by Tom Cox
We shook hands and grinned at one another. ‘Ahhhhrg. Knackered,’ said Jamie.
‘Ahhhhrg. Knackered’ might appear an odd way to greet a friend you haven’t seen properly for thirteen years. In Jamie’s case, though, it worked as a more familiar version of ‘Hello,’ and gave me a pleasant warm little feeling in my chest. In the old days, ‘Ahhhhrg. Knackered’ had simply been what Jamie said, every time he saw you. I’m sure it didn’t always mean that he was knackered. It just meant that he was there, in his lethargic, gladdening way, and ready to play some golf.
‘So what are you playing off now?’ he asked.
‘Well, I’m not playing off anything. I don’t have a handicap any more; I’m a pro, like you,’ I said.
He squinted, raised one eyebrow a quarter of a millimetre, and took a moment to digest this information. He looked like a man trying out a new pair of jeans, noting that, though the leg and waist were the correct size, something was wrong with the fit – possibly a bit of bagginess around the rear. Perhaps he hadn’t heard me properly when I said I was a pro during our phone call. Or maybe he’d thought I was using the word in a different sense – as in ‘pros and cons’, or ‘I’m a real pro at making this cheesecake now.’
While I’d been waiting for him to turn up, I’d been into the pro shop to sign in for our practice round. The assistant professional there had informed me that Jamie and I would have company: ‘We have to send everyone out in fourballs, because the tee is only booked for so long and we have to make sure everyone gets round.’ I wasn’t quite sure if I saw the logic behind this: the course looked deserted.
‘Yeah, fuck that!’ said Jamie, marching in the direction of the first tee. ‘Let’s go out on our own. I’ve played in loads of these things, and a lot of the time you get paired with complete wankers who give it the big “I am”.’
From the age of eighteen to twenty-six, Jamie had played on the Europro Tour, the South African Sunshine Tour and the (now defunct) Hippo Tour, in pro events of all shapes and almost all sizes. He’d had success – and even one victory, in South Africa – but not enough, and he’d now put his playing career indefinitely on hold and taken a teaching-pro job at a driving range in Nottinghamshire. There were a few things he missed about being on tour, and a lot he didn’t.
‘There are a lot of people out there who won’t speak to you,’ he said, after flipping a four-iron 250 yards up the par-four first hole, in the manner that many people might flip an omelette. ‘They think they’re the best and that they’re above you. But in a way that’s how you’ve got to be when you’re out there. I used to get quite lonely. I remember going on this massive train ride up to the top of a mountain in Switzerland and then having to play a practice round with these two complete wankers who totally blanked me, and wondering, “Why am I here?”’
‘And then there were the hotels. Formula One are the worst. They were where I stayed mostly when I was on the Sunshine Tour. The bathrooms aren’t big enough to turn around in, and you have to share a bed with a complete stranger, but that’s all you can do when you can only afford eight quid a night. I’d always get a snorer, too. At times like that the only way to get to sleep is to drink about eight pints, which is no good when you’ve got a 7.30 a.m. tee time.’
The Jamie I remembered from my childhood had had a cool, reserved competitive edge that everyone around him seemed sure would take him far, but his older incarnation was open, candid and self-deprecating. Perhaps a little too self-deprecating. ‘If you’re not a cocky so-and-so, you may as well give up, really,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think I can be that way. I don’t want to be a twat.’ The ultimate dampener on his pro ambitions, however, had been financial.
‘It’s hard out there when you’re standing over a putt knowing that holing it’s the difference between getting to play the next week or going home with nothing and having to go and put cones out on a motorway in the middle of the night. It’s like my mate Stuart, who’s still doing it and has God knows how many credit cards. One day he’s at Gleneagles playing with Sam Torrance, the next he’s working on a road crew. It gets even harder when you know that there are guys out there who have trust funds, or who are supported by their parents, and it doesn’t matter so much to them. I know you said a bit of stuff in your book about my parents wanting me to be the best, but the truth is, I wanted to go out there on my own and support myself, and I did. It fucks you off, though, when you can hear rats under your bed and you know some of the other guys are in the Hilton.’
