Pitchmarks Podcast

“Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.”Boris PasternakI didn’t know what to expect. It had been suggested to me by a friend, Helen, whose previous recommendation had proved a wonderful surprise, and it was a convenient pit-stop on my return from the Kent coast. But I didn’t know there was even a course in this district, let alone that it was the work of Harry Shapland Colt. My preparation consisted of the input of a postcode and a degree of trust, and when the former showed just how close the course is to that ancient, historic relic that is Canterbury, I was surprised that I had been ignorant of it for this long, for many afternoons have been spent strolling on those nearby cobbles. So Pam and I agree a time, and meet in the clubhouse and - as we do time after time - enjoy that delicious taste of suspense before inspecting paths we’ve not trodden before.This gift of surprise begins as the first fairway rolls us over a vast hill, and down towards a well-protected green. First impressions are important, and this is a strong one, not least because it pulls us up onto a ridge where the wind can cool us a little. The next is a superb short hole, where Colt’s false front politely rejects our balls for what must be the millionth time in the last ninety-eight years. At the third, we’ve a marker to aim our drives at, but such simplicity is dangerous, for - as on many of Canterbury’s holes - the architect has used the natural camber of the land to test the player’s grey matter. As the front nine progresses, some themes become clear for us both. Canterbury is a masterpiece of design, the holes crafted into the landscape, and much of the challenge is centred around angles. The bunkering is brilliant but sparse - intended to complement rather than over-power the integrity of Colt’s thinking. By the turn, I am utterly lost in terms of where we are on this vast property, and bemused at how even a master architect could cover this ground in the first place, let alone create such a coherent feel through this rambling adventure. Hole after hole feels like it could be plucked from or transported to the cousins I know well - the Wentworth’s and Swinley’s of this world - and yet, though many of those are themselves built on undulating plots, somehow the terrain here is on a grander scale. A more difficult routing to imagine, I suspect. The par three eleventh is steep and gorgeous, and the bank on the right helpful, then at the next the gentle contours pull everything left, and I flounder in yet another marvellous, grassy hollow.The sand-free, uphill fourteenth is barely mentioned anywhere, yet it is to me a thrilling hole - the sort that must frustrate and occasionally elate the regular - with the green perched at the top of a demanding climb across rumpled ground. Somehow, I feel like Colt was flexing his muscles here, in the face of such a challenging site. In places, including in some sense the course’s delightful presentation, it feels like the sort of escapade Braid used to drape over mountainous slopes, yet some holes feel as if Abercromby’s confident swagger is at work. The restraint of the bunkering whispers of Simpson, and yet - though Canterbury has a feel of its own - it is unmistakably Colt, and among his finest, perhaps.The sixteenth has shades of New Zealand’s subtle eleventh in it, in the way the approach tickles everything left, then the seventeenth completes a fabulous set of par threes with a green carved into the bank, which positively bundles us both to the right. And we finish beneath the charming veranda with a fine pair of par fives to close, pitching up three glorious hours after we started.Within a week, Pam has sent another friend this way, and now - fully a month later - I am still thinking of those fairways and certain gentle troughs, and wondering why on earth so few people speak of this place. It is a place of pilgrimage, Canterbury, so rich in history and antiquities, but this golf course is not out of step with the city it serves, and I am staggered anew at how broad and deep England’s golfing catalogue is. I will be surprised if I don’t pass this way again, and soon… Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

