Welcome to the latest edition of pitchmarks. This is your chance to pause for a few minutes, turn down the noise and immerse yourself in golf. Make yourself a decent coffee or something stronger and relax. Maybe it’ll even help your game!
Inspired by the arrival, shortly before publishing last Sunday’s pitchmarks #4, of the Duffer’s Literary Companion Episode Three, the theme of this week’s missive is Trans-Atlantic, which seems appropriate as The Wirral prepares for an influx of American players and spectators ahead of the 151st Open Championship.
One American reader dropped me a note to say he’d decided, after listening to my rambling monologue about golf writing on the Firm & Fast Golf Podcast, that he would revisit Alistair Cooke’s Marvellous Mania, and shortly afterwards, I was myself reaching back for this trusty companion, a gift one Christmas from my late father.
For those tuning into this blog recently, you can find earlier musings on Cooke’s gorgeous golf writing in the archive piece below, and another piece published before the first of this year’s majors here, touching on this theme of how fascination with this old game seems to waft to and fro across the Atlantic at various points. Certainly Hoylake has seen plenty of action as the game grew on both shores.
I suppose much of the appeal of The Open, for us as mere spectators and for those lucky enough to compete, is the way that links golf - the purest form of the game - retains much of the rugged challenge of the game’s roots. Hoylake has had a dry summer so far - certainly by the standards of north-east England - and even with all the ball and club technology modern golf offers, there will be plenty of running shots and the players’ imaginations will be stretched in a way that rarely happens away from the links.
The art of the ground game is such a joy to engage in, and is perhaps the most compelling reason to play hickory golf, as I do regularly (see here!). But if the theme this week is Trans-Atlantic, combined with history in advance of next week’s mouthwatering festival, then who better to kindly provide a guest post than Stephen Proctor, whose own prose shines with the same vitality of those he is now celebrating; as much as master of his craft as Simpson of Carnoustie, who he writes of here.
I am so grateful to Stephen, for his willingness to submit this gorgeous piece. In a week’s time, as this generation’s greats toil in the heat of the final round, we will watch and maybe dream a little; “live in joyful hope of that rare moment when I am suddenly transformed into the immortal John Ball of Hoylake”, as he puts it. There are ghosts all around us in this game, from Cooke back to Ball and beyond, and, in taking out our oldest sticks once in a while, we are paying our own tribute, to those who have left behind so much. Please enjoy the latest old friends piece below:
In case you have missed earlier guest posts, there are some links on the lower right hand side of the pitchmarks home page, along with a miscellany of other bits.
Reading, Watching, Listening…
This week’s Reading is from an unexpected source - “The Campbell Companion: The Best of Patrick Campbell”, which arrived in my hands from a recent blog subscriber, and was then mentioned to me by another in short order. A bookmark took me to a piece in which the author - famous from TV’s “Call My Bluff” - recalled how he somehow played, and made significant progress in, the 1949 Amateur at Portmarnock. Campbell’s prose and dialogue is wonderful; at one point house guest Henry Longhurst is watching him warm up, wincing at each sliding hook, until complaining that he is “trying to hit it round corners. It’s agony to watch”.
A few balls later, Campbell dispatches one down the centre, “quail high and all, perhaps, of a quarter of a mile”, and Longhurst’s response is swift…”Right. We’ll leave it at that. You’ve probably only got four more of those left”. Other essays in this hilarious volume deal with golfing at a glacial pace in France, and case studies on the theme of “How to become a scratch golfer”. Highly recommended!
I tend to avoid YouTube for golf, more from fear than anything else. It feels like the sort of cavernous pit that might swallow me up, only emerging several years later and perhaps without learning a thing. But another Trans-Atlantic friend - one I am yet to meet in person, though through the prism of golf he already feels like a life-long connection - sent me this gorgeous video of Brancaster at high tide, and if this was the only thing on YouTube, it would still present a dangerous distraction to the rest of life, for I could watch it a thousand times…
And that only leaves Listening for this week, and with a few hours on the road on Friday for a blissful first look at Piltdown (which was gorgeous, more to follow on that), I had a rare chance to sit still and absorb some of the great pre-Open content. Here’s two podcasts from the other side of the pond featuring British folk setting the stage for what will surely be another great homage to links golf:
No Laying Up - Royal Liverpool preview with Martin Ebert
The Golfer’s Journal Podcast - An Insider’s Look at Liverpool (with Joe McDonnell)
The latter was particularly interesting to me, as Tom Coyne and Joe also talked about the creative process, and of Joe’s love for finding places “off the beaten track”. We speak the same language…
You can find some of Joe’s fabulous artwork here.
So that’s it for this week. Clear your diary from Wednesday afternoon onwards, make sure you have a supply of refreshments and a comfortable chair, and watch as the greatest golfing show on earth rolls into town. The 151st…
What a rich compilation! My Simpson brassie comes out to play this afternoon ⛳️