My own first game of golf was in
1967 as a student in Glasgow but I only started to play regularly when I joined
Lothianburn GC in Edinburgh in 1979. I
played there for over 20 years before joining my current club, The Glen GC, in
North Berwick. I’m currently trying to
raise cash for Cancer Research UK by playing every course in Scotland – a
formidable challenge, as there’s around 650 courses in all if you look
carefully enough. Who would have thought
there was a 9 hole course on Stroma, a tiny island that’s been uninhabited
since 1962? Progress on the all-courses
challenge is reported in my other blog at www.scottishgolfcourses-allofthem.blogspot.com.
Lothianburn
Anyway, back to the purpose of this
blog. I’ll start with a few true tales from my years at Lothianburn. Lothianburn GC was founded in 1893 and has
over the years been primarily an artisans club, attracting members from the
working classes rather than the toffs.
When I joined the club in 1979 I quickly fell in with a great bunch of
guys, including Bobby Moore (no, not that one!), Ray Stephenson, George
Anderson, and his son David. Bobby, Ray
and George were all retired miners from the nearby Bilston Glen colliery,
long-since closed. David was a big
strapping lad, well over 6 feet and at a guess, near 18 stone. David and I would regularly play Bobby and
George on Sunday mornings and have a great laugh, usually at each others’
expense. The standard of golf was moderate at best but we were all pretty quick
witted and there was no mercy for the meek or wayward.
The 16th at
Lothianburn is an awkward shortish Par 4, slightly downhill. The fairway slopes sideways from left to
right with anything slightly offline running down into heavy gorse. The safe shot is down the left of the
fairway. There’s a stream beyond the
gorse on the right followed by Out of Bounds and an access road that runs up to
the largest dry slope in the UK.
We’d noticed a council workman repairing one of the streetlights a
couple of hundred yards down the road.
He’d probably been replacing a bulb and had just finished screwing the
large spherical glass outer casing over the bulb before climbing down his ladder. Now Bobby (also known as Sammy, for reasons I
never thought to ask. It was just one of
those facts that didn’t seem to require explanation) was by far the best golfer
amongst us and was usually pretty straight off the tee. It was actually pretty difficult to go Out of
Bounds off the 16th tee and Bobby was playing pretty well that
day. Accordingly, it was pretty amazing
to see Bobby’s tee shot go straight right and the more so when his ball
shattered the light fitting that the council workman had just replaced.
I guess it was our laughing that
got the workman started, but he fair bolted up the road to remonstrate
furiously with Bobby. Indeed, he was
clearly accusing Bobby of having deliberately broken the light fitting, shaking
his fist at Bobby from the safety of the road, with the stream and the Out of
Bounds fence between him and the 4 of us.
The language sadly degenerated to the industrial. There was a bond between Bobby and George that transcended mere friendship
and one would always stand up for the other if necessary, so it was no great
surprise when George, who could be pretty coarse when the need arose, replied
saying “Deliberate, don’t be so fucking
stupid, man! The daft old bastard couldnae
even hit the fucking golf course.” This prompted further hilarity and the
retreat of the workman, back to his van.
There are in life statements that are simply unanswerable and this was one of the best. Unfortunately for our workman, we were all walking the same way, down the fairway/road,
with George gleefully repeating his views along the way.
Big David was my regular playing
partner and the kindest, gentlest and mild-mannered of guys, but he was never the
greatest of putters, a weakness that would be his downfall one wet Saturday
morning. We’d been drawn together with a
third player in a monthly medal competition.
We’d had a good soaking on the way round, but with only a couple of holes to
go, David was still hanging in there despite some pretty mediocre putting on
slow wet greens. The 17th at
Lothianburn is a tight uphill Par 4 with gorse on either side of the
fairway. The green is small and
rectangular, with a grassy bank behind it that runs up to the adjacent 18th
tee.
When your game is off there’s
always a tipping point during a round when it becomes inevitable that the game’s up
and that instead of getting cut, or being within the buffer zone your handicap
is going up by 0.1 despite your best efforts. For David, that moment came
when his 3rd putt on the 17th lipped out. 4+ hours in the cold and wet finally took
their toll and although David was usually very even tempered, it was easy to
sympathise with him when he threw his putter, javelin-fashion, towards the
grassy bank behind the green. As I’ve said,
David was a big lad and with the rain having softened the grassy bank to a
muddy slope, his putter drove a few inches into the ground, head first, the
shaft vibrating furiously. David had to
pass his putter en route to the 18th tee and had clearly not calmed
down by the time he reached his errant club.
