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THE TAKE By John Hopkins
RYE, ENGLAND | It is not the Big Room in the R&A clubhouse at St Andrews nor is it the bar known as Trap 2 at Royal Porthcawl’s delightful clubhouse. But in the first full week in January when the President’s Putter is taking place, Rye’s dining room, set in a clubhouse crouching among the dunes a few miles from the twinkling little town, is crammed with golf administrators, players, lawmakers and course designers.
This room, where hams and roast beef and roast lamb wait to be hacked at by men whose handiwork with a carving knife makes you hope they are not surgeons, is a representation of the game, populated by golfers privileged enough to have attended Oxford or Cambridge universities. The Oxford & Cambridge Golfing Society may not have the clout it once had but you’d be hard-pressed to find people who care or know more about amateur golf, about course architecture, about an arcane rule of golf or embody the spirit of amateur golf more than the men and women gathered in this room at this time of year.
Question: What do the best golf clubs such as Muirfield, St Andrews, Royal Liverpool and Royal Porthcawl have in common? Answer: They all serve sludgy coffee. Question: If the practice ground at Royal Birkdale was in bounds for Jordan Spieth in the last round of last year’s Open, why weren’t all those who had used it earlier in the day disqualified for practising on the course before playing? Answer: Stop asking awkward questions.
There could be four or five past captains of the R&A in attendance, past and present members of the R&A’s championship and general committees, captains of well-known golf clubs. Some years, though not 2018, a past chief executive of the R&A would have been present. Donald Steel, the author whose excellent memoirs have just been published, might be in one corner, Alex Boatman, one of two women who competed in this historic event, in another. There is wine on the tables (and the tablecloths) and laughter ricochets around the room.
A story is told by a member of the society about Leonard Crawley (the distinguished player and later the golf correspondent of The Daily Telegraph) who, while staying with the player and administrator Gerald Micklem at Sunningdale, left his false teeth at Waterloo station and had them sent down on the 8:10 train the next morning. Micklem’s valet took the Bentley to collect them and return them to their owner.
“Crawley was playing at Worlington (Cambridge University’s home course),” the raconteur began “and Pooley, the local gravedigger who had rather stooped shoulders, was carrying Crawley’s clubs. Halfway down the third, Crawley stopped suddenly, remembering that he had forgotten to do something before leaving his house adjacent to the course. “Pooley,” he boomed, ”go to my house, go round the back and in through the back door, which is open, into the kitchen and turn the kettle off.”
At Rye early in January you see amateurs who are the lifeblood of the game because without amateurs there would be hardly any professionals. In 2018 this amateur golf competition required an 83-year-old man to be first off the tee on two mornings running, daylight hardly having broken. No concessions to age here and he wouldn’t want any.
This amateur event is men walking from their drives towards their second shot. “What is the opposite of disgruntled?” one asked as he approached his ball. PG Wodehouse would say, “Bertie Wooster, if not disgruntled then was certainly far from gruntled,” replied another. “Well remembered,” said the first.
This amateur golf event requires competitors to wrap up in thermal underwear underneath a T-shirt beneath one or more sweaters and a fleece-lined windbreaker topped off by a waterproof jacket to play a few holes on a bone marrow-chilling morning when rain is forecast and a 15 mph wind is blowing. It is men walking from their drives towards their second shot. “What is the opposite of disgruntled?” one asked as he approached his ball. PG Wodehouse would say, “Bertie Wooster, if not disgruntled then was certainly far from gruntled,” replied another. “Well remembered,” said the first.
The golf writer Bernard Darwin and a former head of MI5, who had both been society members, spent time in this clubhouse. Now, it’s buzzing with conversation – about the weather and the cricket, two British staples, about Brexit because former Prime Minister Tony Blair had recently said that there could be a second referendum about Britain’s departure from the European Union even though in the first, in 2016, a majority of Britons had voted to leave it. There was talk about Fire and Fury, the book that is causing President Trump so much concern, about the long putter and anchoring, about learning to play ready golf after years of waiting until it was your turn.
And there was talk about the ball, the distance it travels and whether or not a move toward limiting it were just rumours. What we didn’t talk about was Tiger Woods and the recent announcement that he will continue his comeback over the next few weeks. Nor did the Ryder Cup receive a mention.
So that gives you a flavour of the atmosphere inside Rye’s clubhouse last week. Golf, which can be self-important and pompous, is all the better for what happened there. Long may it last.
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