The Instigator of this whole carnival - one Philip Truett - delivered in his opening address to the assembled troops “The Rules of Engagement”, including the mention of a “lifetime ban” for the heinous crime of helping another party look for their ball in this triangular fixture. Clearly, pace of play is important, but the notion of tackling Walton Heath’s marvellous Old Course - more or less as Herbert Fowler left it - without visiting the menacing heather seemed pretty unlikely. Layer on the additional pressure of representing one of three such distinguished entities - the host club, the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, or the British Golf Collectors’ Society - and stray golf balls began to look like a certainty. And it would be three-ball six-somes, playing alternate shots. With hickories…I’ve always loved the two courses at Walton Heath. Back when I was a greenkeeper down the road at Mitcham, the place - under the stewardship of the late, great Ian McMillan - was the gold standard for firm, fine turf and environmentally sympathetic management, and on the evidence of a quick glance at the first hole on the Old, it was in that sort of condition once more. Craftsmanship has always been a theme at Walton Heath, from the half-century of James Braid’s presence, through the persimmon mastery of Harry Busson, but this event in itself is an example of crafting something exquisite from nothing. It was originally a club vs Collectors fixture, but presumably after a certain number of clean sweeps from the home team, it was decided to bring in the R&A to add a bit of competition to this annual rout, as The Instigator explained with not inconsiderable delight. This worked in one respect, as the newcomers began to pick up the odd scalp, but the Collectors - the ones who are meant to know how to wield their sticks - remained eager competitors but perpetual losers.And so we commence. The opening par three ought to be straightforward, but most groups had difficulty keeping all three balls in play, and further trouble remembering to not look for them. Then we crossed the road and the Heath opened up before us, parched a little but with gloriously natural golf in every direction. We learn that the award of a gimme is a delicate business in a three-way match, and that one side might be willing to concede whilst another would rather “see it in”, which keeps us all on our toes. Hopeful glances are perpetually cast across greens.Another cause of a lifetime ban would be the use of distance measuring devices, but the more regular hickory players among us have long ago given up any hope of knowing how far we might propel the ball with a brassie or a mashie on any given occasion, so the business of how many yards remain is rendered a moot point. And with the ground as it is this summer and the Old offering more scope for the running game than Fowler’s entwined New Course, many of the yards a shot does travel are along the ground. We also discover - playing “Sunningdale” format, whereby a team gets a shot when they reach two down until that gap is halved - that it is possible to be giving and recieving a shot at the same time, depending on the status of each of the two matches you are embroiled in. And everyone else pretends to be unclear of the specifics of the situation until they are due a shot, at which time clarity is instant, and suspicious.All of this is taxing to keep track of, and way above my pay grade, but my partner Perry has played a bit of golf, and all of it sublime, it would seem. In the face of his effortless grace over the ball and tremendous skill despite the hickories, I feel like apologising not only for my game and the places I put his ball, but for my very existence. He has written “far and sure” on the side of this sphere that we somehow clip around the entire course, but neither term applies to anything I manage. Yet the phrase rings true for each of his strokes, and it is a joy to watch, particularly as his partner. Perry has used only hickories for the last three years, and it is hard to imagine that anything more modern could improve this exhibition of ball-striking and temperament. I start to wonder if - despite living almost four hundred miles from him, with the small matter of The Channel in the way - I might have found a new golf teacher, over thirty years since my childhood Saturday morning lessons ceased, and then he admits to feeling “like I was born in the wrong era”, and the deal is done. Cologne is a long way from Surrey, but the prospect of maybe one day hitting a single shot like he does will go a long way. The oppositions are doing well, too. Another Richard hardly plays with these clubs but his natural game keeps The Instigator on the straight and narrow, and in turn he benefits from a degree of local knowledge probably only ever rivalled by Braid in this parish. They are a delight, and to play at last with Truett is a privilege, particularly given that he started me on this path a few years back with some of his spare weapons (mainly Braid-stamped, as are all his - “support the local pro”!).Cliff plays with a tempo almost as graceful as Perry’s, and at the very infrequent mis-cue, his smile only broadens. And his partner Gavin waits until he has watched me dispatch Perry to some dark corners of the first twelve holes before showing me his “secrets of hickory golf”, which he has written down and stuck to the back of his phone. I am both honoured that he’d show me such delicate information, and eager to deploy these nuggets immediately, but then I remember that Gavin is by trade a medic, and I therefore have no hope of making sense of the scrawled hieroglyphics he is kind enough to flash before me. And so it goes on. At the fifteenth, someone’s ball takes a rather hard bounce left into the cut heather, and isn’t instantly visible, so we have a swift look, and Truett is quick to remind us of the lifetime ban, and even quicker to mutter “though some might quite like that”, as if any of this has been less than wonderful. If I needed a spur to work on my game over the next year, the thought of a repeat selection for the 2026 edition should prove more than adequate. It is a festival of golf, The Triangular, all cleeks and no cliques.It is hard to imagine that any match could stand up to the brilliance of Walton Heath on a glorious afternoon like this, but I think - in terms of the friendship and laughter and, on occasion, the golf - we half a dozen managed to contribute to another of those days whose fun is etched in the memory regardless of the result. But we do cover the result, and the day - after a 36 hole lunch - finishes as it started all those swipes ago, with The Instigator addressing the room. We run through the individual matches, swiftly moving on at the moment when Truett declares his and Richard’s quarter-point yield - “the lowest possible score” - perhaps an indication of unsporting conduct from the other four in the group, but I had no idea what the score was anyway. We discover that the R&A have won today’s battle, and closed the gap on Walton Heath in the series. The BGCS came into today with “precisely zero”, and will depart with the exact same total, but there are nothing but smiles on the faces of my fellow whipping boys and girls today. Truett says at one point that, in the context of enjoying your golf, “it doesn’t matter if you win. But it doesn’t half help”, and we cling to the first half of the couplet, tails between our legs. I am still smiling when I get home, and still smiling when it gets dark, turning on the lamp to pore over my old copy of the club’s history book. It is called “Between Heather and Heaven”, which seems to me to sum up as well as any four words ever might a day such as this. Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

