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I remember almost every hole of every one of the twenty best golf
courses in South Africa. Golfers never forget these things, even if
they don't remember their wives' birthdays or their children's names. I
think it is the tension and sheer fear of the snares and entrapments
which causes the course lay-outs to be imprinted in our memories- just as a mountaineer remembers, twenty years after a climb, a rockface's successive hand-holds that kept him from falling into space. |
"The ball's stuck in that tree!"
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No need then to describe any of South Africa's best-known courses --
Let me, instead, mention just two strange features of two courses I've
played locally, and remind you of some of the things that lurk among
the links of other parts of the world.
In Cry, The Beloved Country
Alan Paton wrote of the rich soil of Natal's hills, where the grass
sings. The grass sings in the hills beyond Ixopo and, in late summer,
it stands tall as a number-one wood.
Ben tells me he once played golf somewhere in those Ixopo hills --
though unlike all other golfers, he cannot quite remember where. Ben
does not stand tall, and fortunately, he does not sing -- not so that
anyone would recognise it as song.
Anyway, there he was, among the chuckling streams and the tall-standing
hills and the singing grass, with an infant caddie about half Ben's
height.
In this unpredictable pursuit named golf, Ben did the predictable. He
hit his first ball straight over the fairway, into the tall-standing,
singing grass. He and his caddie went in search.
After the stipulated five-minute hunt, which Ben invariably stretches
to fifteen minutes, he and his caddie went in search of each other. I
surmise they were going round in circles, unable to hear each other
above, or even below, the singing grass. After anxious eons, first the
one, then the other staggered on to the open fairway, where they held a
heartfelt reunion. Ben delivered his usual lecture to his caddie about
'keeping your eye on the ball', and then magnanimously agreed to
declare it lost and start again. 'Hand me my number-one wood, Caddie,
and another ball.'
It was at this point, I assume, that the two of them stared at each
other with a wild surmise just as the poet, as well as golfer P.G.
Wodehouse, remembered stout Cortez staring for the first time at the
Pacific. Both Ben and his little man knew instinctively at that moment
that the number-one wood, and all the other clubs, and the bag and the
reserve balls, were lying somewhere in the singing grass. The equipment
was found eventually, but not before the sun started sinking in the
west, and not before Ben had to be dissuaded from setting the singing
grass on fire.
I cannot vouch for Ben's tale -- indeed I positively
refuse to vouch for it -- but I was present at another strange
ball-hunting incident at the Kloof Country Club in Natal. In those days
there was a private shooting-range right in the middle of the course,
so that one would tend to tense up, waiting to hit one's ball in an
anticipated lull between pistol-shots, which echoed around the
non-singing hills. One would tend also to slice one's ball towards a
weird, witch-like tree which lurked on the edge of the fairway.
Sure enough, my ball flew into its encompassing branches like a cuckoo to some other bird's nest.
'See where it fell, Caddie?'
'It never came out, Suh.'
'What do you mean "never came out"?'
'It's stuck in the tree, Suh.'
'You can't be serious. How can it stick in the tree?'
But
he was serious. And it apparently was stuck in the tree, though there
was no way of seeing it. The caddie threw a half-brick into the cloying
pine needles -- and it never came down. Half impatiently, half
amusedly, I threw my club at the tree to shake its foliage and bring
down my ball. The club stuck in the tree. We could see the club's
shaft, three metres above us, pointing at the sky. It was the only
visible item so far gobbled up by the tree. We threw three more stones
into the tree. Two came down.
'I think it's full,' I said.
'No, Suh!' said the caddie. He was taking me seriously.
'Oh well, better shin up there, Caddie, and get the club. A bit of a shake may also bring the ball down.'
'No. Suh,' he said. And nothing would make him. Eventually we had to
summon help and a ladder from the faraway clubhouse in order to
retrieve my five-iron.
'I swear this tree must practise catching bullets from old Field's
rifle-range over there,' I told the caddie master. He, too, took this
quite seriously.
You see how much mystery and romance and adventure there is in golf?
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