Making sport of a game
Curtis Gillespie’s love of Scotland’s links makes golf pleasant again
For many (or most) of us, golf is a game we both love and hate. For many (maybe not most), relationships with our fathers are of the same dichotomy. But not for Curtis Gillespie. He finds golf rewarding and pleasant, and he not only loved his now deceased father, he truly liked him as a friend.
Playing Through brings memoir and ode together for both. Gillespie writes about leaving the colonies with his young family to spend a year in Scotland among the links and the characters. He had spent some time there before during his early academic days when he was attending University of St. Andrews on the pretense of getting a history degree while playing golf for the varsity team. The history bug left him, but golf and Scotland stayed with him. It was something he always wanted to share with his father, but never got the chance to.
As the reader, I suggested to Gillespie (rather hamfistedly, I’m afraid) that I thought his book was a metaphor describing how ridiculous offspring can become when they determinedly abandon their genes, their family and their history – just as the game of golf in North America is a ridiculously pretentious, anxiety filled "sport" when compared to the brisk, nature-embracing game still being played in Scotland after centuries.
As a man who has never belonged to a private golf club and who enjoys many of our public courses, he didn’t completely buy into my line of reasoning. Still, he was quite willing to do his part in the small revolution to make a very pleasant game pleasant again.
"Here (in North America) it is really expensive, really slow and status-laden. It’s unfortunate because the public courses in Scotland are brilliant," says Gillespie. "To a Scot the game of golf is a chance to get out for a brisk walk, have a little banter with your buddies, have it over with in three hours and then go for a couple of pints. Here it is a lot more serious."
One of the people Gillespie golfed with and befriended during his year summed it up: "The main problem with North American golf is that they keep score." In Scotland, match play is preferred, and when it is obvious one player is whipping the other, rather than prolong the agony, they pick up their balls and head to the next hole. After dropping $70 on a game here, you’d be apoplectic if your partner did that.
Hilariously, one of the ways many courses on this side of the Atlantic try to speed up the sport is to force an electric cart on you.
"On most of the courses in Scotland, to use a cart you have to have a medical certificate. I’m not joking," Gillespie tells me over my howls of laughter. "They don’t even call it golf, they call it ‘cart ball.’"
I am keen to feed my derision of a game I actually enjoy, and Curtis indulges me with tales of the Scottish seriously looking forward to playing on brown grass, while Alberta’s courses fight with the farmers over the little water we have.
However, the book itself leans less toward the comparisons of the game played here and there (he has a few problems with the membership rules in some of Scotland’s more exclusive clubs: for instance, No Women) and more to appreciating the beauty of the Scottish land and seascapes, the people and the long, proud history of the game.
At least a third of the book is dedicated to memories of his dad. And while I have to admit I enjoyed the sections on golf and Scottish idiosyncracies best, in the parts about his father, though not particularly astonishing or edifying, it was nice to read about a son’s love for a father who did his best to live his life well and allow his family to do so, too. |