So Shane is over for a few days, for another dose of the heathlands. We’ve played together a bit in Ireland - around Dublin where he lurks, and in Donegal - plus a bit over here. As well planned in his golf as he is for his Firm and Fast podcast, the itinerary is tight, and takes in some significant headlines. Thirty-six at Sunningdale is a ticket many cross vast oceans for, and The Berkshire and St George’s Hill deserve every plaudit they get, and they get lots of them.But I am pleased that he is keen to look beyond the top tier, for the glory of the home counties shines brightest in the division that sits quietly beneath those famous old tracks. He will start on the heath at Liphook, and wrap up by doing laps around Mildenhall, and I am thrilled for those appointments, as I suspect he will love them.My chance to play a role comes on Wednesday, and - with Shane every bit as willing to be up with the sparrows as I am - we are on the road early, battering south. The one glimpse of the sea we can manage on his voyage is at Hayling, and as we glance down at the links from the sun-drenched deck of the clubhouse, we know that Firm and Fast will be on the menu today, for the playing corridors inhabit every shade from green to beige before us. Dry, hot summers like this will test the fine grasses as much as Hayling will test us, which is a great deal, even without much breeze. Our car park swings last for a hole or two but then we find some form, and charge through the early holes, our golf balls bouncing and bobbing and bundling along. On the thin strip of soil that the course has to play with, the turf is admirably stubborn, and though it looks parched, it plays like the golf of my dreams. Resistant to our irons, flattering our woods, the turf is as unyielding as anything I’ve played so far this year. In the semi-rough, the fines offer a slight crunch underfoot, and beyond that the seed pods of Hayling’s menacing stands of gorse are popping as the heat builds around us. I love watching people discover with fresh eyes the places I love, and Shane’s eyes start to widen as the course builds in drama near the turn. The eighth - with its deceptive glimpse of a flag over a dune - charms him, then the ninth with its teasing drive and that long, exacting approach. The tenth is a masterclass in design - a hole that dares you to be bold, but that can smell a player’s fear, it seems. And it goes on, and by the time we drop down to the elusive thirteenth green and begin the homeward stretch, he seems as mad for Hayling as I am, for it has so much of what the game ought to offer, and avoids plenty of what has been added elsewhere. It is natural, and wild, and rugged. The second half of the day is set for Pulborough - West Sussex Golf Club - and after half a dozen years away it all comes flooding back as we leave the main road and take the little track that trundles in behind the clubhouse. Since I was last here, fairway irrigation has been installed, but as we track north-west up the first, sampling a couple of bunkers on the way, we can see that it is being used sparingly, and thoughtfully, as the turf is superb here, too.The rollercoaster, bunker free second reminds me how important the course’s undulations are, while the stunning third - ominous hazards punctuating a pine forest backdrop, with a dangerous target up ahead - is reminiscent of a sandbelt aesthetic, to Shane’s eyes. Pulborough is so very pretty and the marvellous bunkers are central to this, with their blend of clean edges and clumps of heather. But though it is not long, and has a degree of quirk in the routing - three par 3’s in four holes early on - the course’s honest challenge floods back to me, too. At the eighth, my tee shot fades out right to leave a tricky pitch over the cavernous trap, and though I hit it well, and have an outside chance of a three, I shall not need to putt for, as we scan the runoff at the back for Shane’s fine iron shot, it occurs to us that there is one place to look that is hidden. As he approaches the hole, I suddenly know that he will find his ball in there - his third hole-in-one - and I am torn between by delight for my friend and some indignant self-pity that I am still barren on that front, and no longer three up. It is the first ace I have witnessed, and it is pleasing that it came from such a fine stroke, but it unsettles me and I chop and hack my way around from hereon, just about clinging on to the early lead that was dented by his miracle. But in between shots I still remember to gaze at this glorious setting - heather and flashed white sand punctuating the wonderful turf corridors through this rural landscape - and the next few days are spent ruminating on the somehow modest feel of these two quiet wonders. They are so different from each other, Hayling and Pulborough, but then again they are different from everything else as well. Hayling is its own links in style and location and feel, and Pulborough with its effortless cadence through the pristine heath seems like the benchmark for how such courses could look and play. They each walk to the beat of their own drum, and driving home it occurs to me how often golf clubs or courses yearn to be like all the others, and it never quite works. There are dozens of courses that Shane could have checked out this week which try just a little too hard to impress, that put a bit too much effort and money into things that really don’t matter, but it feels to me like these two are a breath of fresh air by comparison. It’s inspiring to see, and though I sleep like a log after our efforts, my dreams are full of the jangling masts of boats bobbing in the Solent, and the splash of coarse, white sand on deep green grass. And I wake in a hurry to get my next golf organised, exhilarated by Hayling and Pulborough, and with the hunt for my own, inevitable ace only intensified by Shane’s. It’s a funny world we live in, but wonderful things can happen. And golf seems to me to have more than its fair share of such miracles. Hayling and Pulborough fit that description. Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

