Pitchmarks #73 - 17th November 2024 - "L Plates"

Royal Wimbledon Golf Club

I was meant to be having a break from golf; a breather, a sabbatical. To get some other stuff done, recharge the batteries, rekindle the fire. And also to try and work out what to make of the magnificent Baltray, for it is now over two weeks since I played there, and I am still reeling from it. The page reserved for notes remains blank, and I wonder if it blew my mind, that links.

But it feels more like an eternity since I’d pushed a tee into the ground, and when an invite comes to slip up the A3, and up through the village, and into the familiar district of Royal Wimbledon, it is the easiest question I’ve ever had to answer. And we meet, and begin, and the course is more wonderful than ever. All of the work that has been done is bearing the most magnificent fruit, and the three members with whom I share this crisp November morning on Caesar’s Camp clearly love the golf here as much as I do. Unreservedly, that means.

The greens and surrounds have been given the space to breathe by careful forestry management, and the turf seems to sing throughout; the boldness of some of Colt’s green sites exposed in all their majesty. Some are vast and sprawling; others small but quietly devastating. And beside and behind many of them are wicked, pristine run-offs that demand such creative solutions.

I love the rhythm of the course, the first five swinging out and back, then a loop on the high ground, and back past the hut, where a memorial bench reminds us that “Every shot makes someone happy”. Which is just as well, for we all hit plenty that confound ourselves. From there, the mouth-watering thirteenth backs on to the even more tempting seventeenth - both a hundred times better with the wind now whipping through them - and the southernmost holes in between are now dry and delightful, the drainage issues solved.

The new eighteenth is marvellous, the angles off the tee and the pitch to the green a tempting, taunting finish, only we don’t finish there, for even after shaking hands we decide to carry on going. It’s the middle of November, the sun is beating off the clouds, and the forecast is icy for the week ahead, so on we charge, back at the North Downs then sharp right into the long shadows; another short circuit of smiles and laughs and expletives.

Our golf is a mixed bag today, the odd glimpse of success with some dire failure ladelled on for a dressing. But we each hit just enough of the former to negate the latter, and we cling to these flukes for dear life, for they keep our hope alive. In truth, we could still be out there, for it is the time of year when you savour such days, and each crimson oak leaf that drifts down seems a harbinger of winter. Those dark days will come along soon enough, and this maddest of hobbies will seem even less plausible for months on end, but today we are blessed, and don’t want it to end.

But end it must, and on the way out, winding past the Common, our stream of traffic is slow and frustrating. I spot a red “L” on a car up ahead, and suddenly the driver’s caution makes sense. They are tentative, fearful, just as I was when pitching to the sixth, and some sense of how this game makes learners of us all arrives from nowhere. We are all only ever learning the game, every single one of us. Michael and Alex, Olivier and I. And Jack, and Ernie, and Joyce and Old Tom. All on some spectrum from novice to wizard, but the “L” plates are permanent, all form only fleeting.

Few of the hundreds of precious people this game has connected me with have to play golf. From all walks of life, they bring their skills and knowledge, and confidence and power, and then leave them in the locker room, and begin again. For the game strips us naked, renders us defenseless, dissolves all security in a flash. And no amount of study or coaching or practice will ever be enough, for we will still lift our heads too soon, desperate to know if the damned ball might fly as we’d like it to, or catch the bigger ball first, and watch some ghastly divot float off down the line.

We choose to be humiliated for the slightest chance of a long holed putt or the sublime flush of a long iron stroke. The odds are stacked, the house in control, but it’s worth every gamble, every desperate, unsteady lunge. We are lifelong learners, and golf teaches us more about ourselves and each other, and about luck and patience, than any other syllabus ever could. It’s a cast-iron recipe for humility, and perhaps the world could do with a pinch more humble in it just now. So wear those “L” plates with pride. And good luck out there. You’re going to need it.