Pitchmarks Archive ADVENTure #8 - "Kington, and a love of "The New"..."

In search of fathomless horizons...

Judge Smails: “Ty, what did you shoot today?”
Ty Webb: “Oh, Judge, I don’t keep score,”
Judge Smails: “Then how do you measure yourself with other golfers?”
Ty Webb: “By Height”

(From “Caddyshack”, 1980)

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, which is why, on missions to explore new territories, I often don’t do a lot of homework in advance. I like the feeling of trying to work a place out for myself, and see if the vibes I pick up match those of the previous visitors, though I am increasingly drawn to places where little exists in the way of background material anyway.

And so it is with Kington. A couple of Old Friends have a similar taste in golf to me, and so by about the third knowing mention of it, I am starting to plot a route there, to see what all the fuss is about. The approach road starts gaining altitude a little way out, and the tarmac starts to narrow, but my co-pilot knows the way so we continue to climb, implausible though it seems.

I mustn’t be the first to need a double-take at a sign indicating the club is ahead, for beneath “Kington Golf Club”, it simply says “1284”, and even I know that it’s not that old. But when you spend enough time in and around golf, you come to understand that most situations can be traced back to Caddyshack, one way or another, and I realise that this numeric is simply the degree to which Kington’s highest point sits above sea level, in feet. And I love this idea that this course measures itself not in slope rating, or length, or course rankings, but in height. Like the great Ty Webb.

A further little detail catches me in the car park, where I notice a large rock wedged behind the rear wheel of another intrepid camper van, insurance against the inevitable force of gravity that will start to affect our golf balls any minute. So we park up carefully, and find a coffee, and gaze out at a field of sheep above us, beyond which we can just about spot a flag fluttering on some precipitous ledge, carved into the hillside.

Off we go, and before we reach that first green, we negotiate not only the wind and a steady incline, but also Offa’s Dyke, whose ancient trail weaves across this land. By the time we reach the second tee, there is already a stone bench waiting, by the sign which designates our next assignment “The Gully”, and I wonder what we’ve got ourselves into if there’s an expectation that players will be tiring after only one hole.

Presumably inspired by these mountainous surroundings, my ball seems to have its own sense of mischief, cannoning left off a tree from both the tee and the attempted recovery, and then, faced with a delicate pitch up to the green, the usual terror kicks in, and that ball completes its adventures for this particular owner with a lethal thin across the intended target, ricocheting off the timber flank of a bridge before diving into “The Gully” itself. But it is better ball we are playing, and M’s ball is better than mine here by some distance, so I quietly assume the honorable role of flag-handler instead. That wretched ball can wait for a new owner.

Like many courses of this vintage - Kington’s Centenary will arrive in 2026 - the holes seem to steadily build as the round goes on, and this little match we play seems to get tighter as we go. We trade a few pars and birdies with more than a few bogeys, the dry start to summer makes for firm conditioning, and this ingenious routing keeps us gaining elevation without it ever feeling arduous.

All around us are endless, gorgeous views - of the Black Mountains one way, the Malverns another - and it occurs to me that the reason Kington, and Painswick, and other such marvels of a grassroots style of golf have such a draw for me is in the way they don’t impose on these acres of windswept grassland. Instead the holes seem to sit within the landscape, bringing us out to enjoy such rolling contours and fresh air in spots we might otherwise never get to cherish. In between shots I drop into a thousand-yard stare, and a couple of words from the wonderful Peter Matthiessen drift in on the breeze…“fathomless horizons”…

The holes start to run out for the oppo as this hidden gem weaves its way back towards a charming clubhouse, perched on the side of a hill, but a loose comment on the fourteenth (“Whole View”) seems to irk J, awakening a quietly competitive nature that has stayed well hidden until now. And he makes four from nowhere, and on we go, our first chance to close out this match gone.

At the fifteenth (“Charlie Bounds” - the last of a vicious set of stunning short holes), J is last to play, and though M is within reach of a solid par three, J’s ball never leaves the flag, soaring effortlessly above the target like the red kites that have followed us round. And it pitches just short, and runs out to finish, somehow, an inch or two behind the hole, all eight of our legs buckling on the tee as the ball caresses the lip. And I make a mental note to take care over such playful banter in future, for golf has a way of tackling such insolence.

All the way down the hole, we talk of aces - that rarest of gifts that I am still yet to receive - and I hesitate to ask J, for I have some sense that he will have had action in this magical realm. And so he has, but it is not the first answer “Eight” that hurts so much, as we stroll towards what should have been his ninth, but the next sentence…“Six left-handed”. And we roar with laughter, and though my vain attempt to force a half strikes the flagstick, it is not at the business end of it, but at chest height, another ghastly thin flashing across the hillside like a stray bullet.

A few minutes later, my ball somehow finds the final green from the tee far above it, and a two-putt birdie on “The Quarry” is enough for M and I to just about hold on, and buy the tea. And then away we drift, back down the steepest of drives, back across this green and pleasant land for hours on end, but every mile of that journey is spent in the warm glow of this latest discovery, the love of the New.

And all I want to do is come back again, and get to know Kington like D knows it; learn its secrets and savour its views. For it may not be the oldest course or the greatest test, but it deserves to be at the top of some criteria or other, and if measuring itself by height is the way it can do this, that’s just perfect for me. It is my latest New Friend, but I hope to make it an Old Friend, in time.

It is funny reading this today, for I have been thinking a lot about height in golf recently. The courses over here have been sitting so wet for periods of the last few years - bouts of torrential rain changing the water table on a more than temporary basis, I fear - and just as the houses near flood plains are the ones that are often on the news when storms hit, so the golf courses into which ground contours naturally drain are struggling.

At Southerndown this week (or should I say “upon” Southerndown, for it is perched upon a slab of Jurassic limestone, overlooking the coast), it was not just the formidable conditioning that had me purring, but the “fathomless horizons”. Golf gets us out in nature, and there is something hardwired into us that appreciates and requires this for our well-being, I think.

But when you have worked hard to gain a bit more altitude, as you do at Kington and Southerndown, and many of the other places I have come to love that are perched where the land would be used for little else, you can see a bit more of the natural landscape. It changes your perspective, and that you can share many of these places with the sheep and cows and other creatures that wander around just adds to the appeal for me. If people knew golf could be like this, instead of the over-fed, luscious stripes they see on TV, they’d get a very different impression of this strange species, the golfer. More of this, please…