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Delights of French & Indian golf
Despite its tragic injustices and its constant dashing of hopes, golf actually offers rare moments of aesthetic pleasure. I mean, picture a French meadow of giant, chest-high wine bottles, bearing labels such as Lamarque, Pontet Canet and La Tour de Mons scattered across a golf course in Bordeaux. Can you think of anything more beautiful? They are markers on the driving range, beside which you stride along between the eighteen tees sponsored by eighteen famous wine estates of the region. And after playing nine holes, you can fortify yourself at the clubhouse with a glass of Mouton Rothschild and survey in two directions golfers struggling across mere water. Having strengthened yourself with any number of these eighteen wines, you may set out among the big bottles again. It's a soulful experience.
Acquitaine, France, is my favourite golfing ground. Contemplate, in the crisp morning air, the second hole at Seignosse, further down the Atlantic coast from Bordeaux. Seignosse is a course so new that its dramatic potential is not yet properly appreciated by the world. Your party stands on a tee surrounded by tall pines which cast thin shadows, straight as the balustrades of a staircase. You gaze down that giant, natural staircase, appreciating the manicured immaculateness of the green carpet which drops in gentle undulations to the lakeside two hundred and sixty metres away.
Having duffed your drive (nobody's perfect), the gentle beauty of this scene transforms into awesome grandeur. The lake now seems to stretch for ever, and near the far side there is a small, green peninsula with forbidding cliffs and a tiny flag bravely flying atop. Instead of an easy iron (fer, as we say in French) your slightly imperfect drive forces you to approach this fortress with a wood (bois, as we say). It's an impossible shot, so you close your eyes and swing. Voila! The ball soars over l'obstacle d'eaupitches beyond the drapeau and comes to a halt inches from the drop into the lake on the other side. After three putts (well, nobody's perfect) you will have negotiated a golf hole which will live in your memory for ever.
The next hole is over another obstacle d'eau, and you're still congratulating yourself on your bold, perfect drive, when you discover the green is the size of a piece of jambon and seemingly impossible to stay on. Yet the ball pitches and holds on an impeccable surface.
The third hole is a sharp dogsleg (le dogsleg, we say in France), but as you turn the corner you come face to face with a small mountain with a flag perched halfway up. When you finally get there, you step on to a platform of billiard-baize green.
Skirt the miniature mountaintop and you find yourself on another platform. Down below, between the treetops, you will see yet another perfect green. It looks so easy. You'll be as amazed to learn that my tee-shot came to rest hors-limit‚s in le pique-nique spot in the forest beyond the green.
While wandering about in the forest in search of my powerfully struck ball, I heard a terrible cry, thrice repeated.
'Trou en un! Trou en un! Trou en un'
Rushing to the rescue, we discovered two Frenchmen from an Alpine golf club, dancing a jig. When sense was restored, we were invited to drink champagne in the clubhouse to celebrate the 20-handicapper's miraculous hole-in-one.
Ah, golf! The miracle of it is awaiting bestowal in the most delightful, or exotic, or exciting surroundings. Golf lets you soar -- so that it can put you down.
I remember striding up the eighteenth fairway of St Andrew's Old Course, being photographed by sightseers under the misapprehension that we four South Africans must be great golfers because we were dressed so funny.
For the first time in memory, all four of us had hit impeccable drives and approaches -- and we had done so to the final green of the world's most famous course, where crowds were gathering! It was a high moment. I remember casually taking a putt to finish in style ... then another putt ... then another ... then another. All four of us, to the rising murmur among the mob, took no less than four putts each. So high. And so low.
On the edge of Kashmir I stood on the seventh green of the Bhurdan Golf Course and marvelled at its highs and lows. The green was at an altitude approaching two-and-a-half kilometres, on the top of a summit two-and-a-half times as high as Table Mountain. But this was merely in the foothills of the Himalayas, whose six-kilometre snow-covered peaks form the background when you pause to size up a putt.
These are the course's ups and downs. The 'downs' at Bhurdan are directly below your feet. I calculated that, if you failed to hold the green with your approach shot, you would need to send Sherpas down the mountain to recover the ball. Fortunately I did not have the time to risk it.
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