So, he grabbed the putter handle and yanked it angrily out of the
ground. Unfortunately, the force of his
throw or his tug on the buried club had broken the shaft, meaning the putter
head remained buried. This on its own
left me and our third player in fits of laughter, made all the worse by David’s
subsequent gentle smoothing over of the hole left by the putter shaft and his ever so
softly spoken message “and you can fucking stay there.” David went on to finish
his round, soaking wet and putterless.
There are some tricky drives at Lothianburn, the most tricky for me
being the 18th, requiring a long uphill drive over gorse
bushes. I managed the drive eventually
after having to back off a few times in fits of giggles, much to David’s
further annoyance. The putter head
still lies where David left it.
David and I had won a
Volkswagen-sponsored better ball pairs event at Lothianburn in 1983 and qualified for
the national finals, held at Whitecraigs GC in Glasgow. We’d been picked up in Edinburgh by a Volkswagen rep and driven
through to the course, and all players were given VIP treatment
throughout. We’d had to wait for a couple of
hours before playing off, but we were able to pass the time by watching the
closed circuit TV coverage of play.
However, this only made us more nervous and David in particular was
feeling the pressure. When our tee time
finally arrived, we were introduced to Arthur Montford, then a famous football
TV commentator, who was making the player announcements on the 1st
tee and doing the commentary of play on the 1st hole. The 1st at Whitecraigs is an uphill 135 Yard Par 3 with Out of Bounds to the right, just beyond some high pine trees, with the club car park lying immediately behind the trees. We’d agreed that David would take the first
tee shot. Arthur’s commentary was
something like –
Next on the 1st tee is David Anderson, representing
Lothianburn GC. David is a telecoms
engineer and with the wind blowing across the hole from the left, David is
playing an 8 iron (after the slightest of delays and the sound of shattering glass) ….
and would the owner of car number W81BSC please see the Club Secretary….
David had shanked his opening
shot Out of Bounds, through the windscreen of a parked car and Arthur was
clearly inventing the car number, quick-witted as ever. Although David was absolutely appalled by his
opening shot, I was just the opposite, with another fit of giggles, such that
Arthur duly introduced me “Next up,
eventually, representing Lothianburn is Alan McPherson, aiming well left I
suspect…” I scrambled an unlikely
par and we were off and running, hopefully out of camera range.
We didn’t win the event, but we
played pretty solidly and thoroughly enjoyed our day. We stayed on a for a few beers and the prize
giving dinner. The Volkswagen MC made
some standard remarks about the quality of the course, the outstanding play on
show, the catering etc. before introducing a hastily edited film of the
competition highlights. I’m usually not
bad at multi-tasking but I’d not really expected to see David’s opening tee
shot in glorious slow motion, just as I was downing my latest beer, hence the
spluttered giggles and wet trousers. David
was presented with his OOB ball, much to his embarrassment and Volkswagen
kindly settled the repair bill.
I had some truly great friends at
Lothianburn when I was a member there and I still keep in touch with them and
play the course from time to time, but as with any golf club, there were one or
two complete muppets who were best avoided. To spare potential legal action,
embarrassment or worse, I’ll call this individual John. John was an arrogant sod who had a very guid
conceit of himself. He’d play regularly with his teenage son but I really can’t
remember anyone else who’d willingly give him a game. He was a handy enough and fiercely
competitive golfer and not slow to talk up his latest exploits, not that anyone
I knew was remotely interested.
Lothianburn had been founded in 1893 and 100 years later a grand 100 a
side friendly match was held between Lothianburn and Baberton GC. I drew the short straw of partnering John and
although the match was clearly a celebration of both clubs’ 1993 centenaries, John was clearly determined to win and didn’t feel it was appropriate for
me to be offering our opponents any factual information (not advice!) about
individual holes and hazards on the course.
Our opponents in turn quickly got
the measure of John and our match proceeded rather more seriously than I, or as
suspect our opponents, had expected.
John was happy enough talking about himself, though, and after a few
holes mentioned that he didn’t get to play as much golf as he would like due
to his heavy commitments as a rugby referee.
This information clearly got the attention of one of our opponents from
Baberton, an athletic looking and sturdily built guy in his late 20’s, who
asked which league John officiated in, as he’d never come across him in rugby
circles. I can’t remember which league
John mentioned, but it was something clearly local to the Edinburgh and
Lothians area. “That explains it” said
our opponent, who added that as he played for Hawick’s first team, (Hawick
being at the time one of the very top clubs sides in Scotland!) he’d not expect to
meet John on a rugby field. This left
John somewhat deflated for once but what really made my day were the drives
at the 15th. This is a
shortish Par 4, with the drive played way left to a marker pole from which a
well struck ball might run steeply downhill to the green. The green is readily reachable from the
Yellow tees but is far more difficult from the White medal tees. John was a better player than me and
certainly longer off the tee. Our
opponents both drove the green. John’s
got snarled up in rough only slightly off the ideal line and for one of the
rare times I drove the green from the Medal tee, much to John’s surprise. I don’t remember the outcome of our 4 Ball
and in such a celebratory match it shouldn’t have mattered anyway. Suffice to say that the overall outcome of
the grand match was declared a draw, with honour preserved on both sides. Some time later, John took his membership to
another Edinburgh club. He wasn’t
really missed, but I sometimes thought back to that day when playing the 15th in subsequent medal competitions!
