(This series is neither well planned or coherent. What it is, though, is the result of spending a few spare hours at Christmas 2021 looking through some recently located files of pictures, and thinking about my golfing journey to this point. I’ve been lucky to have played in some pretty special places, and made some lasting connections along the way, and year end seems as good a time to reflect back on a dozen of these as any. Who knows, it might inspire me to plan a few more exploratory trips for the year ahead. All suggestions & invites are welcome!)
As I write this, the New Year is about five hours old, and I am in a camping chair in a remote field, with only thick darkness and the local tawny owls for company. My family and the rest of the world are still asleep, but it feels good to be starting a new year sober, alert, and in touch with the natural world, even at this hour.
2021 was a difficult year for most of us, but I am full of hope and optimism for the year ahead, and a great deal of that positive vibe is centred around golf, this sport that I have loved from the age of ten, which keeps us in touch with the elements, and teaches us patience, courtesy and humility in spades every time we head out.
I tend to make resolutions more frequently than just at New Year, but if I had one vague intention around 2022, it would be to play more golf than I have in the recent past, and to rediscover the excitement that golfing a new or different venue can bring. We are creatures of habit, with ancient operating systems that favour the familiar over the uncertainties of adventure, but a few recent debuts have rekindled this roaming spirit in me, and in the architectural side of golf.
So it was fitting that my last game of 2021 was on a course I’d heard much about of late, but not played before. It was also meaningful to me that this club, had been through a very tough year, with some drama of its own.
Cleeve Hill was not even somewhere remotely on my radar until early last year, when the staple listen known as the Cookie Jar Golf Podcast featured a couple of stories about the Club and its uncertain future, along with a tear-jerking video. Somewhere along the line, the golfing community became sufficiently engaged to save the course, and the new owners have given it, like the rest of us on this sunny New Year’s Day, a new lease of life; a fresh start. Of all the golfing stories of the last twelve months, this seemed like the most interesting, and with the happiest of endings.
100 miles door to door was swiftly devoured, and on arrival, the car parks were packed, both with golfers and walkers - an early sign of the sense of shared community that seems to sum up golf “on the hill”. My journey included some homework in the form of further revision of the various media stories about this Phoenix-like episode, and I was amused to hear the course referred to as not “the links in the sky” (see yesterday’s Pennard issue here!), but “the links in the cloud”.
A quick coffee, and we were off, one experienced visitor and three newbies to the wonders of Cleeve Hill. The course is rugged, minimalist in its definition, and via some shared fairways and a few well-placed and rustic bunkers, you slowly climb towards a distant, gnarled tree, which for much of the round seems to dominate the horizon. The heavy bunker sand is selected in order to not blow away, and up here, 1,035 feet above sea level at its peak, I can well imagine that being an issue.
But we are blessed with calm, dry weather on the 362nd day of the year, and spend what little time we have waiting between shots taking snapshots of the ridiculously fine views. Behind one green sit the Malvern hills, behind another the (old) Severn Bridge, and all around is a panorama that you’d expect when hillwalking. Which we are, really, just with clubs.
The condition of the course is very different to that which some of our golf is played on, but to me, this was cause for celebration. It felt like the course is prepared in a way that is financially and agronomically sustainable, and given the breathtaking surroundings, this natural feeling was entirely right for the setting. The greens putt well, and it is hard to lose a ball out here (I did manage to lose one…), despite the regular and often terrifying quarries, and the occasional hill fort. The set-up suits all standards of play, and just as well judging by some of the shots we experienced up at this altitude, mine included.
Elsewhere you will find reviews of hole after hole, and a bit more detail about the heritage of the course, and the changes that have taken place, but if you have half a chance, make sure you head down there to play - that is the only way to really get a feel for this unique landscape, and the marvel of a golf course that weaves through it, alongside, and in harmony with, hikers, bikers, kite-flyers, runners and buzzards. Out of the winter season you also get “the locals”, as referenced in the aforementioned CJG video - the sheep that keep your stray shots findable by grazing the vegetation.
It feels as if the raw beauty of this land is harmoniously shared by its various inhabitants, human and otherwise, and the drive home was punctuated by a few dozen voice-notes, to remind me of certain details I could have missed about this already treasured experience.
For Cleeve Hill is what golf is all about to me - story-telling, and community. About using that which is special from the past to move forward into a better future, embracing what is fundamentally great and layering on top the icing on the cake for the next generations to be enthralled at this special place.
The people who intervened to make the Club’s plight so public, and the people who stepped in to save it, were brave enough to stand up for what they believed in, brave enough to dream of a different outcome. This place reminds me to continue to try and learn and develop, weaving my way towards my own tree on the horizon, slowly gaining altitude along the way.
The simplicity of the Club’s logo - that single bent tree, enduring against the weather and the ravages of time - seems to sum up how uncomplicated the game, and our lives, can be when we are present enough to see what matters, and what doesn’t.
Golf on Cleeve Hill is of a different kind, but the smiles on the windswept faces of those sharing the space with us prove that this sort of game - this amount of fun - has value way beyond status or ranking. It is about facing the challenges of the great outdoors head on, and having fun in the process.
This is visceral golf; the spirit of the old game stripped down to the bare essentials. And I love it. Really, really love it. What a great way to end that strangest of years.
I hope you enjoyed this! If you did, please share it with a friend or two, and encourage them to subscribe. This in turn will encourage me to keep on writing this stuff! You can find a link to some other pieces here, and please also consider following my twitter feed here. Happy New Year fellow golfers!
Reading this was a breath of fresh air… and inspiration to ramp up my new year’s resolutions!