I wake up feeling shattered, spent. Overwhelmed. No spare capacity for inputs, though they keep on coming, let alone the energy to make decisions.I opt for no breakfast, for the binary yes/no is so much simpler than the cascading menu options that could follow a yes. So I hit the road with only coffee, in search of headspace. I need long, wild horizons; cool fresh air. A pause from the treadmill; a dose of wilderness. And Cleeve Hill delivers that sort of medicine each time I climb up there, but particularly today. For we are first off in The Old Tom One - an event to explore the liberation of playing with a single club in hand, each and every shot hit with one choice weapon. In some sadistic twist, one of our three maniacs decides we should choose each other’s tool from the club’s retro stock, then pick our missile at random from the mooch bucket in the Pro Shop. Simon spends most of the week texting “putter”, and so deserves to be condemned with some flanged thing from the middle of the last century. It has a steel shaft, just about, but the leather grip certainly hasn’t become any tackier over the intervening decades. Dickon makes the mistake of being caught admiring the head of some ancient John Letters blade, whose ferrule design weirdly reminds me of platform shoes and flares, and his punishment comes when he is handed the club to discover it looks more like a toothpick in his hands. For the next three hours, he will flush the ball across the Hill with a seven iron that looks more suited for his ten year old son, Ernie.In turn, or perhaps in revenge, Dickon hands me a bladed six iron that resembles a surgical instrument, and it is three holes and about ten painful thins before Simon clocks exactly which club I am cursing. These Sounders are not for use, he tells me; “display purposes only”, but the thing is I’ve nothing else on me to use bar a pitchmark repairer, undeployed to this point due to the wind-shy trajectory of my strokes. I feel some exhilarating thrill from the illicit equipment, but in truth the whole thing feels like we are on the wrong side of golf’s normal code - an delicious, adult equivalent of playing truant, perhaps. It is a strangely refreshing version of the game, this; one that screams of creativity, and innocence. Free of the burden of club selection, or the baggage of - well - baggage, we race around. Hit it, follow it, hit it, and the natural flow of this golf brings out the best in our swings. Plus Cleeve Hill is in the best condition I have seen it in the three years since I first gazed across this pinnacle of golfing vistas. The turf and presentation are obscene when you factor in that the club employs two - TWO! - greenkeepers, and runs the equipment on a budget most clubs might allocate to the gardening. It has always played like links, but today it dawns on me that it isn’t like links, it is links. Don’t ask me how this turf got up here, I don’t know. Some glacial event, I would guess. But up here it is. I also don’t know how only two people can get it to this state, and that after weeks without rain. Nor do I know how Simon gets it round in less than most of the members with a putter, or how he carries the quarry on the fifteenth with it. Or how the infant seven iron in Dickon’s hand keeps knocking it ten yards past my best six. None of it makes much sense, or perhaps it makes perfect sense, and I don’t recognise this simplicity.Once in a while we all need a break from the world’s complexity, from relentless decisions. So The Old Tom One arrives in perfect time to recalibrate my aching grey matter. And the result? I don’t know exactly, but I do know we got round, and only lost one ball between us (a decent shot of mine that presumably flew the third green and is perhaps in the next quarry down or the wash pool). And I know it felt like the most fun we are likely to have on a golf course until the next one, in summer 2026. I return the Sounder six iron to the rack, though I have come to love it dearly over the course of our adventure. Then I climb in the car to drive home, inspired where I was earlier exhausted, and spend the return leg charmed by how positive I feel, how energised I have become. I suspect several hundred thousand other people have golfed their way through this Saturday morning, but I doubt many have had as much fun as we have, freed from all the paraphernalia of our collective addiction. Decision fatigue is a distant memory. Joyous play is a recent one. Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

Of Milan Kundera’s masterpiece “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”, Ian McEwan wrote that “one is torn between profound pleasure in the novel’s execution and wonder at the pain that inspired it”. He is right; the exquisite dialogue loses little in translation from the French, and Kundera’s ability to find humour in simple, human interaction makes it an annual read for me. I bought my paperback copy in 1998. It is starting to look weary, but then so am I.But “the pain that is inspired it” is in reference to the backdrop for the tales of Clementis and Eva, Marketa and Jan, as behind the narrative lies the author’s yearning for his homeland, and for those times before the occupation that drove him from Czechoslovakia. Early on in the book a mechanic recounts, for the benefit of a menacing stranger who will soon arrest him, that “in Prague, a guy is throwing up. Another guy comes up to him…shakes his head and says ‘I know just what you mean…’”Most things remind me of golf, but surprisingly often, golf reminds me of Kundera, and his gift for revealing life’s absurdities. So when the breeze delivered to me, across the third fairway, the screech of anguish that followed a dear friend’s latest violent slice, I felt like calling back “I know just what you mean…”Perhaps a study of our facial expressions - as we watch the ball and clubface part on an entirely different angle to that which was hoped for and called for - would make for an interesting set of portraits. It could be a window on the eternal suffering of the human condition, amplified at regular intervals by this cruel “sport”. We live and die alone, and in between endure golf on a largely individual basis, but - when seen together as a set of portraits - perhaps our plight might seem more collective, somehow. More tribal. Another portfolio might pull together the sounds we make as each shot reveals itself a traitor; groans and sighs, breathless self-directed tirades. After a good front nine, my own game disintegrates before a peg punctures the turf of the twelfth tee, and I catch the sound of the subsequent disciplinary rant as it hangs in the air. Golf denudes me, then I berate myself. And from the other side of the next fairway, Luca is yelling - and I mean yelling - “what is wrong with you?” at himself. The same old mistakes, followed by the same old squeals and grunts. At least the date has changed. This week the U.S. Open returns to the mighty Oakmont for a remarkable tenth time. At almost seven thousand, four hundred yards, with one hundred and sixty eight bunkers and an extraordinary set of fast greens, the par of seventy is no mean feat, even for the modern professionals.But - if the course plays the way it just might, long and firm and fiery - then those mysterious wizards that effortlessly excel at golf as if caught in some celestial mantra might get a glimpse of how it often feels to us, and we might hear down the satellite line a few choice expressions of their own, or catch their frustrated whimpers of agony over the gasps of the gallery. I’d rather they didn’t throw any clubs, or resort to expletives, or spit in the hole - after all, Hogan and Nicklaus and Miller and Els all managed to win there without giving themselves away like that - but if they struggle as they plot out survival from that marvellous, brutal legacy of a golfing test, I think I might understand. And sympathise. Even in the persecution that drove Kundera from occupied Prague, though, there is hope. Hope is what drives his characters to explore in such style their alienation, and a forlorn detachment from where they want to be. And hope is a key ingredient for everyone who has ever lifted a golf club to then feel a ball leave the centre of the face. We hope that this feeling will return, that we might get back to that precious state, of watching the ball sail merrily down the middle. And when such curious things occur, our faces are not twisted scowls, but the first beginnings of a delicate, innocent smile.Hidden in between all of the struggle, these fragments of glory that make it all worthwhile. That make it all involuntary. We shall each be paid back, sooner or later; our occasional consolation a closing birdie perhaps, or the sweep from the swindle, or the unnamed trophy for the U.S. Open. The rest of the time we will have another dose of grumbling and bleating, whether from the second cut of heather or from the strange confession box of The Church Pews at Oakmont. I see you in there, grappling. Trying and failing, and shortly after, wailing. You know how we feel, now. And “I know just what you mean…” Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

