Pitchmarks Archive ADVENTure #2 - "Rules of Amateur Status"
Or, a short note about love
amateur
/ˈamətə,ˈamətʃə,ˈamətʃʊə,ˌaməˈtəː/
noun
a person who engages in a pursuit, especially a sport, on an unpaid rather than a professional basis.
a person who is incompetent or inept at a particular activity.
adjective
engaging or engaged in without payment; non-professional.
done in an incompetent or inept way.
Well, that all seems fairly sensible. We understand the pecuniary demarcation between an amateur and an a professional in golf, even if the dangled, golden carrots of the elite game seem to have both diminished the once marvellous calendar of amateur events and turned a few of golf’s heroes into characters straight out of Chaucer, rubbing their hands at the thought of even more money; astronomical fortunes that no one could reasonably spend. “Avaryce”, the Pardoner called it.
If we’re being honest with ourselves, we also understand only too well the feeling of incompetence or ineptitude. We see it all around us in our playing partners, and hope that it is not one of those things that is subject to airborne transmission. But such displays and feelings visit all those who wield a club, sooner or later. And we know when it hits us it will hurt, and will then retreat as mysteriously as it arrived, and we accept it as part of the deal we strike to play this game. An occasional bout of conscious incompetence, if you like.
But if we delve deeper into the roots of this word amateur, we find that it comes, via the French amateur, from the Latin amare - “to love”. Hence such familiar terms as amour, amorous, etc. So I think about this game, with all its idiosyncrasies, and its dodgy public image - despite all that is secretly wonderful about it - and I realise that, just lately, I have fallen back in love with golf.
I’ve always been decidedly amateur - any of my few long-suffering golfing chums will concur, probably with greater enthusiasm than I’d like - but when I look at how much pleasure, friendship and Stoic education this sport has given me, I am now firmly back in this other meaning of amateur, where the game is not about scores or trophies, but simply love.
I still feel my pulse raise as I swing round a corner into a new experience - be it the rugged links of Royal North Devon or the majestic perch of Cleeve Hill. And when I renew acquaintances with old friends - the vast dunes of the front nine at Royal St George’s, or the heathered gullies of Swinley Forest - I feel all the strands of my golfing story coming together again in a familiar melody.
So, I hold amateur status in several ways. Alongside the various volumes of rules and handicapping stipulations that define modern golf is a seperate booklet on “The Rules of Amateur Status” in golf, set out to define the boundaries beyond which a player might be deemed “professional”. These are typically thorough, and there are definite and long-winded parameters for those seeking reinstatement as an amateur, presumably to protect the rest of us hackers in the monthly Stableford.
But as I think more about this notion of playing the game for the simple love of it, as I do, it seems ironic that many of the good people who work in golf coaching and operations are not defined as amateurs, though their passion for the game can be the only logical reason they linger in such positions, at facilities the world over. It may be of little surprise if I suggest that few work in golf for the glamour, or the marvellously detailed (and apparently critically important) dress codes. I doubt many go into it for the interminable Committee meetings, or trivial, sometimes idiotic Suggestion Book entries and complaints, either. And no one has yet entered golf club administration for avarice, for they’d be in the wrong place.
These professionals give their life to the game and suffer at the Sisyphean coalface of restoring your doomed lack of rhythm or correcting your WHS record because they love golf, or maybe once loved it. Behind all the nonsense; a million miles from the commercial extravaganza of the PGA Tour; despite all the endless waste of modern equipment development lies a beautiful, precious act - of hitting a ball with a stick and once in a while flushing it, feeling the welcoming bliss of the sweetspot - and it is this pure moment that we all know well but can easily forget, distracted by the paraphenalia.
Alistair Cooke said “They have been playing golf for eight hundred years and nobody has satisfactorily said why”, but, wonderful line as it was, he knew why. He understood what hooked him on golf, at 55, and it is, absurdly, the same thing that sees the most decorated professionals back on the range long after their trophy cabinet has closed to new entries. It’s the same thing that brings a mischievous smile to the face of a beginner somewhere in the world every single day, and the same thing that propels a battered and bruised Tiger Woods back to the practice ground, after all the physical and mental impediments he’s faced.
