Pitchmarks Archive ADVENTure #22 - "Of heathery lies and heavenly days"

Or, "Golf Masochism at its very best"

Some things in the calendar are fixed, immovable, sacred even. Wednesday last I’d been invited back to New Zealand, and if the weather forecast had predicted the apocalypse instead of passing showers, I’d still have been “on” for it. In fact, when the apocalypse does arrive, I’d be hard pressed to think of anywhere I’d rather watch it.

It is familiar territory for me, New Zealand, and as I walk around the top corner of the car park, the generous fairway of the first comes into view, a glorious carpet of green and brown, the recent dry spell and gentle breeze wicking the last remaining drops of moisture from the sea of bent and fescue. I pass through the empty bar, whose quiet ambience feels more like a temple, and into the locker room, where the collection of jackets and slip-ons confirm that there is, somewhere ahead and almost certainly in the heather, a golfing society.

These visitors will have another of those classic days that only seem to occur here, two bouts of golfing struggle either side of a wonderful lunch, taken under the painted gaze of a handful of New Zealand chairmen. As I peer at the modest notices beside the classic lockers, I think of one of these fearsome creatures, whose legacy is still spoken of in whispers decades after he passed away. For on one of these signs, it is noted that “the playing of 3-ball, 4-ball and “Greensome” matches…is deplored”.

The next sentence affirms that “Few members engage in this form of Golf Masochism”, and all are reminded in no uncertain terms to play swiftly, and let faster play through. I smile, as I always do when marvelling at the sparse language and direct message of this masterful warning, and of the fear it must strike into the heart of a newly elected member. They’re lucky the message was not delivered in person, from the stories you hear of the author…

Perhaps a regular Pitchmarks reader will not be surprised to hear that I too love fast play, and far prefer singles or foursomes where possible, but as I mull over this theme, it does occur to me that foursomes itself is equally Masochistic, though you’d normally get it over with in two and a half hours. The look on your partner’s face as you carve another one into the jungle; the agreement to offer “no apologies in foursomes”, though your golf warrants “all apologies”. And it’s not just you and I who suffer at this format. Cast your mind back to the 2004 Ryder Cup, and Tiger’s facial expression as Phil’s drive sails towards a fence, permitting a Clarke/Westwood bogey to win the match, a withering look that painted a thousand words.

As we weave our way through the serene landscape of this heavenly routing, it occurs to me that heathland golf is heavily Masochistic, too. It looks wonderful, heather, for about a month every year, and it is environmental gold both for the species that rely on it, and the golf clubs who seek to protect their land. Over ninety per cent of this habitat has been lost both locally and globally, so this patch is not only a custodian of some of the very best that golf has to offer, but of an ecological treasure. But put your ball in there, and you step into the realms of severe punishment, of suffering.

Once in a while, perhaps as the blue moon hangs above the pines, you will hit one so pure from the brutal heather that you remember deep down that such escapes are possible, but on every intervening occasion, the thick, woody stems and heavy flowers will either swallow the ball or violently repel your club, and you will know what it is to struggle, to be humbled. You must take your medicine, but it’s a bitter pill, every time.

My host and I have one of those rare days when the ball sails straight more often than not, and so the heather does not bother us much today, and our game is a delight - a brisk walk in great company, with a few sticks and a ball in hand. But in the days that follow another of the signs in that locker room floats back to me, the one that represents the sign-up for the July Medal. In a time where most clubs are fully loaded of a weekend, this latest surge for scorecards is clearly still absent here, as each line of the A4 entry form remains entirely blank, and it will likely do so until after the prescribed date, when the notice will come down and the Medal itself will remain where it has always been, locked in the cabinet.

The following day, I am standing between two gentlemen who know this sort of golf, and club, and I’m delighted to note a kindred spirit as one declares, in discussing the ritual of medal play, that “the simple presence of a card anywhere about my person automatically causes my game to disintegrate”. The other man notes that Bernard Darwin - whose unrivalled ear for a fine turn of phrase would have surely delighted at the capitalised Golf Masochism - regarded the occasional medal as something that must be “endured” in order to then enjoy the finer pleasures of a foursome, and that marking a card was “an atrocious pleasure”.

So by the time I am typing out this paragraph (assuming you’re still there), this Masochistic notion has moved beyond the original, deplored formats to include foursomes itself, heathland golf, and now the keeping of score. Golf appears to us in many guises, but I am starting to run out of examples where it isn’t Masochistic, and I suddenly realise, as if struck, at long last, by a bolt of common sense, that golf is inherently so.

The game itself, whose claws dug into my imagination as I watched some freak occurrence soar in the sky as an eleven year old, is nothing more than a litany of disasters, bearable only for the occasional miracle. We travel and travail together out there, and share a language and an understanding that runs deep, but we’ll never beat this game and perhaps that’s the point. It’s a mysterious Masochism, this golf.

I think about the rest of the game, and fail to think of a form that isn’t absurdly difficult. Then I think about my own golf, and the fact that I make the same, simple mistakes I made thirty years ago, and know that if I’m lucky enough to still play in another thirty years, they’ll still recognise those traits a few hundred yards away. I look at the old blades in my half-set, whose sweetspots are employed about as often as the hosel, and whose unforgiving, forged steel heads were too harsh for me back then, let alone now. Or the hickories that sometimes venture out, every one an antique within one bad swing of breaking. As if the game wasn’t hard enough…

Or there’s the membership process, the internal workings of which are like an unwritten sequel to Catch-22, or the interview, or the dreaded, traumatic play-in. The whole game is puzzling to the non-golfer, but to the initiated, it’s perhaps stranger still, and yet we still turn up, slip on our Masochistic uniform, and head out full of hope like the deluded fools we are. Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”, but we’re helpless despite the logical arguments against this pastime, for the connection - the addiction - overrides all else.

So having spent a few more minutes thinking about this game, wondering why on earth I play it, let alone spend time thinking and writing about it, we are none the wiser but the clock is ticking, and later today I have a time booked, so it is back to square one. The dictionary suggests that Masochism is “the enjoyment of an activity that appears to be painful or tedious”, and as I pick up the strap and walk towards the tee, I know we’ll be enjoying it plenty today.

This post was originally broadcast back on 8th July 2022, and it was lovely to read it again, although it struck me as a little long this time round, and not without typos the first time (and perhaps again!). But I think Einstein would have made a terrific golfing companion, and I imagine him laughing loudly as he attempts to extricate his ball from some spiky gorse bush or revetted hell-hole.

I suspect had he played golf, we’d not have heard of him at all, for he might have been snared in this trap rather than exploring the shallower mysteries of space and time. We all understand on a deep level that time is relative, though…compare three minutes looking under leaves for your own ball with an equivalent lifetime waiting for your opponent to do so. Einstein was on to something…