A 4.30am alarm for a drive of four and a half hours ought to feel like a burden; a cruel awakening. A difficult start to a long and busy weekend. But instead, the time passes quickly on the empty roads, as the sun follows me north west towards Wolverhampton then due west towards the Welsh coastline. The gloomy weather forecast seems to be a false alarm until the last few minutes, whereupon dark clouds gather and a tentative first drop turns into steady rain, shifting across the landscape in waves. From a car park off the high street of Machynlleth, the ancient capital of Wales, I call today’s companion D, whose van is camped at the top of a nearby mountain, and can barely see beyond his windscreen. So we meet for some sustenance and then drive in convoy to the town’s golf club, just three quarters of a mile from the iconic town clock, once a gap in the rain presents itself. On approach to the single-storey clubhouse, a cleaner smiles warmly as the next heavy shower hammers off the windows, chasing her rubber scraper down the panes. “I’m not sure who’s madder - me or you!”, she exclaims, water dripping from her brow. I daren’t admit what time I arose to get here, or that the primary reason D and I chose this venue was in order to take the photos I either failed to last time, or lost. It is clearly not an ideal day for photography, and I doubt many people would regard a nine hour round trip as a reasonable tariff for nine holes on a fairly unknown track in the shadows of Snowdonia. “There are three out there already”, she continues, “and they said the Met Office predicted the rain would stop at ten, which it did”. I glance at the watch on my wrist while she pauses for comic effect, then bathe in her gorgeous accent as the punchline is delivered with glee…“thing is, it started again at five past!” But here we are, and D even has some waterproofs, so we press on and are more or less soaked by the time we leave the first green, and more or less soaked when we shake hands on our eighteenth. For - wet or not - Mach is as wonderful as I remember it from my maiden soaking there a year earlier, and we couldn’t bare to only loop once. Perhaps that is the acid test of a nine holer - that you cannot wait to start all over again.I remembered the holes well from my first rounds - another good sign - but it is a joy to watch D connect with this rustic and wonderful rendition of the game. At the first we struggle both times to envisage the right angle for that cunning dogleg opener, but manage to scrape two halves in bogey. The long second rolls up and over a couple of broad swales to a green tucked at the north end of the property, then the blind, short third beguiles us with bounces we can’t quite see. On the second loop we skip up the hill to the fourth in the hope of a half in aces, but mine has spun off the right hand ridge too soon, and D’s must have rolled by just on the high side. Two pars is a phrase we barely use today, but at the fourth it must always be a proud statement to make.The fifth is just wonderful, and I remember from last time that the marker you see from the tee is not the centreline of this gentle dogleg left, but the point at which the rough encroaches from the hill we swing under. Up at the green, our balls chase in low, bouncing up and through to where the sheep casually graze. Six comes back down, then the long par four seventh follows a narrow runway between trees and the rocky outcrop on the right. It’s exquisite golf, and from almost every point on the course you can gaze across the whole routing, but the view from the penultimate tee - a mid-length par three with the green way beneath us and over a little, diagonal ditch - epitomises this natural site and James Braid’s inspired path through it. Our tee shots hang above the distant hills for an eternity, then plummet to earth to settle beside today’s awkward pin near the right edge. Then the last delivers us to the back of the clubhouse, where we do our best to dry off and recover. If it had been raining like this at home in Surrey, I’d probably have skipped playing one of the world-beaters down the road today, but somehow at Mach the rain doesn’t matter, for it can’t dampen our spirits or the appeal of this wonderful place. Somehow it has more of what I take for the game’s deepest rhythms - golf’s “warmest chords” to steal a phrase from the sublime Joni Mitchell - than any of the other places which are probably bathed in sun and rammed today. And it is not just the holes themselves, though they are so very lovely, and it is not just the panoramic views or the cool, fresh air. Not just the honesty box sign, or the practice ground that has more sheep than flags. It is somehow all of those things in harmony, and the fact that this little, modest loop - laid out in 1904 - is in this town and of this town. Run by volunteers, surviving on a shoestring, a hub for this proud community. We call it a day at eighteen, but a tiny slip of blue sky starts to peer through just as we are driving out and it occurs to me that in some other life I’d like to live here, a few yards up the road, take my daily medicine of nine here with a dog or two in tow and never need anything more from this transcendent game of ours. But for now, I delight in the fact that D now knows this little wonder I call Mach, and drive home with more than a little of its charm anchored deep in my heart. And a couple of photos, to boot. I’m still not sure “who’s madder”, but I know deep inside that I wouldn’t change a single thing about today. Love you, Machynlleth…Caru chi Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve mentioned “The Art of Possibility” several times before, but though I don’t believe either Ben or Ros Zander play this game, much of the stuff they talk about in that marvellous book is of value to the golfer, and none more so than “Rule Number 6”. “Don’t take yourself so seriously”, it states, and straight away I am amused by the absence of any mention of preceding Rules, for the playful, irreverent nature of the authors is evident in this initial tactic: there are no Rules 1-5. But some days a sense of humour is more or less essential for survival, and these are often golfing days for me, if not the Zanders. A thick layer of ice on the windscreen warns me that this will be proper winter golf long before I arrive, but there will be no cancellations, as the four of us are heading to New Zealand, so things like the score, and the ground conditions, and the biting northerly wind are mere details beside the more important priorities of friendship and story-telling. And laughter, it quickly becomes apparent. We are not in a hurry to don several layers of clothing, so take the opportunity to