Our assigned meeting place was halfway down the first hole. “Meet at 10.30. You can park there. You’ll see other cars there. You get in via a gate.†Those were the instructions. And so we gathered with one dog and took part in the most common act taking place on golf courses throughout the UK in these pandemic days. It was not to watch golf and certainly not to play it. It was instead to take our daily exercise on and around a golf course.
There are nearly 1,900 golf courses in the United Kingdom. Many are private, a few are public. Though some clubs bar non-members in these pandemic times, the rule of thumb for others seems to be to allow walkers and their dogs and hope they will show respect to the golf course. Stop the dogs scratching around in bunkers, that sort of thing. There have been acts of vandalism such as at a golf club in Oxfordshire where masked men on motocross bikes and a quad bike deliberately drove over greens and fairways, and there have been confrontations between walkers and golf club members as well as between different types of dogs but all things considered these have been rare.
Golf courses could hardly be bettered as places to walk. Normally acre upon acre of space forbidden to non-members while occupied by people chasing a little white ball who occasionally shout, “Fore!†they have become vast playgrounds for man and man’s best friend.
We walked for two hours, through heather, gorse and scrub, over fairways and around greens, past ponds, up slopes, brushing aside light foliage, slipping sliding down muddy paths. Conversation was punctuated by one question after another: “Shall we go down the side of the seventh, cut through the copse and end up by the 11th tee or do you want to walk around the pond, head towards the road and cut back to the 17th?†The rain that had threatened at the start held off and at quarter past noon we found ourselves back at our cars. We were well exercised, the dog was dog tired, all was well in the world.
Golf courses could hardly be bettered as places to walk. Normally acre upon acre of space forbidden to non-members while occupied by people chasing a little white ball who occasionally shout, “Fore!†they have become vast playgrounds for man and man’s best friend. Traditionally, a golfer’s companion is a Labrador, black or brown, or a golden retriever. The pandemic has brought dogs of far greater variety to golf courses: Labradors, labradoodles, golden retrievers, spinones, bulldogs, cockapoos, beagles, poodles, greyhounds, German shepherds, setters, spaniels and schnauzers.
Napoleon once described the British as being a nation of shopkeepers. With the shops shut we have turned into a nation of dog walkers.
E-MAIL JOHN
John Hopkins
