeburgh, a place he loves dearly, and one I have always meant to visit. And the train up to London gives me time to think; my golf bag the distinguishing mark of a leisurely day in the midst of sullen commuters.

M picks me up at Waterloo, out the back near The Cut, and we weave through the grey rain of Westminster, then the Docklands, then up towards Chelmsford. Gradually, the hustle of the metropolis peels away, and dual carriageway turns to country road as we chat through the journey, all the time with M’s car radio gently providing a classical soundtrack.

We cover art, and parenting, and a great deal about writing, and I am inspired by how M’s own fiction just appears, and how comfortable he seems with this mysterious delivery of sentences, and characters. We also talk about golf, of course, and M’s intensity about the elusive secrets of his own game is a delight as usual. He talks of being “suddenly possessed” by “a movement, a feeling” - and how such solutions last only a few holes or rounds and are then gone. Forgotten, or perhaps spent. It’s an ongoing thing.

But this sharp focus on golf seems to me to sum up M in general. It is just one example of how he manages to live more in the present moment than most of us…not bathing in some rose-tinted haze of the past nor worrying too much about the future. He is here, now, and when we hit the course at Aldeburgh, each shot will command his full attention, “suddenly possessed” by the pursuit of another flushed stroke; by another mindful moment.

Towns become hamlets as drizzle turns to warm sun, and when M seems to enter a trance, peering at the flowering gorse off the left side of what I will later realise is Saxmundham Road, I sense we’re getting close. And then we swing left into the car park, and a charming white clubhouse sits perched above sweeping fairways, and I can barely wait to explore this place. The radio is still quietly playing as we get organised, and M - clearly delighted to be back in one of his many spiritual homes - is whistling the simple refrain from Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” as he strolls to the locker room, a melody that has “suddenly possessed” me, too.

From the first tee, Aldeburgh sinks its teeth into me, a pulled drive forever buried in gorse, but still we whistle and hum. Rising temperatures after a damp winter has bestowed a fresh growth of immaculate turf, and the semi-rough is dry enough in the early afternoon sun to crackle as we walk on it. At the wonderful short fourth, I find a bunker defended by ancient sleepers, and marvel at the rustic nature of it all despite leaving my ball in there. And when I finally escape, splashing it out onto another vast putting green, I notice that Schubert is raking the sand with me.

The front half continues to develop, and as we turn towards the clubhouse for the ninth, M remarks that this is often the point at which players decide to wave a white flag, leaning their clubs against the terrace wall in favour of a long lunch, but we are desperate to carry on. Later, I will read on the club’s website that Bernard Darwin - a lover of Aldeburgh, which is no surprise - played his last shot here, a four iron to this green, and I will disappear down another rabbit hole, wondering what caused the great man to lay down his own sticks. His shortened round that day another “Unfinished Symphony”…perhaps he just felt, as one does at Aldeburgh, that days can’t get much better than this.

But for now I have my own four iron to hit, and from where it finishes, beyond and to the right, the chances of a recovery look ominous. But the ball springs from my blade, “suddenly possessed”, and glides down the slope, and takes the borrow at the last moment to plunge out of sight, and I look over to M for his reaction but he is fiddling with his towel so Schubert and I share this miracle instead.

The tenth starts the homeward half in style, a tough par four into today’s breeze, then eleven swings hard right, with two of its eleven bunkers defending all but a sliver of fairway right where you need to thread your ball. The shorter twelfth is no less treacherous; another beautiful green that dares you to attack, then hammers the slightest conceit.

Walking down the thirteenth, we stop regurgitating Schubert for a moment and talk about him instead, and about how important rhythm is to golf, and M offers a different refrain as we search for his ball down the left. So Beethoven’s seventh joins us for the final few, and all the sweet lightness of “Unfinished” is lost, along with my own cadence and another nice ball. The flow that we’d talked about in writing had been with us on the course for a while, but now the swings - like the words on a dark day - don’t come tumbling out but seem awkward and angular.

It’s a battle from hereon, but the thing about Aldeburgh is that it is such a gorgeous place to be that it hardly matters how you play. The fabulous rollercoaster sixteenth brings us within sight of the clubhouse again, but we must tackle another brilliant par three first. Seventeen is barely a hundred and thirty yards with the hole cut back left; yet it is terrifying. A diagonal trap guards the approach, with five more around the green, but though we both avoid the sand, and feel rather pleased with ourselves, we spend another half a dozen strokes with our putters.

Our pace slows up the last, mainly as we don’t want this game to finish, but it does, and we sit and gaze out across this gem in quiet contemplation, the earlier symphonic companions replaced by the simple song of the larks and the gentle chatter of a few other golfers. It occurs to me that no-one had really told me anything about Aldeburgh other than that I should go, and that they thought I was mad to have not done so earlier. Some places can be described clearly in words; others have a presence - a charisma, perhaps - that is less definable. It’s the sort of place one gets “suddenly possessed” by. Aldeburgh seems to lift me up in its simple majesty, in just the same way Schubert did that afternoon…

It’s not links, though the sea is with us in spirit throughout; it’s not really heath either, though the firm turf is like the best of both. It’s not quite Rye, nor Muirfield. Not Ganton, nor “George’s”. But it has much in common with all of them in the way it feels, the way it plays. Maybe in the way it sounds. There isn’t a category for it, so the best I can say is that it is, and will hopefully always be, very much like Aldeburgh. And a round at Aldeburgh, “Unfinished” or not, is something to cherish for ever.