Elgin
I’ll be adding stories from time
to time but no blog of golf stories I’ve been involved in would be complete
without a few references to the annual golfing holidays made by the Humpties to
Elgin, surely one of the best centres in Scotland for such a golfing trip. By
way of brief explanation, the Humpties is a loose grouping of Edinburgh-based
golfers who enjoy, shall we say, the social side of the sport alongside some
serious competition. The looseness of
the grouping is such that I’ll not attempt an exhaustive list, but JD, Brian
M, Donald (Squeaky), Graham (Wee Sconnie), Les, Brian B, Martin, Chris and
others have over years been Elgin regulars.
This particular gem features Martin, a formidable golfer and bon viveur
and at the time, owner of an elderly blue car that one day became the
centre of our attention.
We’d always stay at the Southbank
Guest House in Academy Street, a popular Elgin B&B that was usually pretty
busy with travelling tradesmen and the odd tourists (usually ourselves). The Southbank had a good sized car park at
the back but when it was full we’d have to park our cars on Academy Street. We usually went up on the Sunday and stayed
until the Friday, with 36 holes on the Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and 18 on
the Wednesday and the Friday. Most of us
would take our own cars up but we’d share the driving when we were up
there. On the day in question, Martin
was due to be given a lift to a nearby course by one of the other guys and he’d
left his clubs and golf shoes in his car overnight. Since we’d been late getting back the
previous evening, the car park was full and he’d parked his car as near as possible to the guesthouse,
outside the bungalow next door, in fact.
We’d come down for breakfast in
our usual one’s and two’s and when Donald and I arrived Martin was clearly in
some panic, as his car keys wouldn’t fit in the lock of his car boot, or indeed
in the driver’s door. He suspected that
someone had been trying to break into the car overnight. We’d come for a relaxing holiday so we were
all concerned that our friend’s holiday might be disrupted and that even if we
could somehow get into the car, our golfing plans for the day might have to be
revised. I’m not particularly
mechanically minded but being an ideas man, I joined in the discussions about
what we might all do. Well, as we were all civil servants at the time, we
clearly needed a meeting. Our first step
was to be a survey of the problem, followed as necessary by a range of options
involving credit cards, coat hangers and screwdrivers and in extremis a brick, or similar solid object, to take out the driver’s
window.
Accordingly, the 6 of us
gathered outside the adjacent bungalow to consider our options on site. As Martin had reported, his car key wouldn't
fit either the boot or door lock and try as we might, it seemed that we
couldn’t break in to his car without causing terminal damage to the driver’s
window. From there, it would be a simple job to remove the back seat and in due course, Martin's golf clubs and shoes. It seemed that a brick or
similar object might be needed and the garden of the adjacent bungalow might
harbour just such an object. It was at
this point that we noticed two important things. First, an elderly lady was peering out of a
front window in the adjacent bungalow, phone to her ear, with a worried frown on her
face that developed into a clear state of alarm. In turn, we became concerned that she might
be phoning the police, under the false impression that we were intent on
breaking into a stranger’s car. We couldn’t
think of any reassuring hand signals that would convey the message that
Martin’s car key wasn’t working and we were merely trying to retrieve his golf equipment, so speed appeared even more to be of the essence.
The second thing that we noticed
was that Martin’s car was parked immediately behind an almost identical blue
car, same model and condition (i.e. used and slightly the worst for wear, as
was Martin!) Yes, we’d been trying to
break into the elderly lady’s car. This
realisation prompted howls of laughter from us all and some ridiculing of the
unfortunate Martin. Unfortunately, the
sight of 6 guys quickly opening another car, extracting a set of clubs and a
pair of golf shoes and hightailing down the road probably didn’t look as
innocent to the elderly lady as might be expected. She was still on the phone when we all ran
past her window, but we didn’t wait around as by this time we were behind
schedule for our day’s golfing. We never
heard any more about it and Martin managed to park his car in the relative
obscurity of the Southbank car park for the rest of that week without being spotted by our next door
neighbour.
No comments:
Post a Comment