show Chip - on his first visit - around some of the delightful elements of this old clubhouse. We peer at a few of Samuel “Mure” Fergusson’s R&A medals in the bar, and at the Spy cartoon of that powerful amateur which hangs above them. And I recall and recount that lovely old excerpt from the Minute Book, whereby the Board of the day note with appropriate reverence Mure’s passing in late 1928, followed almost immediately by an acknowledgement of the fact that a large consignment of port will now not be required, and must be returned to the vintner. An ability to not take anything too seriously, least of all the golf, seems to be essential round here.There’s little hurry - “technically, the ladies have the tee from 10.00am”, Aubyn informs us, “but we’ve no idea if any will turn up”. And of course the fairer sex is the more sensible version of a human, so as the next leg of our delaying tactics tours the Dining Room, we spot today’s sole female striding down the first with her husband in tow, both dressed as if heading for Antarctica. They are playing only the first loop of five holes, so all urgency is dispelled at this knowledge. Aubyn informs us that the vast oil painting of Fergusson that hangs above the all-important pudding counter was amended at some point to fit the ornate frame from which his confident sneer still dominates the space, and that an informal hunt has been going on for “Mure’s legs” - which were detached and rolled up at the time - for a few decades now. The otherwise empty Dining Room once again echoes laughter at this knowledge, but I can’t help thinking that, if Mure were here in person rather than portrait, none of us would dare to laugh, and his glaring eyes have spooked me, so I decide not to suggest a possible link between the regular consignments of port and Mure’s legless status. As we change our shoes, Chip and Nick are charmed by the old notice that “deplores” slower formats of golf such as Greensomes & 4-balls, labelling them as forms of “Golf Masochism”, but - with only two other people on the golf course - we decide to deploy the former format anyway. No one can be bothered to try and work out pairings or handicaps, so the two standing closest together form a team, and we grapple with the frozen turf to insert our tee pegs, a process that takes longer than Mure would have needed to complete the first. And then our drives somehow split the fairway, and land and skip and run, Nick’s ball in particular finally coming to rest an absurd distance from the shattered peg from which it flew. It is downhill from here, the first hole, and our golf goes steadily downhill from this auspicious start, but none of that matters for the pattern of intermittent laughter that punctuates our frustration is the perfect balm for a game as maddening as this. We spend two minutes, fifty-eight seconds searching for my ball behind the first green, in the strip of heather into which it barely trickled, and Aubyn is quick to explain that we are - in hunting through the heather in this way - showing Chip “the authentic New Zealand experience”, and not for the last time.At the second, Nick hits another splendid drive, though this one draws slightly in the air unlike the bullet down the first, and though it comes to rest inside the left edge of the fairway, he notes that “the draw has crept in, so it won’t be long before normal service is resumed”, and I am all empathy, though delighted at the prospect of having someone else to speak to whilst looking for my own snap-hooks all morning. Perhaps daunted that Nick is complaining even when his ball finds the fairway, Chip carves his slightly right, and the gentle silence of the pine forest is momentarily punctured by the sound of urethane on timber, a not-unfamiliar chord in these parts. As we stroll up the fairway, Aubyn and I wonder if the presence of a woodpecker as the club logo could be in response to the regular and rhythmic collision of these two factors rather than a drumming beak. We laugh once more, and again when my second hits another ancient trunk, before coming to rest in a frozen bunker, and I am delighted when we all agree a pact to ignore the Rules of Golf in the face of this latest setback. As long as we observe Rule Number 6…At the dangerous seventh, Nick somehow hits it to a few feet, and though Trevor - the gentleman in the Hut - pretends to not notice this outrageous blow though he’s not missed a duffed shot for about two decades, Nick steels himself to make a rare two, restoring parity in the conflict. Shortly afterwards, we notice that the ditches in the eighth carry are rather generously GUR, and I am still chuckling at Nick’s observation that “if you go in there, you have more than enough problems to deal with as it is” when I spot my ball in one, having failed to make the carry after all. So I take the free drop, find the fairway and then thin it through the damned green. My fingers are killing me, but so are my sides, for I’ve done nothing but laugh to this point. And so it goes on. We learn that the famous peacocks that used to strut on Addington’s roof were surprisingly camouflaged when up a tree, and that you might not notice them at all “until they sh*t on you from a great height”, as Nick put it, “like my Chairman”. We also learn that in the good old days, the Addington Captain’s duties would include setting light to an enormous bonfire on Guy Fawkes’ Night, then sprinting for cover as the flames tore through the practice ground and up into the sky. Upon his election as Captain, Nick’s children were delighted at the prospect of their daddy as the latest “Captain Inferno”, then devastated when health & safety brought that terrifying ritual to an abrupt end shortly before his turn would have arrived. By the time we reach the final green, Nick has a putt to halve the match, and declares that if he fails to hole it, he will fast for a month. But the Hewitt draw is imminent, and a Match Dinner, too, so missing is never an option and as the ball rolls right in the centre, it is the only result that we all would have wanted from such a morning’s work. We are, three hours later, back where we started, but a great deal richer from the more or less perpetual comedy of (very) amateur golf.So, another glorious day in search of golf’s elusive treasures is almost over, but when Chip sends me a note later, I dig out something to share with him - the first thing I wrote in public - and I realise that I had specifically mentioned Rule Number 6 before. That it has taken this long to return to the topic as a prerequisite for a morning’s golf seems tragic. If I were in charge, I’d have it written on the scorecards. Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

