My dad kept a photograph album from the age of nine until he was fifteen. There is a gap and then pictures of him courting my mum start to appear in other albums; they married in 1943.
His first pictures are accompanied by quirky observations in a clear precise hand that remained constant throughout his life, he was never destined for the medical profession. As he approaches his later teens the comical asides disappear, and the serious older boy simply writes pertinent information on the rear of the photographs.
All of them are square contacts derived from 120 roll film. Despite his lifelong interest in photography there are not many pictures in the album - film processing and printing costs would have stretched a schoolboy with empty pockets.
The early images are from family holidays on the south coast, mostly Hayling Island – the tight-knit unit: Alf, Bessie and son Kenneth. Some images show modest sand dunes, and I have convinced myself this must be Gunner Point, just off the coast from Sinah Common and Hayling Island Golf Club. I am following ancestral footsteps, songlines.
Hayling is also the perfect opportunity to share another round with Richard Pennell in a wild, beautiful, and unexpected place. As soon as we meet, true to his word, he presses his newly published book, Grass Routes, into my hands with a broad smile. It is beautifully presented and written, and the prologue simply confirms a shared aesthetic – “all of this came from an old square photograph”.
From a distance Hayling links seems daunting – generous patches of gorse, long rough and a keen wind, but appearances can be deceptive, and the round opens with a not too testing par 3. I relax into conversation: a shared disappointment at the state of professional golf; the unholy rush for filthy lucre in almost all forms of modern sport and the demise of worthwhile terrestrial golf coverage is my excuse for distraction. At the second a low, piercing drive buries itself in the gorse.
For ease of identification, I carry a yellow ball as the provisional. Some take exception to oddly coloured golf balls but the yellow has its advantages: I can see it more clearly against a grey sky, it is easier to find in the rough and you can identify your ball early, at a distance, always assuming some interloper isn’t playing the same colour. This early identification buys you more thinking time. It says much for the forgiving, managed nature of the Hayling rough that, despite best endeavours, the ball I tee up at the second is the same I play up the eighteenth.
This is a glorious open space where the outside world only intrudes at its edges – surfboard kites wheel and dive like lung dar prayer flags over the beach, to the west there stands the chimney and radar tower at Fort Cumberland and, on the distant horizon, Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower. Much of the surroundings would be unrecognisable to my dad, but if he had ever ventured to the edges of the course, it must surely have appeared much as it does now. It is at the still centre of an ever-changing world.
There are few significant landmarks on the course, but each hole derives its unique character from the shape of the landscape, thereby supporting my theory that God is a golfer. It is at the thirteenth that the outside world finally intrudes – as you descend towards the green, the grey timber building on the left, with its wall mounted clock and single brick chimney could be a clubhouse from a northwest Scottish 9-holer. An odd mixture of small wood frame homes and “houseboats” line The Kench, a passenger ferry plies the narrow entrance to Langstone Harbour, and the scene is overlooked by The Ferry Boat Inn. I try to fix this through my father’s eyes but even in this quiet corner so much has changed – the Ferry Boat was known as The Norfolk Lodge Inn, the prominent Langstone Harbour Board building would have been an empty space and the Mulberry Caisson, grounded off Sinah Sands would not arrive until 1944. Always and everywhere, this unequal struggle to preserve and remember – Ian Jack (1945-2022).
The course does not follow the traditional outward and inward nine links layout, so it is not until hole fourteen – Farm, that you head for home. Farm is followed by Jacob’s Ladder, Wharram (a par 3), Sailor’s Grave and finally, Sinah. At the eighteenth my drive is not too far short of Richard’s; my fairway wood lands safely to the left of the greenside fairway bunker and a low 7-iron chip leaves me 4-foot from the pin. Inevitably I miss the putt but, on this day, in this company, it is of no consequence. We play for the conversation, being there and the sheer joy of hitting golf balls at the edge of the sea.
I had come in search of a ghost but in truth, I can find no trace. As I return to the mainland on Langstone Bridge I console myself that, at least here, I am in the shadow of my dad’s footsteps. But even this turns out not to be true. In the 1930s, visitors to Hayling Island would have crossed on the original African Oak bridge which was so fragile that bus passengers were required to disembark and walk. This wooden bridge was replaced by a concrete structure in 1956.
All of our worlds die with us. This is either the eternal human tragedy or, because of its very inevitability, nothing worth fretting over - Brian Doherty, The Guardian Weekly.
I was finishing my reading of your “Golf in the Wild” last evening. Of course, I loved dreaming of following your route on my little motorcycle and a small bag of golf clubs. Hopefully, we will get easy access to your second “Golf in the Wild” book here in the US soon. Anyway, as I was reading this this morning I was thinking Durness Golf Club and Hayling Golf Club were about as far apart as two courses could be in Great Britain. Thanks for the transport.