Pitchmarks #98 - "Guardians of Joy"

Minch Old, image courtesy of Simon Pope

“Comparison is the thief of joy”
President Theodore Roosevelt

Some new ranking comes out, a list of the places we are supposed to hanker after across Great Britain & Ireland, presented as if it were the official league table after a vast, scientific experiment. At first, I shrug, but then, in a moment of weakness, I zoom in on the chart and catch myself just as my blood begins to boil at some gross injustice before me, and I cast the screen away like some weak slap of a drive, for I can feel the joy slipping away.

Across social media platforms, folk have begun to jostle over the relative positions and movements of their own favourites, imposing their opinions as if the world is only built from facts, and they alone are the keepers of the ultimate truths. Ears are taken by storm, and the debate rumbles on as it surely will until the next edition lands. But it is - perhaps - human nature to look to classify, as a means of understanding, a way of bringing order from the chaos of this strange life.

We use numbers to keep track of everything - our best and worst restaurants, or golf courses, or even Presidents - when really, the quote attributed to Teddy Roosevelt above serves only to remind me of the primacy of his final noun in all this: “joy”.

The closest I get to studying a ranking these days is an occasional dip into a list with no particular order to it, but rather a collection of places that make the world - and the lives of us golfers - a little more splendid with every inclusion. Early on in the “147”, Ran Morrissett notes that “long-form writing is dwindling on a popular basis”, and that his literary heroes and mine “are no longer here to remind us how the joy of the written word can bring a course to life”, but I finish each dip into the joyous waters of Ran’s prose glad that he is here to uphold that standard, for his joy in the sort of places that simply breathe golf is infectious.

During the introduction, he writes of measuring a course worthy of consideration for this palace of treasures as one where, at the end, “you feel invigorated rather than exhausted”, and of landscapes with “features that connect man to nature”, and I think about how many of those that I have seen - often as a direct result of consulting the “147” - have changed me along the way.

And so one day, after many years of lurking at the fringes of his golfclubatlas.com and quietly tracing his steps from afar, a chance arrives to join Ran in person for a few holes, and there is no decision to be made. If we were each to choose a course for such a meeting, I might well have chosen Minch Old, and on writing this piece I jump back into his first reflections on the course, where he finds it “hard to believe a bunkerless, common ground course could have so many standout holes”, and that it possesses “a graceful charm and quiet dignity unto itself”. And in case I needed further proof that my utter delight each time I land on that little common in the Cotswolds was justified, it comes when Ran explains that he bought a house down the road in order to “be near this”, which in time will reduce his commute to the opening tee on which we meet by around four thousand miles…

So we push tees into the ground, and begin, and the course is all fiery after a lengthy dry spell. At the first, my approach goes bundling through the back, and I remember that this place plays firmer than most links when the rain stays away. We climb back up the gentle slope for the second, then swing around behind The Old Lodge to find the third green. At the fourth, the diagonal, dry ditch berates my timid approach once more, and then we gaze across to spy a little gap in the back nine to our right. The course is busy today, and it is great to see, but to stroll across and pick up at the fourteenth offers a chance to keep moving. This loop within a loop is known as “Old Man’s Nine”, and though by playing it we skip a few of the “standout holes” Ran identifies in the eighteen hole version, the two options are equally wonderful.

The fifteenth beguiles us as it often does, and the sixteenth thrills us - a carry across a flinty hollow to a green pitched against play, with motorbikes and open-top cars roaring past behind the flag on their way towards “The W”, a kink in the road leading south off the common. Often when I drift off into thinking - or dreaming - of Minch Old, this sixteenth dominates my thoughts, but every time I am here in the flesh and manage to survive that glorious challenge, the penultimate hole enchants me afresh, with its tight, taunting drive and the cunning demands of the second. The ball scurries right with each hollow bounce on this marvellous turf, and holes like this - simple yet subtle, where the lay of the land dictates the challenge - make me yearn to live nearer Minch. I left Surrey to come here this morning, passing many of the places that dominate that new ranking en route, but Ran’s planned migration to these parts makes more sense with every stroke we play.

Minch Old isn’t on that many radars, but it always feels to me like a distillation of all that once was, and can still be, pure and natural about this game I love so much. It’s like the soul of golf haunts this place, quietly blessing us in the whispering of the breeze. Above my desk now lives an image of Minch Old, to extend and replenish the inner smile that I always wear on my return, and it reminds me to let the others get on with their endless comparisons, casting authority as if any of it matters. Instead, I shall plough my own furrow, scramble through my own bulwarks, and stand guard against the theft of my joy.

“Minchinhampton stands for proper golf”, Ran once wrote, back when his love for this place was in its first, giddy flush. And so does he. And so do I.