I found this from 2004 when Paul Turner and I went to England.. I blantantly and shamelessly ripped off Dostoevsky (thanks Tony Pioppi) at the start.. This is unedited, not spellchecked etc.. It is a lost discovery, perhaps crap writing but for you Paul, I put it up in a public forum to embarass myself.
I am a sick man. I am a critical man. I believe my golf game is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I do not consult a golf-teaching professional for it, and rarely have, though I have a respect for professionals and golf architects. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect golf instruction and design, anyway (I am well educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a golf instructor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though.
Seeing my predicament and my predilection towards spite, I decided to cut my nose off to spite my face. I agreed to take part in a Ryder Cup style event at Painswick GC in England several months ago and enlisted the enabling powers of my friend Paul Turner to join me. Paul and I quickly hammered out a list of courses to play before our tournament and it read like a highlight reel of great British golf--Royal West Norfolk, Hunstanton, Royal Worlington and Newmarket, Parkstone, Broadstone, St. Enodoc and some lesser known gems such as Perranporth and Tandridge.
I was lying when I said that I was a spiteful golfer. I was simply just amusing myself. Actually, my golf game was quite fine in early April but then a series of personal issues such as an engagement to a lovely woman and career problems weighed on my perfectly timed backswing. I felt an outlet was needed, I craved seeing new golf architecture venues to seek out and I was tormented by the fact that my game might not live up to the places I was to visit. Now, I am sure no one fancies the difficulties another golfer feels in their games so let us get to the places I saw and the hiccups that awaited.
I should have known the trip would be up to no good when Paul Turner was 30 minutes late picking me up in a driving rainstorm at Gatwick Airport. With the the car smelling like day old whiskey from Paul’s previous night’s foray and pillage into the town of Slough with his cousin, our expedition began. A scant three hours later (and making sure the tide did not wash out the road leading to the clubhouse) and we pulled into the parking lot in Brancaster (Royal West Norfolk). A lovely English rose who Paul fancied until he saw her wedding ring took our greens fees and we made our way to the practice tee. Paul immediately saw I was setting up for hooking the ball with a closed stance and strong grip. He also was the first to see me unveil my new Tiger Woods yip where I could feel the clubface closed at the top and coming over the line so I would stop my swing. It was horrible, a tick caused by my brain’s motor cortex and I could not stop it.
Somehow, we managed our way to the first tee at Brancaster, a place where the North Sea seems a shade of purple as it intersects with the lovely named Norfolk estuary, The Wash. Brancaster has the classiest entree in all of golf to its first tee. You see, the golfer must pass through a gate dedicated to WW II veterans by the club before beginning the game. I was reminded by Dante’s entrance into the gates of hell in the Divine Comedy (Abandon hope all ye who enter here) as I knew my game was not up to par (pun intended). Paul’s swing looked perfect and my spite grew.
When you gaze the first tee at Brancaster you see the club sits on a sandy floodplain protected by a narrow spine of sand hills abutting a wonderful beach. Like the kite surfers, we saw enjoying the day; perhaps my time would have been better spent flying one. To the nouveau golfer, the start at Brancaster might seem prosaic with a shared fairway for the 18th but the golfer must realize the further they utilize the extra room this provides to the right, the harder the second shot will be as the hole doglegs left.
Somehow, I matched Paul’s par on the first and had an okay round going until the 3rd. The tee shot here is partially blind and the marshlands that abut the front 9 on the right gobbled my tee shot. There is no easy way to play this hole as bunkers await your tee shot on the left and a ridge obscures the approach to the green. Paul’s par barrage continued on this hole all the way to the 8th.
The 8th at Brancaster is rightly famous and immortialized by Darwin quote of, “that of a man crossing a stream by somewhat imperfect stepping stones, so that he has to make a perilous leap from one to the other.” We played the hole with the tide out and the marshlands wet but playable. The brilliance of the hole is that it is strategy supreme. With the three fingers of turf (the tee, the fairway and the green), all types of players can be accommodated as the weaker player can play it as a relatively easy par 5 while the stronger player can tempt fate and go for heroism in two with the satisfaction of a marsh clearing long iron approach.
The 9th is an even stronger hole than the 8th where the marsh again must be cleared on the tee shot (from another island like tee) and the slicer will find death and the hooker a bunkered fate. The 2nd shot is somewhat heroic (similar to going for the green in two on #8) to one of the best sleeper faced greens a golfer may see. The green is elevated and is a tiny target to hit and hold. Upon putting, one must take a quiet sojurn and look around for this is among the top places for solitude in golf. There is nothing to hear but the wind and nothing to see but boats moored in the nearby harbour, their hulls exposed with the outgoing tide.
The homeward holes are much shorter than the way out but no less a player in a plot that is Brancaster. The sleepered 18th’s green complex a reminder of the hazards that must be cleared in order to secure a good round at this museum piece.
Savoring a shandy in the clubhouse afterwards, I saw Paul's evenkeeled, polite English manner decidedly turn outright hostile. A few tables over were a gaggle of "old boys" as Paul labeled them. English public school graduates, all in their 60s with wisps of gray hair, looking like rumpled muffins. The spoke with hearty laughs, wore salmon coloured trousers and seemed to be savoring their glasses of claret--here here (boisterous laugh).. Paul with his modicum of middle class equanimity almost gave them a Sicilian like sneer.