Jamie’s last big playing year was 2002, when he made it through Regional Qualifying here at Hollinwell, then shot a 69 in the opening round of Local Qualifying at North Berwick. That year’s Open, at Muirfield, had been just one good round away, and with it the probability of more prize money than he’d ever won in his life, invites to European Tour events and who knows what else. But a second-round 75 had put paid to all that. He said he’d still love to play in The Open, but even if he qualified this week, he would have mixed feelings about going to the north-west and playing Local Qualifying at one of the courses near Hoylake. ‘The way you have to look at it is that once you’ve factored in accommodation and travel, it’s another five hundred quid. And that’s more than a week’s wages for me.’
Now Jamie had cut down his schedule to Midland PGA events and The Open Qualifying, he said he was playing the best golf of his life. ‘The pressure’s off now, and golf’s just a stroll again and a good laugh, like it used to be when we were at Cripsley.’ He said that since he’d stopped pushing so hard, he’d started to get on better than ever with his wife; he’d also started to sleep without nightmares for the first time in years.
As we negotiated fairways that were not only narrow but dangerously crispy from a month of non-stop sun, he looked supremely relaxed. He asked me if I still listened to ‘all that weird shouty punk music’, and I asked him if he still listened to smoochy R&B (the answer to both questions was no). We reminisced about the time I’d chased him around Cripsley town centre after drinking nine cans of Red Stripe (neither of us could remember why).
When I hit a bad drive on the seventh, he told me that I looked as if I was ‘desperate to get it over with’. I noticed that his swing, meanwhile, sent the ball huge distances yet gave an impression of being in slow motion. It was as though his arms were saying, ‘Look, I know we’re not going to stop halfway through our downward movement and make a cup of tea, because that would be silly, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t if we wanted to.’ I observed, too, that it was a wider, more modern action than the one I remembered.
‘Yeah, I did some work on it five or six years ago,’ he said. ‘It’s weird, though – yours hasn’t changed a bit. It’s sort of like an old-fashioned swing, isn’t it?’
I had hoped that my work with Steve Gould at Knightsbridge might have brought me a bit closer to the present day – if not right up to the beginning of July 2006, then at least, say, March 1998. Clearly not in Jamie’s eyes. But then, next to him, I suppose I’d always felt like a bit of a relic.
I mumbled something about my hand action always having been ‘a bit unpredictable’.
‘That was always the thing with you,’ he said. ‘You could always make a lot of birdies, but you could be all over the shop too.’
By the time we came off the course, I wasn’t quite sure I’d lived up to Jamie’s memory of me as ‘The Birdman of Cripsley Edge’. I’d made two birdies in my workingman’s round of 77 to the four that he’d made in his artisan’s 71. I still felt out of sync, stuck between three conflicting swing thoughts and hesitant around the greens, but it wasn’t a bad display, considering my recent form and the fact that Hollinwell was probably at least three shots more difficult than any other course I’d played in the last year. In the fortnight since Woburn I’d hit even fewer practice balls than normal, having panicked slightly about mortgage payments and accepted a couple of journalism assignments. I felt that by getting these out of the way, I’d have optimum opportu
nity to be wholly golf-centred in the week before my Open debut. In my diary, I had meticulously blocked out each day between now and then, using a colour-coding system for each of the components of my game that required work. It had felt energising, and as I’d done it, the theme to Rocky had played on my internal jukebox.
When Jamie and I went into the clubhouse for a post-round drink, though, I received a nasty shock. A shock, in its own way, more disorientating than the one I’d received examining my ball on the third hole at Stoke-by-Nayland.
