I’ve been playing this game - if you can call it playing, or indeed simply a game - for thirty-five years, and I only reached the golfing equivalent of a pit of existential despair the other day. I asked myself, under my breath, just exactly what I thought I was doing playing golf.
I’ve worked in and around the game for much of that time, and have seen many an otherwise brave soul taken down by the bitter cruelty of the 1.68mm diametre dominatrix. I’ve seen articulate and sensitive people hurl muddy seven irons into the trees, railing against the injustice of the golfing universe, and I’ve seen the subtle blend of sadness and immense relief in the face of more than one octagenarian, when finally admitting that the time has come to hang up their trusty, rusty weapons and move to Non-Playing.
In that latter instance, the term resignation would immediately seem too negative. Those old-timers had resigned themselves to golfing no longer, probably a year or ten past the point when common sense or their actual game would suggest it wise, but the very moment they shared this terrible secret with the world, their posture would shift for the better, and a significant load visibly lift from their shoulders.
“What the hell am I doing?” is of course a sanitised example of a question I’ve heard hackers direct at themselves more times than I care to count. The language will often progress from that version to the realms of choice Anglo-Saxon, but the basic premise is identical, whether prompted by the pathetic sight of another duffed chip or the glorious freedom of a ball as it sails gaily over a fence, or the edge of a liquid penalty area.
More often, self-flagellation will take place near the hole, where putting brings each of us to a common base level of suffering equivalent to the Sanskrit term “dukkha”. Translated - via google of course - dukkha describes “the fundamental unsatisfactoriness and painfulness of mundane life”. Replace “mundane life” with “golf” and even the sparse, mysterious landscape of Zen suddenly seems more familiar to the golfer. The game could be quite accurately listed in the dictionary as “fundamentally unsatisfactory”; I doubt many golfers will object to that suggestion.
In the same way that they say that every motorcyclist will fall off at least once, every golfer worth their salt will break down in tears at some point. In the face of such unremitting challenges, it would take a superhuman psyche and technique to stare their ball in the eye for more than three or four holes without cracking up. But somehow, this Damascene moment - this grassy rock bottom, this primal scream - only arrived at my lips a few weeks back, tens of thousands of duffs after I started on this zigzag path that seems to lead deep into the golfing wastelands.
I ought to have known it would happen at Deal. There’s always been something more to our relationship, Deal and I. The course hooked me from the first moment I stepped onto it, and hook is probably the right term, given that, with the exception of one nightmare slice into the car park during a play-in, I have relied on the same collapsing duck hook into the heavy rough that I hit on my debut there. I somehow made four from there, the surprise in my host’s face as memorable as it was three hours later, when a quick rummage through the many pockets of my bag and costume revealed no trace of a wallet with which to settle the lunch tab.
This place has significant form when it comes to the weather, I think it’s fair to say. I’ve heard people on the other side of the Atlantic talking about the prevailing south-westerly “Deal wind”, but the subject of that regular irritant is far more agreeable when discussed in hindsight from the deep opulance of worn leather armchairs. When you’re out there, it’s a nightmare (language again softened here). It’s traditional for the local members, even when swaying in the perpetual onslaught of such salty gales, to pretend that there is no weather present on any particular morning.
The city folk rock up, all excited at the sight of the links - glimpsed through the urgent rhythm of windscreen wipers - and when they open the car door, it swings hard on its hinges, and their caps fly down past the pro shop and towards the ancient highway. But the locals shrug, and say, with barely hidden disdain, “what wind?” You can tell they are saying this, for you can lip-read a little, but you can’t hear the actual words above the flapping of the flag or the clanging of the halyard against the trucks. Not to mention the gulls. The ever-present, all-seeing gulls, chortling at our feeble efforts.
One time a friend and I booked for a morning game, but were warned that there was a ladies comp on, and so, regardless of our own electric pace of play, we’d be held back until about eleven. So we took our time driving down, and had the sort of calorifically intense breakfast that only links golf can burn off. As we drained grim coffee after grim coffee, it became clear that the only competition the two dozen ladies present were going to play was the self-imposed challenge of making a couple of teabags last until it was safe to resort to the Chardonnay, and after several minutes of peering through the windows, which seemed to be shaking under the pressure of the outside world, we were invited to move up the now-empty tee-sheet, and face the elements.
The rain that we’d driven through had been blown past by a strong wind (even the locals had to admit that this was, at least, a breeze), but by the time we tried to balance our golf balls on the precarious perch of a thin wooden tee, the gale was threatening to blow everything else away, too. It felt like something primal were taking place, and the doomed attempt of our limbs to recreate anything in the way of a smooth tempo in these conditions might well have been the sort of video material that goes viral these days. But luckily there was no-one else mad enough to be outside in what was starting to feel like a hurricane, and even if there had been, their camera would have likely been blown away, landing near the Maiden at Sandwich, or perhaps over the fence to the lodges at Princes.
