Pitchmarks Archive ADVENTure #18 - "Building Bridges"
Addington Golf Club, Surrey
"Anyone wishing to write to the author should address all correspondence to: P.G. Wodehouse, c/o The 6th Bunker, The Addington Golf Club, Croydon, Surrey"
P.G. Wodehouse
If we all had time, I could give you a thousand reasons why I love Addington, and as I cast out the last of those, I’d think of another thousand I’d missed. The history, the drama. The endless, hilarious stories, and a cast of eccentric characters, including several peacocks. One could relay Addington’s history in real time and it would not drag for an instant, would never cease to surprise.
But today, on a cold January morning, it is once again the golf course that staggers me, when I eventually drag myself from the Dining Room, where I stare unblinking at the monochrome photographs of the construction phase, taken before the Great War broke out. The opening holes warm us up, and when we reach the sixth tee, I remember that the course shifts gears at this point. We dogleg left a little, so Simon’s approach from out right hangs in the air above the cavernous “Wodehouse bunker” and only just clears it.
And when we’re done fiddling around on the green, we stride across the timber bridge that delivers us across that chasm to the seventh, and the rollercoaster ride continues. But as we climb towards yet more beguiling holes and other delightful features, it is the bridges that I am drawn to today, and what they represent.
To me they seem the badge of individuality; a sign of character. In this extraordinary club, they’ve always done things differently, and somehow the bridges are emblematic of that. The world nudges us towards the ordinary, and so we all drive the same sort of cars, and use the same, shiny ball-washers. We wear the same clothes, worship the same brands, and in the safety of these uniforms our individual character can get swallowed up, papered over. Smothered.
No one talks like Trevino any more, let alone swings like him. Nor Rafferty, or Furyk, or any of the others whose unorthodox technique could not override their primal will to win, to do their best. On tour these days the courses all look the same, and the people paid a fortune to rip them to shreds are hard to distinguish from each other, all covered in corporate badges and surrounded by leeches.
But this uniformity is dangerous; this conformity contagious. The natural world has no straight lines and yet we climb into boxes and feel secure once inside, but today Addington makes me want to behold the things that make us different, for in those details lie beauty, and courage, and flair. And I’d like more of that around, if you don’t mind.
There’s plenty more niche touches at Addington, but my notes drift on to other places, and each of them warms my heart as we chop through this cold breeze off the North Downs. I think of the lunch tickets and the little sleepers at Rye, and the baskets of Merion. The glorious “Golf Masochism” notice in the locker room of New Zealand, and the wooden rack of index cards in Blackwell’s bar, the name of each member hand-written on them. These things work, and though they could be updated, or automated, we would lose forever a slice of the planet’s charm, for there is nothing artistic nor romantic in a QR code.
My next game is scheduled for Woking, and I smile as I think of that funny old clubhouse - a “temporary” structure built in 1902 - still providing an unusual hazard to the rear of the fourteenth. I’ve seen people play out of the corridor - even from the lounge one time; I still have the video (sorry Bill) - and it was always a source of great delight for everyone bar the player. I hope that in the afterlife I will somehow be granted the occasional echo of those chairs and tables moving to create room for a brave escape chip, and as I type I realise that I am dooming myself to a flier next week, and might just have to enact that farce myself.
Not all such quirks survive, of course. The clubhouse roof above that same terrace is now out of bounds, though evidence remains in The Telegraph’s archives of the heroes of yesteryear clambering up to try and salvage a half from a very unusual lie. The clambering up isn’t really the hard bit, I learned, during the first lockdown of 2020. Nor the recovery, for of course I took a cleek up there and gave it a go. Didn’t need to take a ball; they were lying around everywhere. Getting down in one piece was a very different matter, which probably explains why it is out of bounds, though I’m allowed to mourn the loss of that nuance a little.
Mrs Fabes’ peacocks no longer patrol the car park (or the clubhouse roof) at Addington, and I suspect they disappeared long before anyone could quite fathom why they were there in the first place. But somehow, their colourful welcome was a hint at the sort of flamboyance that the club and this outrageous course were built from, and I vow to somehow cherish and celebrate that which distinguishes us from each other. I daren’t think too much about how great the New Course across the road must have been, lest a sense of great loss follow me around. Instead I focus on the Old, and am grateful that it is still here, confounding us golfers for a century and more.
In accepting our fundamental differences we unearth something profound. A sense of openness, of trust. We probably don’t need all the bridges we cross today at Addington, although it’s a challenging walk without the valleys, but they are part of something different, something wonderful. They sit alongside holes like the eighth, and the thirteenth, and the sixteenth - in fact, pretty much all the holes on this masterpiece - in transmitting to us lucky golfers the vision and passion of the owner, and the defiant spirit of the architect.
And somewhere in this willingness to accept the diversity of life’s rich pageant lies the building of our own bridges. Writing about golf has connected me to some precious new friends I may never meet in person, separated by the great oceans, though we feel as if we know each other intimately. Alongside those are the ones whose company I have had for a loop or two, leaving memories I will always treasure. And just lately, in exploring places like this (are there any places like this? That’s sort of my point!) with special people like Simon, golf is also connecting me to myself - to who I used to be and who I’d always meant to be one day.
We walk in the footsteps of both Abercromby and Wodehouse today, and hope to absorb just a little of their genius in every blessed step. And as I walk across that first bridge and gaze down, imagining the latter in a flat tweed cap, chopping away at his ball with some old niblick, I wish for myself some eternal correspondence address halfway across these sleepers, maybe with the sounds of Woking’s furniture drifting across Surrey on an easterly breeze. That’d do nicely.
That bunker below may have looked like hell to Simon, as his ball hung terrified in the air above it, but to me, today, this place feels more like heaven.
“To find a man's true character, play golf with him”
P.G. Wodehouse
I wanted an Addington essay in this Advent series because I love the place; it’s as simple as that. Love all the stories, all the history…all the colourful quirk. But most of all I love the golf course, and wish that Abercromby had left more behind, and that what the likes of Darwin called his masterpiece - The New, across Shirley Church Road - was still around. Without that, this is as close as we can get, and it is utterly magnificent.
Somehow, Addington feels defiant to me. The whole world leans towards the average; don’t stand out from the crowd. We’re bipedal sheep, basically. But Addington - the unique, thrilling, irreverent wonder that Abercromby created and ruled - is then the outsider, the wolf.
The word “chasm” shows up in here, and some days - today is one of them - it feels like there is a chasm between the quality of the golf - the sheer ambition of the architecture - at Addington, and that of the rest of the courses in these parts. But it is a chasm worth crossing, time and time again. Just like those bridges. I cannot wait for the next time.
Pennell Bridges, something that comes with the writing ✍️
My appetite to play The Addington, has been whetted further.