Pitchmarks #70 - 27th October 2024 - Back at the Coalface

During last week’s musings (here), I included among several quotes from Alistair Cooke the line “no man in his right mind would play golf”, an observation that he meant in a general way, detached from any specific circumstances. But just as that edition of pitchmarks went out, last Sunday was beginning in a fashion that made the day’s plans seem even more preposterous than usual.

I am rudely awakened by an alarm that seemed to have waited until I fell asleep and then a further ten minutes at most, and can’t understand how I’ve managed to get any shuteye at all. I am already three solid hours of motoring and around ten degrees celsius north of home, and the gusting wind is rocking the van’s suspension in some quiet lay-by not far from the long, grey fairway of the M6.

After a spell of rubbing my eyes, I am able to make out the dark shadows of the lime trees that line this luxurious berth, and their swaying motion explains the vast quantity of fallen leaves that have formed a drift up the lower half of the windshield. By the time I am ready to commence driving, the rain has started - sheets of it, blasting the paintwork and rendering the wipers’ frantic swipes the definition of pathos.

More frantic swipes will follow, though it seems unlikely at this stage. The first missive of the morning is posted from the slightly more comfortable scene of a Southport B&B, where another of today’s gathering has peered through the blinds above, presumably, a radiator (imagine such a glorious thing) to see the same gloomy scene of torrential rain and heavy winds. “Not a chance in hell are we playing in these fine conditions” reads the text, and few of us awake could argue at this stage.

By the time I reach Royal Birkdale, the club’s flag to the left of the art deco clubhouse looks as if it is starched, or perhaps mounted on a board, for it points, in roughly its intended rectangular shape, north-east. If not quite at St Andrews, which would be fitting given the planned activities, then at least in the general direction of Newcastle, a place synonymous with coal. Which is fitting, as we are here to represent - at breakfast, at least, for the storm blowing across the links shows no signs of abating - The Miners, a society formed at the wonderful Notts Golf Club.

I stash my golf shoes in the locker room, expecting to not require them at all, and I’m handed a splendid pair of long socks to don. Thick black bands signify the coal whose mining provides the society name, though I’m not sure why. Purple is for the flowering heather of their spiritual home, Hollinwell. And thin, yellow lines are in honour of the canaries who used to accompany real miners into seams of coal as early indicators of air purity. Had The Miners brought a canary or two with them today to test the working conditions for this mission, it is likely they would have been swept away to Oslo before they had any chance to use their wings.

By the time we have all gathered and cleared our plates of what felt like a condemned man’s last feast, the rain appears to have abated somewhat, though it is difficult to open the van’s door against this sou’wester. We are playing hickory golf against the hosts, and my four wait patiently until our anchor match can go, growing ever more nervous as the preceding games seem to effortlessly flush their drives down the first with these primitive sticks.

Several of those present are new to hickory golf, but it seems like the sort of day when we ought to either not play, or at least not make golf more difficult than it already is. But all we have travelled with is hickory, and somehow it feels right playing these classic courses with the sort of kit the golfing pioneers would have wielded. I am glad to make contact from the opening tee, pushing my ball right of the dominant threat of the fairway bunker, and from there nudge something approximate to a modern six iron towards the green, where we halve in fives to begin.

My ball decides that half a dozen spanks is enough for today, and dives left for cover from the next tee, in time to avoid a brief rain shower. By the time I bring another ball into play at the third, the last wave of our storm has been and gone as - relieved of the duty of playing the second - I watched a slideshow of great clouds hurrying across the space above us. It is like some time-lapse movie, the sheer strength of this wind off the Irish Sea hammering vast cumulonimbus shapes inland.

Royal Birkdale is just magnificent, and maybe all the more so because it still suits the ground game. At the ninth, we face a delightful exercise in trusting the right line off the tee, and are then rewarded with a thrilling approach to a green perched on a ridge. They rarely start people from the tenth here, but this ninth is a great finish to a strong front half, and we celebrate our survival and the weather’s steady improvement at the hut, which is as superb as everything else in Southport, it seems.

