I am an avid golfer as well as the custodian of an over active, time consuming Border Collie. Between the dog’s needs and my own I would guess we have visited, on average, one golf course or another at least once, each and every day, for nearly eight years. It is safe to say that our visits total in the thousands; in all sorts of weather, in every season, in the light of day and dark of night.
It is in the quiet of the early morning, or after the course has emptied for the day, that I find the course most striking. There is an essence to an unoccupied golf course, a certain sensuality, a life-force apparent to those who play and look upon it.
The curves and shadows of the golf course toy with the senses, so enticing, so capricious. Uninterrupted fairways lay splayed open, their velvet contours rolling between thickets of grey and brown tree trunks and soft beige bunkers. The rustling of leaves and shrubs murmur an almost audible call to come forward, to brush the earth with feet and clubs. Solemnity blankets the quiet course and wraps the grounds in a comfortable embrace, instilling warmth against even a bitter wind or dying sun.
Within even the slightest breathe of wind there exists an undercurrent, a gentle pull, as if to draw one out to walk the swales of green. The energy is like that which pulls new lovers together, a palpable charge of magnetism and the excitement of times to come. There is the comfort, too, of an old friend, one who has seen you through the ups and downs but will be there, always, a stalwart companion.
At once, there is both the promise of new beginnings and the history of thousands of rounds played out over time. In the stillness of the moment there are no tallied scorecards, no celebrated shots, no heart wrenching miss-hits. What lies ahead through the green is a clean slate; nothing but the promise of a perfect round; the reason we return, again and again, to the course.
