OG's Reluctant And Sophisticated Political Commentary

Advent 12

 Dunstanburgh Castle Golf Club in Embleton, Northumberland is where I fell in love with links golf. Summer 1975 and my brother and I had only recently taken up golf. This was the last family summer holiday that Bill and I went on together - other commitments and activities took us off on our own adventures thereafter. The course had no clubhous in those days, just a shed with an honesty box for green fees. It may be a false, rose-tinted memory but I seem to recall that our junior week tickets cost 50p.

I have been back several times since and it does now have a clubhouse although that serves as a tea-room for the nearby Embleton Beach as much as for the needs of golfers. The course is a superb strip of land behind and between dunes, rarely more than two holes in width. Classic, beautiful and eminently affordable. This is my kind of golf.

I could have chosen the 13th for its sheer beauty - a par three sitting under the lee of the castle and played over a ravine - a public footpath wending its way past the hole so that you often make a fool of yourself before an audience of passers-by. However that hole is a mere 100 yards long and so I select the 6th, a delicious par 4 played from an elevated tee that gives a commanding view of the bay, the fairway curving left beneath you. The photograph shows the hole running from bottom to top of the frame. The right of the picture shows the adjoining 1st hole. Simply breathtaking. 

Bill and I later found our golf subservient to team sports - cricket for him, rugby for me. However golf is now our shared enthusiasm. We played yesterday at Pype Hayes. I played like a clown. He won. There's always a next time.

Advent 11

Little Aston Golf Club seems to me to have long cultivated a rather forbidding attitude to visitors. Certainly it is the most exclusive club in the West Midlands and the members can be forgiven for wanting to preserve that atmosphere. And undeniably it has the course to back-up the conceit. It is a stunning parkland test with greens that are the best on which I have ever putted.

The 10th is a formidable hole. 440 yards of tight, tree-lined fairway meandering slightly uphill in a double dog-leg. I am fortunate to have played the course quite often and I'm pretty sure I've never parred this hole. I can hit the ball right to left and I can hit the ball left to right, but not on demand. 

Advent 10

We're a long way from the seaside today, in amongst the towering trees of Woburn, home club of my friend MB. Lucky boy - well, not lucky actually - you make your own luck in this life.

Woburn has three excellent courses, all of them rather beautiful and always presented in perfect condition. I should think so too at those subscription levels.

Today's choice is a hole I have actually blogged about before - the 9th on the Marquess, the newest of the three layouts. The first time I played this full-blooded (441 yards) par 4 I hit one of those rare approach shots that stay with you - a feeling of easy, controlled power. It was a 3 rescue and I did the decent thing and holed the putt for birdie. Some days it all comes together, albeit briefly. 

The hole dares you to take on the depression in front of the green and if you err too far to the left off the tee you are blocked out by an intruding tree - an oak I think but don't quote me on that. If you really want to know, that 3 rescue of mine had to be cut around the tree after a dodgy drive. Would I remember it so well had I not holed the putt? Doubtful, but this is my list.

Twelve Films At Christmas - 4

This is the best of the lot thus far. Aardman Animations are responsible for Arthur Christmas and it is driven by a nice line in irony. It seems to have been an international success but it nicely betrays its British roots. The voice talents are mostly British - Bill Nighy on particularly good form with the caustic cynicism of Grandpa Christmas, Hugh Laurie excellent as Steve Christmas the modernising heir apparent to the Santa empire. Steve gets his comeuppance at the end (of course he does) but he handles this with a new-found humility that fits with the seasonal cheer. An upper echelon Christmas offering. 71/100. 

Advent 9

A few days ago I said that County Sligo sometimes gets my vote as the best course I have played. Today we have what is the other main contender for that accolade - Southerness, a daunting links overlooking (indeed almost touching) the Solway Firth. Yes, on balance, Southerness is the best I have played - for today at least.

The 12th is a 421 yard par 4 that doglegs its way down to the sea. A pond protects the left of the green, bunkers the right. The Firth boils in the background and there is out of bounds at the back of the green. The photograph shows the hole on a quiet day. When I played it with my dear late lamented mate Rod Meere and my stalwart golfing companion Big Willy, it was blowing a gale. Rod (who had a good few years on the two of us) sensibly repaired to the bar after eighteen but Willy and I were so entranced by the place that we went out again in the storm. We managed sixteen holes before taking our bedraggled selves back to clubhouse. An isolated and magical place. 

Tomorrow we move inland to another championship test.

Advent 8

Bamburgh Castle Golf Club might very well be the most scenic course in Britain, hell the world even. I haven't played enough international golf to be so bold as to make that claim but, on balance (and, of course, I always strive for balance), it's definitely the best situated of any that I have played.

Not a long course, Bamburgh opens with two tough par 3s and then continues the idiosyncracy with two par 5s. It is the first of those 5s that I select today although, if I'm being honest (and, unlike our Prime Minister, I always strive for honesty) I could have picked any one of half a dozen holes on this course for inclusion. Anyway, after those two testing par 3s, you launch yourself towards Budle Bay and the promise of what is to come. When you play Bamburgh, I defy you not to feel good about the world.