That sublime moment, when the ball squeezes off the centre of the face, is when the magic happens, where the passion is sparked, and nurtured. It is the glue that sticks us to the game, that keeps us coming back despite its infrequent appearance, despite the inherent frustration that a golfing life entails. It is, as far as I can work out, the most addictive feeling in the world, and it has been, with the exception of a couple of recent, torturous lockdowns, a legal high for centuries.
Whether Cooke, that master of language, would deem this a satisfactory explanation of his marvellous question we will never know, but I think he’d agree that the very moment that a beginner - be it Tiger at two or himself in middle-age - hammers one right out of the screws is the moment that love for the game enters the equation. It is a sliding door moment, and nothing is ever quite the same again.
It is the ceremony at which real amateur status is bestowed, and no amount of money or professional success is likely to prise it away. Only death brings release, and the many health benefits of the game itself even push that boundary away for many of us.
A few weeks ago, I passed through the “magical playing fields” of Royal North Devon, and, after the breathless delight of experiencing that ancient golfing treasure for the first time, I spent another few minutes with a couple of clubs and a ball in what they call the Taylor Course. Seven short holes, in a deserted field adjacent to the car park, with yardages ranging from 73 to 129.
Amidst all the wonder of that day - a long-awaited pilgrimage to the purest of England’s golfing outposts - there was something about the short course that seems almost as important to me as the rest of that blessed experience. For in the magnificent simplicity of this recent footnote in the Club’s facilities, 154 years younger than the eighteen holes that lie beyond the fence, I found a glimpse of the conditions under which my own amateur status was discovered, or perhaps confirmed. Longer ago than I care to admit, on the twelve holes of a rustic pitch and putt in South Wales, I would play for hours in similarly damp circumstances, for the love of the game.
I would walk up and down the little fairways and get to know those intimate greens and unraked bunkers like the back of my hand, and now and then, the ball would come off the centre of the club as if it was Sandy hitting it, or Freddie. And I would watch the ball soar above the flag, rather than fly like a broken missile into the trees, and the whole world would stop still. In those moments, which still visit occasionally, golf and life seemed effortless; full of possibility. Full of love, I guess.
As the rainclouds that had followed me around Devon all morning finally split, I stood alone, utterly drenched in a field on a pitch and putt, and smiled as big a smile as I have in all those years that lie between these bookmarks of a love affair with golf. It is so easy to get sidetracked by this modern life, by all the distractions and complications it throws our way.
But there is something in this notion of simple play that is somehow far deeper than it ought to be, and it matters. It is one version of a thing I do for love alone, and golf is not the only one I’ve let slide over the years, so this recent second wind with golf is helping other joys like listening to music, and reading, and (at last) writing, to recover (or discover, or re-discover, perhaps) a place in my life.
For many, love won’t be found in horizontal rain with only a pitching wedge for company. But whatever you do (or used to do, or always dreamt of doing) that brings you inner delight should be sought out for that alone, and cherished. For this feeling - of doing something out of a passion rather than for any logical progression - is often within our reach, but somehow we forget how to dream. The treadmill of life keeps rolling on (though the clocks around our golf clubs never seem to work; perhaps there’s a clue there) and your time - our time - is on the wane.
Spend a little time doing what you love, not what you think you ought to be doing, and see if that amateur status is still lurking in you. I’m off to the short course, with Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony” ringing in my ears…
This post originally went out on 1st April 2022, a week after the original piece on the main course at Royal North Devon, entitled “About Time” (link below). Weird how some experiences remain so fresh in the mind…I can recall the drive there, through sheets of rain, the mind-bending simplicity of the opening tee-shot, and my utter delight when I found the Taylor Course hiding in the corner of the car park. And though writing a blog can be a lonely path at times, “About Time” brought a flurry of folk commenting on Substack and sending me direct emails. That speaks volumes for the golf course; it is a place people love, and for me it was at first sight. “About Time” I got back there…