It came not long after the two of us had got into a conversation with Charandeep Thethy. Jamie had pointed out Thethy, a Kenyan pro, earlier in the day, as we passed him on the practice putting green. ‘I used to see that bloke everywhere,’ he told me. ‘He seems to be able to spend his whole life playing golf. I think he’s some kind of African prince.’ Intrigued to find out more about a man who appeared to live the golfing life of Riley – not for him the struggle to find the next entry fee – I’d approached Thethy in the Men’s Bar and asked him if he liked the course. He said he did, but he was amazed at how much the fairways had been tapered in, particularly when they were so bouncy. After a few minutes of further dialogue, in which I found out that Thethy was currently employed part-time at a driving range near Nairobi and that this week he was staying on the couch at his brother’s house, down the road in Bestwood,1 it became clear that either Charandeep was a man who played down his exalted lineage, or Jamie’s royal assumption was considerably wide of the mark.
‘Have you been playing much?’ Jamie asked him.
‘No,’ said Charandeep. ‘This is only my second tournament of the year. It’s so hard to raise the cash. I played a full season last year, but that was only seven events. It’s just not enough to get into a rhythm. There’s so much riding on everything you do. It’s not just another round of golf, that’s the problem.’
A couple of men in dark-blue blazers arrived in the bar. Both, I thought, bore a resemblance to Bagpuss, the cloth cat from seventies children’s TV. The one who looked a lot like Bagpuss, rather than just a little bit like Bagpuss, asked us what we thought of the course. We told him we thought it was wonderful, a genuine test, which is probably what we would have told him even if it had been an ill-groomed mudtrack. They departed, chuckling in that particular male, middle-aged, self-congratulatory way endemic only to golf club men’s bars and the Radio Four quiz show I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Jamie and Charandeep shared a couple more stories – about the island green that Vijay Singh (Charandeep’s hero) owns in the sea next to one of his mansions, and the time a hard-up Jamie played with Mark Roe in The Open Qualifying and snuck back out onto the course to retrieve the barely-used Titleists Roe had thrown away in the bushes.2 We all wished each other luck in The Open, and Jamie asked Charandeep what his tee time was.
‘Eight oh six,’ said Charandeep.
‘Shit. Pretty early. What about you, Tom?’ said Jamie. ‘What time did you say you were off tomorrow?’
‘Oh, I’m off right now, I think. I’ll probably head straight back to Norfolk.’
‘No, I mean your tee time.’
‘I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.’
‘Your time. In The Open Qualifying. Tomorrow. What is it?’
OK. I admit it. As golfing schedule cock-ups go, it was fairly sizeable. Who knows what would have happened if Jamie hadn’t said anything? Perhaps I would have driven the 120 miles home and then that night, in bed, whilst going through my Open paraphernalia and savouring my day at Hollinwell, caught sight of the date on the start sheet and noted my mistake, then prepared myself for an early-morning drive back across country. Or perhaps I would have remained oblivious. The qualifying event would have come and gone, the scores would have been posted, and, six days later, in accordance with my diary, I would have arrived at Hollinwell and enthusiastically made my way over to the first tee, only to be told by a couple more of those Bagpussy blazer-badge men that I was six days late and that if I didn’t get off the premises within five seconds flat they would shoot me and mount my ashen features in the trophy room.
There had been a time, once, when I’d been a great one for planning out my tournament schedule. Since then, I’d got caught up in the mess of adult existence, and realised the immutable truth that life isn’t ever going to be ordered, no matter how much order you impose on it, and with this in mind, there isn’t much point in trying. My approach to important dates these days tended to be more freeform, and worked like this: I wrote them down in the margin of a newspaper or some junk mail, then, a few hours later, threw them into the recycling. Nonetheless, like I said, I’d really made an effort to plan out what I presumed was the week before my Open campaign, and I’d been sure – sure – that the tournament was being held on 10 July. It was only after being put right by Jamie that I began to ask myself questions like, ‘Well, perhaps it would be more logical to have the qualifying event the day after its practice day, wouldn’t it?’ and ‘If Local Qualifying was on the tenth, and Local Qualifying was only for people who got through Regional Qualifying, it would be a bit difficult to hold Regional Qualifying on the tenth too, wouldn’t it?’
