Welcome to the latest edition of pitchmarks, delivered on Open Sunday. 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. Such interludes are rare in the modern world; I hope you enjoy both the change of pace and the content. And I’ll understand if you drift back to the tele…for this is The Open, after all…
I didn’t have to look too hard to find a theme for this week, for I am as excited about this Hoylake Open as I have been for any professional golf in recent years. I have played golf in so many different environments, but it is the smell of the linksland that brings the greatest anticipation, and often the greatest suffering. Golf has become my primary learning tool in life by this point (read this from the archive if you are new in these parts), and most of what the game has to offer exists between the marram grass and the fescues of these coastal corridors of dunes.
For many this week, it is a departure from the normal course of events on tour…the wind ripping through the landscape, the hard bounces and wicked bunkering. Some players struggle outside the comfort zone of uniform creeping bentgrass, and grumble, as if the challenge only applies to them, but links golf doesn’t apportion blame or judgment.
The contours are just what they are, what they always were - piles of sand on the edge of this small island, and it is part of the process to be in the midst of some heroic struggle. You don’t get a free lunch, nor an easy claret jug. This sort of golf, with all its lessons of patience, and fortitude, and Stoic discipline, is in itself an Open University for many this week, and Hoylake the classroom in which this mighty field familiarise themselves with the soul of the game. And in this era when the elite game seems in turmoil, it feels good to return to the links, and to see what this week means to the few who dream not of larger houses or faster jets, but of hoisting ancient silverware.
It’s not for everyone, links golf. And that’s fine; we all have our own preferences and peccadillos. But I cannot help but respect the heritage of this game I love - the courses and clubs and people that have made it what it is - and so it feels perfect to me that this week’s guest post - another submission for the theme of golf clubs that are old friends - comes from a gifted writer who spent nearly two decades within the same old building from which The Open itself is administered. Click on the link below for more information, and thank you, Aubyn, for contributing. Please write more!
Reading, Watching, Listening…(Wondering, Hoping…)
A major part of the joy of diving deep back into golf in the last couple of years has been in exploring the seemingly endless variety that golf has to offer in the UK, where this particular golf nut - me - lives. Not only have we the likes of Hoylake and Huntercombe, there are also dozens I hadn’t even heard of, such that my list of courses to visit grows with every passing week, mostly not as a result of any rankings, but from the simple gift of word of mouth, from kindred spirits.
So this week I am Wondering how I can justify a mission to Welshpool, and Machynlleth, the latter inspired by a few images a friend shares in the full knowledge that in doing so he creates not a decision, but a compulsion…“Dai, diolch fy ffrind”:
https://twitter.com/Daib212/status/1681638178476683265?s=20
In between dreaming of these new horizons, I squeeze in another glorious episode of the Good-Good Podcast, which seems to effortlessly entertain and educate with a variety of guests and topics. This latest one (here) features Mike Clayton, with an early monologue that ought to have been sponsored by the tourist board, singing the praises of the game as it is played in much of the UK. A few courses leap out of this with which I am not familiar, and so I am not only Listening, but taking (yet more) notes; the bucket list is starting to get heavy.
From the same TalkinGolf stable comes another gem, The Thing About Golf, and apart from the odd iffy guest in the archives (here), this one also delivers on a regular basis. A favourite that seems appropriate with this week’s festival at a course forever linked with those amateurs John Ball Jr and Bob Jones (he hated “Bobby”) is the interview here with Sir Michael Bonallack, one of the game’s greatest amateurs himself and Secretary of the R&A for many years.
It’s a fascinating insight into an illustrious life in golf, but may favourite part - and I won’t quote it verbatim, for I’d love for you to listen to the whole thing yourselves - is of that golfing path starting not on the links, though Saunton was nearby, but on the adjacent beach. The whole thing, a love affair with the game that has lasted decades, all beginning with a flushed iron shot from pristine sand. And that’s where we all start, I guess…that elusive, beguiling sweet spot…
When I watched Sandy on his knees beside the final green in Sandwich in 1985, it was Bonallack’s voice that soon after would declare one of my heroes “the Champion Golfer of the Year”. He was also Captain of the R&A in 1999-20, after handing over the Secretary’s reins to Peter Dawson, so must have endured and survived the Silver Club ordeal that is mentioned earlier. Another episode involves his successor, here.
The thought of Watching anything other than The Open feels perverse this week, but in trying to find the actual speech in which Lyle was handed that claret jug, the temptations of YouTube kicked in again, as I discovered a vast library of historic films. So in between lengthy bouts of staring wistfully at Royal Liverpool, with its corporate hospitality and giant, lurid golf bags, I am also dipping back into the past, beginning here with that first experience of this marvellous event:
And lastly for today, a little Reading. Not only do I love charity shops for the occasional piece of golf equipment that makes my heart sing and my shed bulge (the MacGregor persimmon below cost an entire pound…), but for the books, the endless discarded books. Last week I spotted “A Good Walk Spoiled” by John Feinstein, a book I’d read years ago but all but forgotten, and in flicking through it found a couple of lines on the ‘95 Open that stood out.
Firstly, Tom Watson, whose name has been etched into those silver bands a handful of times, said “What happens with a lot guys is they come over here dreading all the inconveniences and end up falling in love with the whole thing…that’s what happened to me…I said “This isn’t golf”, hitting the ball on the ground and watching balls take crazy bounces all over the place. After a few years I realised I was wrong. This is the game. We changed it, not them.”
The chapter ends with a quote from the Champion Golfer of that particular year, Nick Price, who had found an article that said that he’d had one hand on the claret jug on two previous occasions, a statement he referred to in his acceptance speech. A few weeks before heading to Turnberry, he’d read this and made a vow to himself…”one day I’m going to get both my hands on that damn thing”.
Later today, someone else will do the same at Hoylake, and I am Hoping it is Rahm, for I love the brave way he attacks the game, but whoever prevails this time round, remember to look beyond the logos on their clothes, beyond the vast hospitality tents, beyond all the noise. Look into their eyes as they come down the stretch…“look at what it means to them…”