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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626366916 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2011 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| File size: | 628 KB |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Scorpions in the Cup
As Apollo 14 shuddered away from the Kennedy Space Center in February 1971 astronaut Alan Shepard — a makeshift 6-iron concealed in his spacesuit — embarked on a secret mission to boldly golf where no man had golfed before. Shepard's lunar course, later nicknamed the Fra Mauro Country Club after the crater Apollo 14 landed by, was approximately 240,000 miles from the nearest pro shop, so it was as well he remembered to bring a supply of balls. Shepard was the same distance away from the nearest pro, so in terms of the technique needed to play a delicate lob over a crater out of moon dust, in one-sixth gravity, he was on his own.
Shepard has no real rivals in his claim for the title of world's most remote golfer. Even the second man to golf in the stars — Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin hit a shot from the International Space Station in November 2006 — was only around 220 miles from civilization. Tyurin apparently hit something of a shank, which just missed the part of the space station he was supposed to working on. It's golf, Jim, but not as we know it.
Certainly back on earth, most of us do not have to go far to find a track to play. Happily for golfers, the Western world is awash with tees, fairways and greens. In England alone, a slender country that stretches just 400 miles from north to south, there are 2,000 layouts. I can be on the first tee of no fewer than nine of them within half an hour of leaving my front door.
It sounds like a golfer's dream, but maybe this saturation is not all good. Pleasant though these courses are, the experience of playing one is very much like that of playing another. Sure, I can see the sea from one while another has several lakes ... but the similarities outweigh the differences. I obey the same rules and fall foul of the same hazards; I often play with the same people, indulging in familiar banter and codes of conduct. The experience becomes, shall we say, routine; the courses meld into one.
Of course, a global game like golf is quite capable of offering a much broader range of experiences. But to find them, it's best to get off the beaten track. For it's here, in hidden areas of extreme remoteness, that conformity dies and singularity flies. Convention might be a great colonizer but it is a lousy navigator.
But there is more to the remote golf experience than fresh and unusual sights and sounds. Each club in this chapter is peopled by a singular and sparky membership, golfers whose pure and unbridled passion for the game could teach us a thing or two about our own attitudes to playing. These folks do not care how they play — they are just glad to be playing at all. You simply do not set up a golf course on the ice shelves of Antarctica, or the arid expanses of the Atacama Desert, unless you really, really want to play a game of golf.
* * *
But our tour of the world's most remote courses begins in the parched and dusty opal fields of south central Australia. For here, in the middle of a landscape so bleak and lifeless that it is routinely used for post-apocalyptic flicks like Mad Max II, there exists a craggy and crusty eighteen-holer.
Opal Fields Golf Club, 400 miles from Port Augusta, the nearest large town, is baked by 104-degree temperatures and is as barren as they come. "In fact, if we see any grass trying to grow we kill it," says club president Kim Kelly. "It gets prickly and bushy and you can't mow it because there are so many rocks around. It's better to spray it."
The course exists to serve the residents of one of the world's weirdest settlements. Coober Pedy is a mining town, thrown up out of the red dust practically overnight in 1915. It turned out the sterile surface was hiding a sparkling secret — the region is home to the world's biggest opal field. Almost a century later the mines are still going strong. Today it is estimated that 95 percent of the world's opals come from Australia, and of those 80 percent come from Coober Pedy.
The intense heat and featureless landscape mean that twothirds of the town's 3,500 population live underground, in hobbit-like houses called dug-outs. The Aboriginal translation of Coober Pedy is "white man's hole in the ground." In subterranean homes the temperature stays constant throughout the year; even when it reaches 131º F in the height of summer, it's a tolerable 77º F below the surface. And there are other benefits: one happy couple discovered $250,000worth of gems while tunneling their dug-out. Their home is now more of a warren, with 21 underground rooms.
And yes, in this bizarre, bejeweled mix of holocaust and hypocaust there exists a golf course — and for 66-yearold 19-handicapper Kelly, a government mines compliance officer, it might as well be Augusta National. "It might look like the arse-end of the world round here," he says, displaying the endemic Aussie efficiency in getting to the point, "but we have a lot of fun on the golf course."
The club's 42 members tee off toward fairways that are simply the natural terrain of sandstone and clay rubble, with rocks pushed to either side. "We call them mat-land because if you are in the cleared zone you are allowed to use a synthetic mat to play off," Kelly explains. "Originally the mat was to protect your club. But everyone cottoned on to the fact that if you put the ball right at the back of the mat, it was almost as good as teeing it up. We had to put a stop to that. And then we had to regulate the mats after the cunning members came out with bits of carpet with two-inch-high pile."
Hazards are at a premium. The course has no sand bunkers but a couple of creeks, usually dry, just about come into play. Around the creeks are Eremophila (emu bushes), three or four feet high; elsewhere there are patches of tangly salt bush. Apart from some white out-of-bounds stakes, that's about it.