“Comparison is the thief of joy” President Theodore RooseveltSome new ranking comes out, a list of the places we are supposed to hanker after across Great Britain & Ireland, presented as if it were the official league table after a vast, scientific experiment. At first, I shrug, but then, in a moment of weakness, I zoom in on the chart and catch myself just as my blood begins to boil at some gross injustice before me, and I cast the screen away like some weak slap of a drive, for I can feel the joy slipping away.Across social media platforms, folk have begun to jostle over the relative positions and movements of their own favourites, imposing their opinions as if the world is only built from facts, and they alone are the keepers of the ultimate truths. Ears are taken by storm, and the debate rumbles on as it surely will until the next edition lands. But it is - perhaps - human nature to look to classify, as a means of understanding, a way of bringing order from the chaos of this strange life. We use numbers to keep track of everything - our best and worst restaurants, or golf courses, or even Presidents - when really, the quote attributed to Teddy Roosevelt above serves only to remind me of the primacy of his final noun in all this: “joy”. The closest I get to studying a ranking these days is an occasional dip into a list with no particular order to it, but rather a collection of places that make the world - and the lives of us golfers - a little more splendid with every inclusion. Early on in the “147”, Ran Morrissett notes that “long-form writing is dwindling on a popular basis”, and that his literary heroes and mine “are no longer here to remind us how the joy of the written word can bring a course to life”, but I finish each dip into the joyous waters of Ran’s prose glad that he is here to uphold that standard, for his joy in the sort of places that simply breathe golf is infectious. During the introduction, he writes of measuring a course worthy of consideration for this palace of treasures as one where, at the end, “you feel invigorated rather than exhausted”, and of landscapes with “features that connect man to nature”, and I think about how many of those that I have seen - often as a direct result of consulting the “147” - have changed me along the way. And so one day, after many years of lurking at the fringes of his golfclubatlas.com and quietly tracing his steps from afar, a chance arrives to join Ran in person for a few holes, and there is no decision to be made. If we were each to choose a course for such a meeting, I might well have chosen Minch Old, and on writing this piece I jump back into his first reflections on the course, where he finds it “hard to believe a bunkerless, common ground course could have so many standout holes”, and that it possesses “a graceful charm and quiet dignity unto itself”. And in case I needed further proof that my utter delight each time I land on that little common in the Cotswolds was justified, it comes when Ran explains that he bought a house down the road in order to “be near this”, which in time will reduce his commute to the opening tee on which we meet by around four thousand miles…So we push tees into the ground, and begin, and the course is all fiery after a lengthy dry spell. At the first, my approach goes bundling through the back, and I remember that this place plays firmer than most links when the rain stays away. We climb back up the gentle slope for the second, then swing around behind The Old Lodge to find the third green. At the fourth, the diagonal, dry ditch berates my timid approach once more, and then we gaze across to spy a little gap in the back nine to our right. The course is busy today, and it is great to see, but to stroll across and pick up at the fourteenth offers a chance to keep moving. This loop within a loop is known as “Old Man’s Nine”, and though by playing it we skip a few of the “standout holes” Ran identifies in the eighteen hole version, the two options are equally wonderful.The fifteenth beguiles us as it often does, and the sixteenth thrills us - a carry across a flinty hollow to a green pitched against play, with motorbikes and open-top cars roaring past behind the flag on their way towards “The W”, a kink in the road leading south off the common. Often when I drift off into thinking - or dreaming - of Minch Old, this sixteenth dominates my thoughts, but every time I am here in the flesh and manage to survive that glorious challenge, the penultimate hole enchants me afresh, with its tight, taunting drive and the cunning demands of the second. The ball scurries right with each hollow bounce on this marvellous turf, and holes like this - simple yet subtle, where the lay of the land dictates the challenge - make me yearn to live nearer Minch. I left Surrey to come here this morning, passing many of the places that dominate that new ranking en route, but Ran’s planned migration to these parts makes more sense with every stroke we play. Minch Old isn’t on that many radars, but it always feels to me like a distillation of all that once was, and can still be, pure and natural about this game I love so much. It’s like the soul of golf haunts this place, quietly blessing us in the whispering of the breeze. Above my desk now lives an image of Minch Old, to extend and replenish the inner smile that I always wear on my return, and it reminds me to let the others get on with their endless comparisons, casting authority as if any of it matters. Instead, I shall plough my own furrow, scramble through my own bulwarks, and stand guard against the theft of my joy. “Minchinhampton stands for proper golf”, Ran once wrote, back when his love for this place was in its first, giddy flush. And so does he. And so do I. 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Amidst the fading memories of an eighties childhood, the sound of Alistair Cooke’s voice, delivering his weekly sermon from across the pond, left an indelible mark. Sundays in our kitchen would stand still to let his deliberate pace re-set us for the week ahead, and at least once a year – usually the week after the action – his sharp attention would turn to what he called “the same ravishing landscape” of Augusta National Golf Club.For more than thirty years, Cooke would attend The Masters tournament, in the process becoming close enough to Robert Tyre Jones Jr, whose cabin he and Pat Ward-Thomas would frequent, to know that he hated to be called “Bobby”.“Letter from America” would be delivered into a huge microphone, Cooke reading from a typed leaf of A4, but in these days of computerised everything, one blessing is that, alongside many of the original, yellowing crib-sheets, sits an archive of audio files; his legacy preserved as intact as that of his great friend, golf’s finest amateur.It is only just April, but another unforgettable feature of growing up in a world without internet was the anticipation of Masters week, and of that Sunday evening broadcast, and so I delve back into Cooke’s writing on golf, and seek out a few editions to accompany me as all thoughts drift towards what he called “a slowly beckoning beauty” in Georgia.In one edition, Cooke delves into the history of the property, and I am struck by how random the path is, from “sumptuous botanical garden” via a failed hotel development to this annual carnival of golf. At every turn, terrible luck seems to play its cards on first the Berckmans, whose fruit farm fell into decay after the old man passed away, and then Commodore Stoltz, whose dreams of a real-estate empire disappeared in the face of a hurricane one morning in the roaring twenties.And then some “Wizard of Wall Street”, Clifford Roberts, and Bob Jones, thrown together by fate in the dining room of an Augusta hotel, found themselves peering at a view the rest of the golfing world may never never tire of.For in Cooke’s words, “he looked beyond what is now the long cathedral sweep of the tenth fairway, and shifted his gaze across to Rae’s Creek, the little bridge and the shining water. ‘This’, said Jones, ‘is the place’. And so it was. And so it is.”And through every back nine of this little Invitational, as Jones originally called it, the same themes of luck – good and bad – and of the building of memories and stories drift back across the Atlantic, holding back the march of modern life for just a few hours in favour of the telecast.Cooke called Augusta a “sanctuary from the real world”, and noted how the concerns of the political landscape upon which his weekly reflections usually focused seemed to recede under “the towering Georgia pines”; between the Azaleas and the Dogwoods, “and the Magnolias and the Firethorn”.Elsewhere, describing the concentration of the competitor as they creep through Amen Corner, trying to ride Lady Luck back up the hill to that magnificent clubhouse, he talks of “a trance in which all of life before and after is blotted out”, and every April we golfers seem to fall under the same spell, enthralled by the beauty of this distant place, and of the gladiatorial march of the greats, as they produce occasional glimpses of a transcendent mastery.The course that Jones built, in collaboration with the great Alister Mackenzie, has changed in a thousand ways since this “American Festival” first caught the imagination of the golfing public; yet the strategic brilliance of the puzzle those two gentlemen left behind continues to charm, continues to test and perplex even the modern athlete.Decisions must be made on each and every hole, and the beauty of this major being played on the same rolling carpet every year is that there is nowhere to hide from the stories of the past. No one can pull on a Green Jacket – surely the finest sartorial moment of any golfing career – without carrying those same tranquil waters as their forebears, and The Masters seems to channel the world’s best to the top of those vast white leaderboards like no other competition, not even The Open.Jones spoke of the desire to “give pleasure to the greatest possible number of players… (that Augusta should) never become hopeless for the duffer, nor fail to concern and interest the expert.” And alongside those eighteen blessed holes, carved through an old fruit farm, Jones also leaves a further legacy that seems even more valuable in the modern age – an insistence on courtesy, and decency. As the players line up their putts, Cooke notes a deafening “silence around every green”, and suggests that one might question whether they were at the right place for the golf after all, and not “at some vast open-air prayer meeting”.The Masters is, in every way, an “occasion civilised more than the ordinary by the still haunting presence of its founder”, as Cooke put it, and if ever there was a journalist perfectly formed to report on this annual retreat into the kaleidoscopic celebration of golf that is The Masters, it was Alistair Cooke.What a legacy those two left us.Not long to go now…This edition of pitchmarks first appeared on Golf Today’s website, along with a number of other articles. You can find mine here, along with several other excellent contributors under the Opinion tab. Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

