Since December 2021, I have sent out 91 of these Stymies. The first one reached two people; the latest was sent to (somehow) over 700 of you. People are either very bored, or they share the same fascination with this daft game that I have sought to rekindle in this last year or so. Or perhaps a mix of those two factors.
In order to get some of the earlier ones in front of a few more eyes, I will be sharing a selection of re-issued Stymies daily until Christmas Eve; a Stymied Advent Calendar. If you have enjoyed reading them, please share them and encourage others to subscribe. Thank you very much indeed!
13th September 2022: “Furtive Glances”
“Furtive glances”, that’s what I’ll call them. Or maybe “flirtive” would be more appropriate, although I don’t think it’s a real word. But there is definitely something in this that is related to love.
I guess it’s something the non-golfer might struggle to grasp, but there are a few million people following otherwise sensible paths who are golfers, and who experience their life through the strange lens of this curious addiction, this “Marvellous Mania”, as Alistair Cooke called it.
So while they probably couldn’t tell you what a mile actually looks like, they could tell you with unerring, perhaps superhuman accuracy, how many yards it is to, or what club they’d need to hit to reach, say, that bus-stop over there. Or that barn door. And they’d probably look for a bit of grass to chuck, in order to see if the breeze is helping or not.
We think in golfing terms, you see; golf is the language we understand, are most fluent in. Somewhere along the line, golf has become our Mother Tongue.
In this world of the automatic satnav, in which we blindly follow instructions, we might no longer understand a route by reference to a string of notable pubs, or road names, but if you tell a golfer that a certain location is opposite Wentworth, or up the road from Royal Dornoch, they can picture it in their head, immediately. And their pulse might begin to quicken, and their pupils dilate. At this point they might seem to have been distracted by the directions, but it is simply that they’ve drifted back into the golfing paradigm. It’s nothing personal.
Another symptom of the golf tragic might be the sudden shift of attention that occurs when passing a golf course. Driving along Martyrs Lane, for example, is a delicate business at the best of times, this narrow cut-through only a rural bridle path when golf started here, and in the original New Zealand layout, the course actually played across it. Nowadays, it is always busy with motorists seeking to save a few seconds, or with vans heading for the municipal dump.
But add to that the distraction of a furtive glance through the trees and up the parched eighth fairway, or a little further on of two players and a black Lab coming happily over the brow of the the eleventh, and these glimpses of a classic golf course have increased the risk factor of this simple drive no end. I’ve done the hazard ID test on a speed awareness course; they don’t mention nearby golf facilities at any stage. Bins, yes; trees whose growth indicates a bus route, yes. But nothing of fluttering flags and beguiling bunkers. Maybe that’s why we used to call them hazards…
Round here many of the great courses run alongside railway lines, and I can still recall the lift that spotting Swinley Forest or Woking out of the carriage window provided on certain locomotive missions. If further proof were needed that this once innocent soul has long been lost under the seductive influence of golf, I might mention that such feelings of boxcar longing, as my daily commute chugged through the middle of Mitcham Common all those years ago, actually resulted in a total change of career, abandoning a life in the book trade for a spell as the world’s happiest greenkeeper, on those very holes that were once just a wistful gaze - a furtive glance - through the misty panes of the 7.32 from Hackbridge.
And while it has been a long time since I’ve done it, I’m sure the act of circling above west London, waiting for the chance to approach Heathrow, remains as breathtaking as ever for those with a window seat and a golfing habit. Course after course within a mile of each other, the Golden Age artistry of Colt, and Aber, and Fowler, and Park Jnr visible through that tiny bubble of glass like some collaborative tapestry of the masters, a mosaic of great golf. What it must be like to soar above these dreamy, natural playgrounds like the kites and buzzards get to, like our golf balls do when it all comes together, once or twice a round…
So, furtive or flirtive, these glances are a sure sign that a craving exists that must be satisfied before the week is out. I will keep my eyes on the road for now, but sooner or later that same road will lead to a golf club car park for my latest fix. And when the engine turns off and I scurry out towards the tee, I won’t need the satnav’s kind confirmation that I’ve “reached my destination”, for I shall know it in my bones.
Martyr’s Lane is definitely hazardous!!