"Ah, but the fun and games start when you leave the fairway," counters Kelly. "You're in among the rocks. Sometimes you can get a club to it; but more often you can't hit it because of the rock — you'd smash your club. So we have a rock-relief local rule — you can drop away with no penalty. There's an ongoing joke here about some of the blokes carrying rocks in their bag — if they get tangled up in the bush they get it out and claim rock relief."
Kelly is also proud of the greens, which are called scrapes. Inky black, they are made from a mixture of red sand, sump oil and crusherdust — squashed road gravel. Each club member carries a two-foot-long scrape tool. On one side is a rake, which you use to scrape your path to the hole; on the other side is a round pipe that smoothes out your scrape.
"You don't get as much break because they are slower than grass greens," Kelly says. "But you get used to them. When we head off to the cities we struggle on proper greens. The other problem we have is with pitching. The ground your mat is on is sandy, not firm enough to hit down against. You either top the ball or slide underneath it. So we tend to run the ball in with a seven — or eight-iron. And we start putting from 165 feet away."
If all this makes the golfers of Coober Pedy sound serious and competitive, think again. There is a club championship, but most events are fun-based. "We have Eskies out on the course," reveals Kelly, "coolers full of ice and beer. Normally we have two but on special days we'll up it to four. On those days we also have the Booze Bus — normally my Ute — which drives around the course serving water, beer, spirits, port, anything to keep people comfortable. Quite often we get the local police involved. They bring along their breathalysers and give random tests to the golfers. This time they fine people who are under the limit."
There are other sights here that add to the surrealism. An eighty-year-old life member named Ralph Underwood zooms around the course on a motorbike, with a sidecar for his clubs. And although there is no dress code as such, South Australia golf clubs are given color schemes. You will see most members playing in green and yellow shirts. But that doesn't stop casual players turning up in thongs when the mercury soars.
And then there is the constant chance of finding a gleaming opal in your divot — although there are no stories of big golfer finds. "You sometimes see potch — colorless opal," adds Kelly. "Also, when we want to patch up a fairway we'll use mull — that's the heap that gets churned up by the mine. You'll see opals in that, bits that have been missed. But so far they've only been worth a few dollars."
Even stranger is the reciprocal deal Kelly has struck with the home of golf — St. Andrews — allowing Coober Pedy members to play for free at St. Andrews and vice versa. Kelly even sent St. Andrews a cheeky letter, congratulating them on getting their course up to scratch. It becomes only slightly saner when you discover that the Links Trust at St. Andrews has been awarded a small opal-mining site, and that the offer only extends to the nine-hole Balgove course at St. Andrews — and only then in winter.
Then there is the climate. The hot months are January and February and most summers will see a four-week run when the temperature never drops below 104º. But according to Kelly, wind is more of a problem. "When it kicks up there is a lot of dust. It's not nice, but it doesn't stop us. The only thing that stops us is rain. If we get rain you have to stop because the earth sticks to the bottom of your boots and you end up ten feet tall. You can't reach your ball."
Kelly understands why people question his sanity for playing such a hot, remote and, frankly, boring course. But he will always emotively defend golf at Coober Pedy.
"OK, the first time you see the place you think, "My God, what a course." But after a couple of games you realize you are going through the same battles any golfer goes through . .. slicing, hooking, three-putting. It's all normal. Here, like anywhere, you can get lost in that challenge; it's a lot of fun.
"But what brings you back to earth is the tourists. We get quite a few coming through, and they go on minibus tours. You look up to see a bunch of Japanese or Europeans laughing at you and taking photos. That's when you realize how stupid you could look, golfing in such a place.
"Yes, golf is different here, but that's what people come for. We get visitors from all over the world and they love it. It looks hostile, but it's relaxing and pleasant. And when everyone else is shivering, it's nice here."
* * *
Three thousand or so miles to the south of Kim Kelly and his thong-sporting, sun-basking cronies, another group of golfers are definitely shivering. The lime-green buildings of Scott Base, Antarctica, are home to some eighty scientists. The average temperature here is — 1º F, pretty much the same as the freezer in your kitchen. Yet for the small but fanatical group of golfers among the scientists, this is nothing but a nip in the air. To their eyes, a frozen empty continent is no reason to stop swinging.
Golf has been played at Scott Base — at 77 degrees latitude south (Cape Horn is a mere 57 degrees), just 838 miles from the South Pole — since 1961, four years after it was built. As you might guess, the terrain is not exactly a course designer's dream. The "course" is always set up on an impromptu basis, with usually eight (it can be as few as five) holes spread out across the refulgent slopes of Ross Island. That's more out of necessity than choice: Ross Island — a floating ice sheet 500 feet thick and fed by glaciers — has a particularly capricious landscape. It must contend with constant pressure ridges that can turn a level hole into a roller coaster. One year the golfers found the fairway of the third hole, laid out just 24 hours before, now possessed a one-in-four gradient.
