Pitchmarks #49 - 9th June 2024 - Golf has the finest sounds...
The themes for these Sunday sermons sometimes drift in slowly on the breeze, like some gently fading slice, and other times arrive in a flash from nowhere, like the dreaded sh*nks. I’ve no control over them, just as I’ve little real control over the ball, but now and then one feels right and so I release it into the wild, and wonder what on earth people will make of it…
The notion of sounds has been lurking for a while. Up the road in a care home I frequent, certain sounds from the hypnotic tool that is their television will suddenly bring life to the eyes of those in the heavy rough of dementia; often an old song, or a familiar voice from a decade long gone. And somehow that’s how I felt as a golfer walked past at West Byfleet a while back; their brogues fitted with the old metal cleats that we all used to clatter round in.
In an instant, I was back in the eighties, spending endless summers on the course and in the clubhouse at Braid’s Wenvoe Castle; those same spikes colliding with vast courtyard flagstones as the rhythm of my childhood, and of the first giddy stage of this love affair with golf. When it got dark, we’d head instead for the range, and exchange a few shekels for the rumbling call of the ball dispenser - another evocative noise.
So, the sounds of this marvellous game of ours is today’s topic, and a few more leap towards the page from somewhere deep inside. I can all but hear the skylarks above the hut at Deal, and the gorse popping left of the fourth - “Dip” - at Mitcham. The gentle clanging of the boat masts in Rye harbour, and the sudden call of the Warden’s Bell at Hayling; surely golf’s finest example. Each of them a portal to blissful times; every one a reminder to stay open to the senses, and through them, the present.
Then not so long ago, another game at Woking, in a foursome with three debutants on that heathland track. I run them through the club’s history; point out the characters forever preserved in gold leaf down that corridor. I explain some of the quirks and charms of this old place, though only some, as we’re just there for the afternoon. The full treatment in terms of Woking’s nuance could take weeks…
I talk about the terrace, and how when sitting under the Wisteria, one must keep an eye on the fourteenth, in case you or anyone else lingering in the sun comes under fire from that direction. I recount dashing from that quiet office at the end of the corridor when the gunshot sound of a ricochet is heard, or better still, the scraping of timber furniture across ancient tiles. A camera always at the ready, and a first aid kit, too. For this clubhouse - a “temporary structure” in the 1902 Minutes, still going strong a million rounds later - is an integral part of the course, and that quirk an equally integral part of Woking’s equally resilient charm.
Maybe once the old wooden ladder that used to stand in the corner offered another telltale sound, too - of some intrepid player clambering onto the flat roof above the patio to play their ball and then finding out that getting down is harder then ascending. The roof was finally deemed out of bounds a few years ago now, but when a deathly silence fell across Hook Heath in 2020, the lonely fellow rattling round the office found the abandoned ladder and climbed up there himself one day, to collect a stray ball that one particular member had mentioned during a kind of golfing confession. His anonymity is to remain in place for now.
And suddenly, that particular prohibition made sense, for the thin strip of fine turf behind the green seemed to be an unfathomable distance away. I got down, of course, but I can’t pretend that it wasn’t without a few squeals as both ladder and occupant wobbled, my pockets bulging with that TaylorMade and a few other errant missiles.
So as we are waiting at the hatch, to soften the damage these wonderful greens have inflicted on our nerves, it is a heavenly sound when a ball comes bundling in, and two chairs and a table have to be moved, their frequency akin to nails on a blackboard. And we get to see the whole thing play out, and to cheer when her chip clears the threshold, and gasp as it slides just under the hole.
And for me, these sounds are the ones we used to take for granted around here. The laughter from the bar; the clink of glasses from the Dining Room. The echo of players groaning as another putt slips just beyond the realms of charity; the rumble of a train right when you feel able to hit your drive down the fourth. The arrival of Covid brought a deafening hush to this self-appointed (or self-anointed?) Temple of Golf, but as the memory of that slowly recedes, these sounds and others remind us of how things once were, and of how they should always be across this plateau of fine heath, and the many other glorious corridors of the golfing kingdom.
I’m not quite ready for the care home yet, but when I am, pipe in the sound of that shuffling of chairs, or perhaps the thwack of a hammered persimmon, and you will see these eyes light up, too. Golf has the finest sounds…
Richard, Congratulations on another gem! Tom
I felt I was under the wisteria again