A reading from the blog post linked below, from 23rd February 2025:https://pitchmarks.substack.com/p/pitchmarks-85-the-thing-to-do?r=oquyo Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

A reading from the blog post linked below, from 16th February 2025:https://pitchmarks.substack.com/p/pitchmarks-83-you-need-to-know-this?r=oquyo Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

A reading from the blog post linked below, from 9th February 2025:https://open.substack.com/pub/pitchmarks/p/pitchmarks-81-not-only-on-sundays?r=oquyo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web, Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

A reading from the blog posted linked below, from 2nd February 2025:https://open.substack.com/pub/pitchmarks/p/pitchmarks-80-bumps-and-all?r=oquyo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

A reading from the blog posted linked below, from 26th January 2025:https://open.substack.com/pub/pitchmarks/p/pitchmarks-79-baltray-beyond-termonfeckin?r=oquyo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

A reading from the blog posted linked below, from 19th January 2025:https://open.substack.com/pub/pitchmarks/p/pitchmarks-78-dollymount?r=oquyo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

A reading from the blog posted linked below, from 12th January 2025:https://pitchmarks.substack.com/p/pitchmarks-77-like-the-provisionalThe upside-down fire method explained:https://tim.blog/2009/02/02/how-to-build-an-upside-down-fire/ Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

“The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished”Kevin KellyThis is a recording of pitchmarks #79, entitled "Baltray - Beyond Termonfeckin", read by the author.Click here for more details of how to find and support pitchmarks and my other writing. And don't forget to remain astonished whenever and wherever you can! Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe

A reading from the blog post linked below, from 24th June 2023: Get full access to Pitchmarks at pitchmarks.substack.com/subscribe