Back in my childhood home of Troon, I at last venture back onto the golf course…plus Black Label in the former Walker household, and this week’s Beatcrofting show, playlist and stream.

In 1962 we arrived in Troon from Pollokshaws, mum and dad seeking a place to bring up three children that wasn’t in the midst of demolition and the frenzied construction of Glasgow’s take on brutalism. 

We found ourselves in a house that backed onto one of the vast swathes of grass, gorse, sand and heather that make up Troon’s public golf courses. There was a gate from our garden onto the wondrous expanse of Lochgreen and Fullarton. It was an entryway into a new world.

Golf was Troon, but Troon in the 1960s was much more than just golf. The huge Barassie Works was one of Scotland’s chief locations for the repair of railway carriages. There was a shipyard and a shipbreakers. Huge hulking churches crouched massively on every street corner, it seemed, and the green copper dome of Marr College was visible from every part of the town. There were trippers galore, of course, in summer, and two vast beaches, complete with handy sewage pipes for diving off, into the murky sea.

Golf just absorbed me, sucked me in. My school pals Gordon Saunders and Kenny Milligan both played, and so, at the age of seven, a quarter-set-set of hickory-shafted, rusty-headed clubs acquired from Dirty Dick’s junk shop in Glasgow, I was to be found on the Fullarton first tee as often as my parents, God and the Gospel Hall permitted. Fullarton was for ‘ladies and juniors’, a junior season ticket a pound, and we children were tolerated, even encouraged to whack our rescued-from-the-rough Dunlop 65s about, as long as we waved our elders and better through if we were howking through the whins looking for lost balls.  

No measly nine-holers for us. Fullarton may have been flat, short and largely forgiving for linksland, but it was 18 holes and began with what I remember as being a par five 430-yard monster. Par four now. Still monstrous.

I remember the smell of the leather grips on those ancient clubs, the desperate hunger for a roll and square slice at the clubhouse on completing a round, the satisfying crack of persimmon head against ball, so different from the tinny clang of modern ‘metal woods’ with their grotesquely oversized heads (though carbon fibre ‘woods’ sound less ring-a-ding-dingy). The long wooden rack before the first tee where you placed your ball to reserve a starting time at busy periods. Online reservations? Soon there would be talk of a computer taking up an entire building in East Kilbride called Centre One. It sounded like nonsense. Today you could fit four Centre Ones on a watch.

This week I found myself playing Fullarton again, 60 years after my first outing on the course, perhaps 20 after any variety of proper golfing. Because golf began giving way to guitars and God and girls. Then to life in all its messiness and many diversions. There was the occasional visit to astroturfed ranges with assorted offspring, long hours of watching the Masters or the Open on TV, when such a thing was possible without a bankrupting subscription. But no escape,  not completely. The book and radio series Hell’s Golfer, the fictionalised account of a motorcycle trip around Scotland’s obscure, coastal courses, clubs strapped to a Kawasaki Z650, led to other golfing projects, including a trip to South Africa and rounds at Royal Durban, Johannesburg and a course in Cape Town I’ve forgotten. A radio documentary called Get in the Hole, about the great closing rounds of The Open, saw me taking my dubious skills to Royal Lytham, Royal Troon, St George’s and beyond. And ludicrously, I made a film for Japanese TV about the Old Course in St Andrews, which I presented dressed up as Old Tom Morris in plus-fours, tweeds and deerstalker. 

But for two decades, nothing but watching television and the occasional back-garden bout of pitch and putt.

Until now.

Our recent sojourns in Troon have made golf in all its grassy grandeur inescapable. I began to wonder if I could still swing a club to any effect. Bought an old set on eBay. Ordered a box of salvaged lake balls, and began pitching them at sheep, fortunately with no great accuracy. My brother-in-law, John, is a keen golfer and a casual conversation with him led inevitably this week to the two of us standing on the first tee at Fullarton. £30 each. And in golf terms, that’s cheap. 

The first tee is always a test, no matter how experienced a player you are. A golf shot before you hit it is a dream of perfection, a vision of accuracy and control, of mind and body in perfect equilibrium. The result can be glory, disaster or something between the two. 

My hand was shaking so much I couldn’t get the ball, a Titleist 4, to sit on the tee. And the silence as I stood over it, swung back, wrists moving, left arm straight…head down, keep it still, heart hammering…

Eighteen greens and three hours later we were back at the clubhouse. There had been disaster, but also a little glory and a lot of almost-quite good, almost-awful stuff. Score? You must be joking. But as tiredness set in and I lost the fear of failure, relaxed into just connecting, things got easier. Better.

And the skylarks sang, the rabbits ran. Fairway contours felt familiar, greens ran more predictably. Our old house lurked there behind the trees, inhabited by strangers, the gate back to childhood firmly shut.

But the vast tract of grass, gorse, sky and heather remained, welcoming and unforgiving.

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That night Susan I went for dinner to Piersland Lodge, built as a private home by one of the Johnnie Walker whisky family, now an extremely pleasant hotel. I remember it best in its religious incarnation as European headquarters of the World Evangelisation Crusade. Missionaries would spend their furloughs there. Now American golf parties prepare for their costly outings to nearby Royal Troon in its painstakingly restored lounges, bars and restaurant.

We ate excellent seafood, the service impeccable. And I drank a Johnnie Walker Black Label in the tapestried bar, the whisky once made and blended in nearby Kilmarnock, home to the brand until the town was cursorily abandoned by Diageo. And the sad abomination that is the Edinburgh Johnnie Walker Experience took shape.

***   ***   ***

Here’s the playlist for this week’s Beatcrofting. The announcement of Robbie Robertson’s death came just as I was putting the show together. You can hear the whole thing on Mixcloud by clicking on this link:

https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/beatcrofting-friday-11-august-2023/

The Who — Long Live Rock

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band — Canyons of Your Mind

The Kinks — Come Dancing

First Aid Kit — Turning On To You

Hello Saferide — My Best Friend

The Breeders — Cannonball

Jackson Browne — For a Dancer

Ace — How Long

John Hiatt — Riding with the King

Ry Cooder — Drive Like I Never Been Hurt

Mark Knopfler — River Towns

Dave Edmunds — From Small Things Big Things Come

Warren Zevon — Back in the High Life Again

Robbie Robertson — Somewhere Down the Crazy River

Leo Kottke — Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring

Link to the Mixcloud stream:

https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/beatcrofting-friday-11-august-2023/