Sacred ground for golfers
Ian Dunlop
PLAYING THROUGH by Curtis Gillespie Scribner, £16.99, pp. 320, ISBN 0743209257 For golf aficionados Gullane is one of holy sites, which along with St Andrews and Prestwick should be visited at least once in a lifetime. As Bernard Darwin observed in his book about the golf courses of the British Isles, if the golfer can get up early enough and has the strength (and nowadays the money and the introductions) he can play on seven courses in one long summer's day. These include Muirfield, which last week hosted the British Open Golf Championship, and two qualifying courses for the Open — Gullane number I and Luffness on the eastern end of the town. The turf in these parts is like nowhere else. Springy like a trampoline, it takes all the pain out of walking and the views from the top of Gullane hill surely deserve three stars in the Michelin Guide to Scotland. On a clear day you can look east to Edinburgh. Arthur's Seat and the Forth bridges, north to the coastal towns of Fife, south to the Lammermuir hills, and west to North Berwick and its Law.
Gullane (pronounced Gillen if you live up the hill and Gullen if you live down in the town itself) has attracted the attention of many writers, the most eloquent being the Rev. John Ker, the Sporting Padre, who compiled a classic account of golf in East Lothian (and massive debts along the way). Now a young Canadian writer has found inspiration in the town which he first visited as a graduate student at St Andrew's university and which he returned to with his wife and young family on a twoyear stay. The result is a book which is partly about how golf is played by the natives in this corner of Scotland, partly a portrait of village life, partly a memoir of his father who died before he could bring him on a tour of Scottish golf courses, and partly about his life as a parent and husband.
Although he is a good golfer, having played for the Varsity team and on one memorable day scored a 67 on Gullane Number 1, Gillespie is not a good writer in that he thinks every detail of his life, however prosaic, is of interest to the reader. Thus one chapter starts, The phone rang, and Jessica picked it up. "Hello, this is Jessica," she shouted into the phone.' If golfers can be boring when they start talking about their triumphs and disappointments on the course, parents can be equally boring when they start talking about their children. A pity, because he has done his research into the history of the area, read the right books, has a good ear for the banter of some ancient golfers he befriended and played with, and he clearly loved the town and its courses.
Arnold Palmer gives the book his endorsement, but one wonders whether he read it. Indeed one cannot help wondering whether his editors read his manuscript before publication. If they did they cannot have read the finished book itself, because my copy had a section of 30 pages printed twice.
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