We survived, and played extraordinarily well as I remember (after the initial hook of course), hitting driver after driver from the twelfth tee in. At times I felt like we were on some kind of demented expedition, and I suppose we were in a way, but even then, leaning into the teeth of a tempest, we were still golfing. And, until my most recent foray onto that same strip of land, partaking in the act of playing golf had always been better than not playing golf, whatever the weather. I checked later that day, and my hunch was right. We were the only two people to set foot on the links and were therefore leaders in the clubhouse, when we eventually got there, our lips chapped and our bodies exhausted. Another hearty fry-up was in order.
As a child I’d grown up with the local pitch and putt to myself, my beloved Nereus tartan waterproofs a fair match for the incessant Welsh rain, and never considered jacking in a round on grounds on weather alone, though many a partner would bail at the sight of an uncertain forecast, or “fore-cast”. At least, they said it was the weather.
And only a week or two before this most recent effort, I’d checked with a friend if he was still up for climbing Cleeve Hill with sticks despite some ominous icons on the metereological horizon. My respect for this fellow golfing traveller grew instantly as he scorned any suggestion of bailing, and again, as the clouds lifted, we played in ridiculously blustery conditions, and still had a whale of a time. That day, the lad in the shop seemed to think a single had bravely ventured out somewhere behind us, and I forgot to check if he ever made it home…
So, I have some form of my own with the weather, and Deal is simply made of the stuff. This time round, two of our regular four had already cried off, with extremely good excuses, though I doubt they’d have cared too much for what was to unfold. The remaining two of us conversed, and agreed to crack on regardless, inviting a third to join. I rose well before dawn, and drove for two hours through a glorious early morning, the sun slowly rising over France as I descended into first Dover, and then Deal itself, that familiar route one that always brings a sense of anticipation.
Dark clouds seemed to drift towards the clubhouse as if drawn by a magnet, though, and as we enjoyed a flat white or two (the coffee has improved at Deal over the years even if the weather hasn’t…), I apologised to these two locals for dragging them out. After all, they could play here any day of the year, but, perhaps eager to not look as if such things concern them, or perhaps out of pity for my four hour round trip, we all pulled on our shoes and waterproofs (or, in J’s case, some sort of Nordic snow gear; in hindsight that should have been the cause of alarm rather than amusement) and hit the tee.
By the time we completed the first hole, we were a ball down and about fifteen over collectively, and I recall asking them where the boundary lay between the Hard Rain that Bob Dylan once promised, and hail. J’s answer was that hail could be identified not by any perceptible difference in pain levels, but by observing whether the wounds of each incoming missile had caused a permanent scar. I turned to look at him as I marvelled at his ever-present good humour - presumably something required of a Tottenham supporter - but got swiftly hammered by a wall of hailstones, and shuffled off towards the second, trying to hide my face from the barrage.
Things seemed to soften slightly for a hole or two, though it was noticeable how relaxed both J and R seemed when their balls would kick sideways into the revetted haven of a bunker or two. Normally these cavernous hazards would terrify even the hardiest links exponent, but today, they were more akin to the animal burrows from which they developed than they’ve ever been. When R left one in the sand on the third, there was an faint sigh of relief that he wouldn’t yet have to emerge from this most rudimentary of shelters.
So focused were we on the weather developing around us that there was not just dark humour in the suggestion that “I think it’s easing off”. The hail would indeed come in waves, and for a minute or two, as we played the sublime sixth, we drifted back into the gentle embrace of only very hard rain, and smiled at the pleasure this momentary, relative respite afforded us. But it was only fleeting, for in the ten yards between the back of the green and the seventh tee, all hell again broke loose above us.
J stared into what could now only really be described as a blizzard, and asked, presumably in jest, if we fancied going off the back tee, atop the seawall that was built after the club lost not one but two Opens to the sea. I couldn’t have hit the fairway from up there if my life depended on it, but the thought crossed my mind of instead climbing up and over the seawall, and wading into the Channel, Reggie Perrin-style. I’d have been no wetter there, and probably no colder. I suspect it was only the thought of the halfway hut, barely visible in the distance but as alluring as a mirage of water in the desert, that kept me on the links side of the beach, scrabbling to try and extract a tee from my pocket with fingers that burned from the cold.
For the final three holes of the front nine - always the easier side at Deal, haha - the fine judgment with which we’d noticed the earlier soakings slowing was used to percieve what felt like an exponential increase in hail velocity from moment to moment. A video taken on the eighth tee depicts me laughing while simultaneously flinching in pain, and as R thins a six iron behind me, he turns to the camera with only the glint in his eyes visible between his hat and a saturated snood. When, ten long minutes later, we finally reached the hut, completely soaked from head to toe and shivering uncontrollably, I would run the full gamut of emotions.
First, I realised with elation that the hut was indeed open - presumably the staff member designated this lonely outpost could not see her nearby car from her isolated position, let alone risk trying to get to it. Slinging my bag to the ground, I peered in through the steamy windows to find that there were some people already in there, and headed for the toilet instead, unable to cope with the possibility that there mightn’t be room for us in this last resort after all. When I eventually walked into the hut itself, J & R were chatting to the foursome in front of us, whose outlines we’d seen in the distance in the way you might spy another group near the summit of the high mountains, perhaps in between the icy blasts of a Himalayan snowstorm.