My first task, after picking myself up off the tarmac outside Hollinwell’s front entrance and taking a few deep breaths, was to phone my parents and tell them there had been a change of plan. Would it be OK if I stayed over at their place tonight? It would. Might I be able to use their washing machine? I might. Next, I called Edie. Could she manage without the car tomorrow? She could. Finally, I spoke to one of my editors. Could I have a twenty-four-hour extension for the television review I was due to submit tomorrow afternoon? No problem. Within ten minutes, I was feeling distinctly rosier. I thought back to that unforced afternoon last summer, when I’d had my hole-in-one. I hadn’t been expecting to play golf that day either, had I? Perhaps the unanticipated nature of tomorrow would work in my favour.
I’d got to the top of Hollinwell’s long, winding drive when I remembered the final piece to the puzzle: Pete Boffinger. Pete, the son of Cripsley Edge’s tireless ex-junior organiser Bob Boffinger, had offered to caddy for me in the competition, and now almost certainly wouldn’t be able to. I could hardly expect him to drop everything and take a day off work at less than twenty-four-hours’ notice, could I? I pulled over into a layby, and dialled his number, fearing the worst.
‘Yes,’ he said, after I’d explained my mistake, ‘I know it’s tomorrow. You’re teeing off at 1.18. I know I’m not a proper caddie, but I’m not completely useless.’
* * *
The most important day of my golfing life dawned in a way that most summer-loving Brits would describe as ‘a bit muggy and overcast’ but wind-fearing golfers like me call ‘perfect’. I hadn’t slept well, owing to my mum and dad’s clanky boiler, the Pet Sematary yowling of their senile cat Daisy and a greatest hits montage of golf-based nightmares3 playing behind my eyes, but the weather calmed my fluttery innards. Having ridden out some parental fussing,4 I left for the course in good time.
Upon arriving at Hollinwell, however, it became clear that there was going to be another unforeseen bump in my road to Hoylake.
The first thing I noticed was that the fairways were empty. The second was that there was a gathering of a couple of hundred people outside the clubhouse. All of these people seemed either to be muttering grimly into their mobile phones or engaged in terse, one-sentence-per-minute conversations with one another, whilst frowning in the direction of the sky. I did not have to use any master eavesdropping skills to grasp the situation.
‘They’re saying at least a two-hour delay …’
‘It’s been two hours already, yoof …’
‘I heard them saying the last groups won’t get in ‘fore it gets dark …’
‘I don’t know what I’m doing chuffin’ standing here. I may as well get my van and go and shoot some more of them rabbits …’
‘If you look, it is brightening up a bit …’
> There was once a time when golfing authorities took a gung-ho attitude towards the threat of lightning at tournaments. Despite being equipped with bags full of what were essentially conductor rods, players would be expected to soldier on as the air crackled and fizzed overhead. Just occasionally, a couple of them would get hit and almost die,5 but that was seen as another of the fundamental dangers of a round of golf: a bit like an extra-punitive bunker that had electricity instead of sand (and actually didn’t resemble a bunker at all). Greater communications with the Met Office and the advent of the Health-and-Safety Age, however, have changed all that. It is not uncommon now, particularly on the PGA Tour, to see play suspended and players pulled off the course at the first gentle tummy rumble in the sky. For me, today might have represented perfect golfing weather; to the R&A, it probably represented several lawsuits waiting to happen.
Having signed in at the tournament office, I wandered around for a while, trying to spot Jamie. His early tee time meant he would have been one of those whose rounds had been interrupted. Noting that the driving range had, like the course, been temporarily closed, I made a brief foray into the clubhouse to try to get a sandwich – I soon thought better of it. Judging by the queue, any food order would require a long wait, and I worried that when the wait was over, the culinary options might not stretch much further than the mysterious black gelatinous substance I’d seen in the Men’s Bar last evening, stuck to something that, in a previous life, might have been bread.
It was now just past midday. Judging by the estimations being made about the delay in the area of the competion office, my 1.18 p.m. tee time was now going to be a three p.m.-ish tee time, so I had ample time to kill. Remembering one of Jamie’s bits of advice from yesterday – ‘At a big event like this it’s best not to arrive at the course until about an hour or so before you tee off, so you don’t have time to think about it too much’ – I decided it couldn’t hurt to go for a drive.