Nevertheless there are few courses with such an exotic backdrop. Apart from the walls of snow and ice, the 12,000foot Mount Erebus — the world's southernmost active volcano — dominates the skyline.
But erupting volcanoes and holes that change shape are nothing compared to the Scott Base golfers' biggest problem — maintaining a reasonable supply of golf balls. For, whether you know it or not, a golf ball is very much the same size and shape as an Adelie penguin egg. Adelie penguin eggs happen to be the preferred diet of Antarctic skuas, large and aggressive gull-like birds that patrol the skies above the base. And while skuas are expert hunters and nest-builders, they are rubbish at telling the difference between a Titleist and a penguin egg.
"Sometimes they won't be able to get the ball in their beaks," says Alastair Pringle, a keen Scott Base golfer in the 1990s. "Instead they will roll the ball to one side or the other and sit by it. So you will find your route to the hole veering off to one side or another. You can hit a straight drive down a straight hole and still end up playing a dogleg."
Indeed, the skuas ensured golf at Scott Base got off to a rather bad start. Several players ventured out on to the sea ice to compete for a silver beer mug, but gave up after their balls — painted red — were swooped on and carried off by the birds. The problem has never really been resolved.
After the shape-shifting holes and the skuas, a third problem even these scientists struggled to solve involved footprints in the snow around the hole. Eventually this was remedied by a new rule — at Scott Base you are deemed to have holed out if your ball is within your body-length of the pin. This of course gives the advantage to the taller player — although the downside is having to prostrate yourself in the slush to stake your claim.
Although Antarctica is about as remote as you can get for a golf course, there is an American scientific base at nearby McMurdo and golf competitions are occasionally played between the two. There is a tradition of awarding unusual prizes for the best individual score. One of the best, put up by the Americans, was an "exotic dancer" — in fact this was a blow-up doll. "Everyone was driving the ball like hell that day," recalls Scott Base golfer Bob Le Master.
Scott Base had its golfing heyday in the eighties and early nineties. In recent times the activity has declined. "In the last few years the golf's been pretty infrequent," says current base manager Mike Mahon. "To be honest I don't even know where the trophies have gone. These days, when an outside game is played it's usually on the sea ice in front of Scott Base. And we tend only to use putters."
There has, however, been an upturn in mini-golf, with some of the winter crew designing and playing a course right through the rooms and corridors of the base. Well, if you were stuck indoors in the dark for six months, what would you do?
* * *
Meanwhile, in northern Chile, South America, the problems are not cold and darkness, but aridity. The Atacama Desert is officially the world's driest place. Protected by a Pacific high-pressure system to the west and the Andes to the east, its average yearly rainfall is 0.01cm. Parts of it have not seen rain since records began 400 years ago.
Some place, then, for a golf course. Yet the Atacama is where you'll find the 7,000-yard Club de Golf Rio Lluta. Leonardo Jimeno is one of the club's hundred-strong membership, and he is quick to point out that a round here is very much a case of virtual reality.
"There is no vegetation at all, so we must improvise," he reveals. "We have marked several zones with stones painted blue; these are our lakes. If you hit your ball in there you must take a drop, just like normal golf. The only difference is you can find your ball.
"Then there are areas marked by green stones — our forests. On two holes we have taken dead palm trees from the coast, cut them up and propped them on boards. Fairways are marked with a pair of white chalk lines. Between these lines you can play off a mat. Outside these lines you must play the ball as it lies, which means among the thousands of desert rocks. This is why we have a special local rule allowing a fifteenth club — usually an old iron that you don't mind smacking into the rocks. It saves you damaging your set."
Greens, which are coffee-colored, are made up of seashells, sand and motor oil. One hazard you might think a desert course would have no trouble making authentic is the bunkers. But even then, the local rocky stuff is overlooked in favor of a finer imported variety.
Guests are cordially invited to complete their rounds by midday; most afternoons sandstorms kick up dust devils that swirl across the eighteen-hole layout. They are also warned to look into the hole before retrieving their ball; the cups are a favored retreat for sun-shy scorpions.
It is arguably one of the most remote and hostile environments for golf. But remote golfers have an amazing knack of seeing that as an attraction, and Jimeno has no trouble explaining the pleasure of playing in such a place.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "112 Miles To The Pin"
by .
Copyright © 2007 Duncan Lennard.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Introduction,
1 - Scorpions in the Cup,
2 - BMWs for Bunkers,
3 - Dress Code — Socks Only,
4 - 112 Miles to the Pin,
5 - Flattening Grooves in Ten Shots,
6 - Golf in a Prison Cell,
7 - The Club that Swings Itself,
8 - Burial Service — Course Closed,
9 - Around the World in 80 Courses,
Appendix 1: Miscellany,
Appendix 2: Contacts,