There seemed to be an unlikely degree of happiness in this converted shipping container but, from the moment my numb digits felt the warm embrace of a Shovril, I could understand the optimism. Standing frozen on the seventh tee, I’d asked myself what on earth I thought I was doing here, voluntarily exposing myself to such trauma. As J & R walked ahead, I’d wondered, for the first time since I somehow flushed one all those years ago, why I bother playing this unwinnable game.
This obsession called golf, which has been part of my life for three quarters of my time on this earth, seemed as mad at that moment as it had ever been, but, nursing a hot drink and hovering above a heater, it felt as if not only might I survive this experience, and the definite wobble in my golfing addiction, but that things might actually get better. As I mulled this over, the four ahead stood up as if eager to get going again, and the lady - or angel, perhaps - that had provided us with shelter from the most wretched of storms, passed them in turn their bobble-hats, fresh from the hot tin lid of the giant soup urn behind her.
Upon application, these previously sodden items sent steam rising from their heads, and we laughed until it hurt at the absurd situation unfolding before us. What an alien or, for that matter, a non-golfer would make of the scene I can only imagine. It felt as if we had slipped through a portal into an outtake from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, but then it got weirder still.
The four men wished us well, one of them handing me a hot water bottle as he passed, and stepped bravely into the deafening roar of an apocalyptic world outside. And then, instead of turning right and walking straight towards the clubhouse, they strolled left, onto the tenth tee and carried on playing, as if that were the only option available.
I peered after them, through the misted window of what now felt an impossibly comfortable and luxurious building, and, hugging the grubby cream rubber vessel as if it were a delicate newborn, I silently hoped that J and R would declare the four ahead as lunatics, and instead insist we head straight for the main clubhouse, assuming it were still standing.
My prayers were answered and though the walk in was grim, trudging through lakes that were an hour earlier barely puddles, there was a relief in walking off the course that I’ve not known before. Standing in the blisteringly hot water of the shower felt like a transcendent experience after nine holes of urgent misery, and after what seemed like another hour had passed, I started to feel my fingers, and could consider emerging towards the soft welcome of the white towels, and then the consolations of the bar.
Sitting upstairs in the window table of the Aisher Room, we devour lunch as if we’ve not eaten since the autumn, and smile as the hail outside, which is audible against the old roof above our heads, turns to rain, then drizzle, and then, from nowhere, a beam of sunlight is cast across the links, and a promise of a fine afternoon is granted. But we are done, for today. I’d never before wanted to stop a game short, but this morning had been epic, like that lightning scene from Caddyshack, or some movie about Armageddon.
I’d never really wondered why I play this game before, at least not in such an urgent, bewildered state. Four hours driving, a full day away from all that is to be done at home, and while the forecast never actually said “the world could end out there”, it did warn that there would be some weather present, and none of it good, by most people’s definition. But driving home, it felt weird to have been so keen to get off the course, to have stood still for a moment amid the chaos of that awful front nine, and actually questioned not just whether I should be playing that particular morning, but whether playing golf at all is a sensible use of my finite time treading this planet.
I almost felt like I was betraying “golf” by even thinking this, and despite having seen a thousand other people face the same dark question, I knew deep down that even by considering hanging up the clubs (or perhaps, if I were more decisive I’d have thrown them in the Channel, to get it done sooner), I would invoke the golfing gods to provide another few dodgy bounces in the near future. Probably a horseshoe lip-out, as well.
The clubs were indeed lucky to not drift out towards the Goodwin Sands, and instead took a full week to dry out in the shed, alongside some pretty sorry looking golf shoes. And in the back of my mind, for a full seven days, I wondered if I’d ever play again, for that glimpse of the futility of this daft activity had spooked me.
But then one day the sun rose early, and as it burned the dew away from the morning ahead, I put a few irons in a shoulder bag, and golfed. As the ball swung left then right, high then low; my shots a blend of the good, the bad and the ugly, I found I was smiling again, not just at the occasional straight ones, but at the gentle teasing of the wayward shots, too.
And then, when my thoughts slowed down enough to start to hear the birdsong all around me, I hit a couple of sweetspots in a row, and felt the effortless transfer of energy that these rare and beautiful miracles create.
And as the ball sailed up high against the blue sky, and landed softly on the fine green carpet, I knew I’d be carrying this daft old habit forward, not ditching it. Not while I can still pick up a club, at least, and probably for a couple of years beyond that. “What the hell am I doing?”, I silently asked myself again.
“Having fun”, said the smile that ran from ear to ear. “Lots of it”.
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This particular Stymie had been lurking in draft for a while, but since I mentioned it in the recent Wild Golf Podcast (here), I thought it was about time it saw the light of day. With thanks to Michael McDonald for making that chat happen!
In case you are new in these parts, here’s one from the archive:
You can find a link to some other pieces here, so check out the older ones, and please also consider following my twitter feed here.
Thank you, sincerely! Happy golfing…
Unrecognisable….literally just back from 3 days in glorious sunshine at Deal and Princes……though on previous visits I have also experienced the kind of ‘weather’ you so vividly describe!
Another great one, Richard. You paint the scene so well…love those early morning wake ups and drives to the home course or one further down the road .