The tenth might be my favourite tee-shot here - a bunker guards the outside line before the fairway turns abruptly left round a dune, but without an indication of the distance to this dogleg’s crook - use of a measurement device would be criminal in a hickory match - we are cast back into the murky world of personal judgement. You choose a line more on instinct than data, and then wonder whether this ancient, wooden extension of your arms will follow the directive. It’s a precious process of relinquishing control, or perhaps of realising you had very little of it in the first place.

The new, short fifteenth is a delight from our forward tee, but - with the clubhouse beautifully sited far behind its vast putting surface - we can imagine those in the hunt for the claret jug in less than two years feeling nervous here. The back tee measures two hundred, and without the wind or the pressure, it’s an ample green. But factor those two in, and throw in a few thousand silent spectators and a bank of cameras, and it will be a fitting stage for the greatest drama to unfold upon.

Our own little tussle is getting tight, and so on the penultimate green, having negotiated this brilliant hole with such devious bunkering, we settle for a half by way of a conceded putt, and as we head to the final tee all square, Stuart recounts an episode whereby one player offers another half via the old plea of “good good?”, only to hear the answer drift back...“invitation declined”.

The oppo, as they have done all day long, both split the final fairway, but mine is tugged left and in danger of a water hazard, and David’s trusty 1.62” Dunlop 65 - unwrapped for this very occasion like a Ferrero Rocher - follows the example of my previous ball at the second, and retires forever into some thick brush out on the right. At this stage, David and I hint at “good good?” ourselves, but as they are in control, go on we must. Our “invitation declined”, we stroll laughing up the last together.

It all looks gloomy from here, but by some miracle my ball is dry, and more than that, it is sitting up on top of a little tuft, from where I can see just the very tip of the flag over yet another revetted hell-hole. It’s the sort of lie that one should ignore, but I rarely play in matches, and hardly ever in one so congenial and well-fought as this, so as Britta and Stuart push their balls down towards the green, it feels like a four will be required to win, and I am for just an instant not a rank amateur, chopping round this sublime links with a bag of old firewood, but a contender, with one last chance at glory for today.

It is a foolish decision, and the look in David’s eyes as he senses what I’m considering confirms this, but given how this day has turned out, as we head down the last in short sleeves and bask in the last of the autumn sun on our backs, it feels like the sort of time when something magic just might happen. So the tweed cover comes off my old driver one last time, and it hammers my ball towards the clubhouse, and when I make it past the fairway bunker, there is a small white dot right behind the hole, and none of us can believe it.

By the time we get there, I’ve two for the match and so we shake hands and head in, but - though we guests sneak home at the last - it has been such an adventure, such a tight, well-fought, spirited match that the result means nothing to us. What feels important is that there are people out there who still cherish this sort of golf, who don’t flinch at a dismal forecast or buckle in the gale force winds, but who play the game the way it was played when such masterpieces as Hollinwell and Birkdale were first laid out. We’ve played this magnificent course in the spirit that Thomson and Palmer and Trevino did, but with tools that would have been archaic even to them.

Our four - Britta and Stuart and David and I - are all winners today, for we are reminded why we do this sort of thing, and in doing so we are caring for each other, and for all that has gone before us in this game and at this place. It’s an act of homage, this, and the selection of mashies and niblicks, jiggers and cleeks that we wield are our vulnerable connection to a game that was once so simple and wild, though it still can be if we choose to approach it this way. We still have that choice.

Driving back home, after a lunch as delectable as the golf course, I feel like I’ve emerged from some dark mine and back into the light, and I vow - as I always do after an outing with the hickories - to do this more often. For while Cooke was right in some ways when claiming that “no man in his right mind would play golf”, I feel as if the counter-point is that if the average golfer knew how much fun we’d just had on a classic, simple course with antique clubs and the right attitude, no-one in their right mind would ever decline such an invitation.

With sincere thanks to David Holmes, Chris Stott, Iain Harper and Britta Nolle for organising the match, and to Royal Birkdale Golf Club for hosting us all. 💚