All Courses Great and Small A Golfer's Pilgrimage to England and Wales

Chapter One: In the Dunelands of Northern England In all the rounds I've played in Britain and Ireland -- very like a thousand -- the game at Goswick in the summer of 2001 marked the only time I'd ever had as my companion a man who had first been captain of the club (equivalent to club president here at home) and then, not too long after his term of office, a worker on the grounds crew. But the Berwick-upon-Tweed (Goswick) Golf Club is a very egalitarian institution, to say nothing of a warmly welcoming one, so perhaps I should not have been surprised.The club, founded in 1889, is located about eight miles south of town in a remote spot on the seaward side of the A1, on the far northeastern coast of England. For the most part, the holes are laid out along the flanks of the sandhills. The classic linksland fairways are undulating, rumpled, even tumbling, the legacy of the receding seas over tens of thousands of years. A number of golfers of national and international repute had a hand in shaping the holes we play here today, including James Braid, the Scot who won the Open Championship five times at the beginning of the twentieth century; Frank Pennink, 1937 and 1938 English Amateur champion and a Walker Cupper; and very recently, English-born Dave Thomas, a four-time Ryder Cupper best known for designing, with Peter Alliss, The Belfry's Brabazon Course, site of four Ryder Cup Matches (Chapter 14).The club secretary introduced me to Jim Manuel, whom he described as a longtime member, a past captain, and a single-digit handicapper who would be pleased to play with me. And off the two of us went on a pretty summer day, high cumulus clouds in a predominantly blue sky, with a mild breeze that would not prove destructive to my all-too-fragile golf swing.The opening hole at Goswick, 388 yards long, aims toward the sea, with bunkers on the right of the tee-shot landing area, where the hole bends emphatically around a spinney of fir trees and climbs steeply to a sloping and sand-defended shelf of green in the dunes. The 2nd, a shortish par three over a deep, grassy chasm, is followed by a fine 404-yarder from a high tee in the sandhills. Then come a short par five (good birdie chance) and a superb 410-yarder that bends smoothly left as it rises into the prevailing wind. Bunkers right, left, and short render the dramatic bi-level green elusive.On the tee of this exacting hole, Jim, a husky man in his mid-sixties with a good head of silver hair, directed my gaze deeper into the dunes, where a derelict old white-washed stone cottage squatted. "That's a fishermen's shiel," he said. "Been there as long as this course, maybe longer, maybe a lot longer. The fishermen would stay there overnight, to be close to their work when it was time to go out before dawn. The beach is just on the other side of that dune ridge."A 6-handicapper, Jim had muscular forearms and, with a following breeze, would hit his 7-iron 170 yards. He clearly loved the game, playing five or six days a week, and he loved this links. At the par-four 7th he said to me as we stood in the fairway while he chose his iron, "Those trees beyond the green, they're Mediterranean pines. I brought the seedlings back from France about eight years ago and planted them."Goswick measures 6,294 yards from the regular markers. Par is 72. On the inbound nine, both par fives are short (485 and 480 yards), and there are two short par fours, one of which, the 18th, 263 yards, has been driven more than once from its tee high in the dunes. Still, make no mistake about it, there is a lot of sport on the second half, particularly on a four-hole stretch beginning with the 12th. Testing and charming us are two comprehensively bunkered one-shotters, played from elevated tees on opposite sides of the central dune ridge; the 13th has lovely views out to sea, and the 15th commands the pleasant inland aspect with its pastures and croplands and low hillsFinegan, James W. is the author of 'All Courses Great and Small A Golfer's Pilgrimage to England and Wales' with ISBN 9780743223881 and ISBN 0743223888.