The bittersweet gratification of trying to coax a golf ball around the countryside was the game's main thrill. The terrain on which it unfolded largely an afterthought.
Not even after I bought my first World Atlas of Golf did the penny drop. I now had the full picture of a tournament venue's layout to complement the fragments offered by television, but that was it.
Until my future wife unknowingly played a blinder ten years on. Saw a copy of Golf's Magnificent Challenge languishing in a charity shop and thought I might like it.
Like it? It was my road to Damascus. Finally, I began to awaken to the inspiration behind all those alignments of fairway, green and hazard that I had taken for granted.
As the author, Robert Trent Jones, explained the thinking behind the holes photographed in the book, I, who had merely looked at golf courses for so long, finally began to see, as the door opened to what would become my favourite part of the game.
Professional golf leaves me colder than a Hogmanay swim these days, beset as it is by player entitlement, out-of-control technology and, as of early 2024, an odious power struggle.
Had you told me not so long ago that I would soon happily let 12 months pass without watching a single Major, I would have broken down and wept in front of you. But that is where I am now.
I no longer care about those pinnacles of the game because, with one or two exceptions, I no longer care about the men who contest them.
The golf I like is the game the rest of us play, where well-crafted par-4s aren't routinely neutered by 375-yard drives and no beered-up lunatic waits to shout "MASHED POTATO!!!!!" behind the tee box.
The love affair I now have with the countless playgrounds on which you and I strut our modest stuff, I will take to the grave.
So, as I offer below a fresh perspective on some popular but flawed golf course perceptions, please don't mistake it for the hectoring of a know-all, for I am nothing of the sort.
This page, if anything, is a letter to my 20-year-old self, revealing what others have taught me about golf courses and the wit and charm that underpin so many of them.
A letter that would have spared the younger me that lost decade before Robert Trent Jones came to my rescue. Ten years of whacking balls around pretty pastures without knowing even the half of it. May it do something similar for you.
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THE PERCEPTION (1): "I love all these trees. They make me feel like I'm the only person on the course."
THE REALITY: Yup. Been there myself. But now let me invite you to view all that foliage through a different prism. Take away ninety percent of those trees and what are you left with? A course that is far more subject to the elements.
One of the hallmarks of a good golf course is that it never plays the same twice. You give the wind more free play around your course and it moves a little closer to that ideal.
And then there's the playability factor. With too many trees, chances are an off-line drive leaves you blocked out; your only play a boring sideways chip back onto the short grass. Six of those in the same round and let's see how attractive all that timber still looks.
With just intermittent trees, on the other hand, there's a good chance you're still aiming forward with your next shot. Grass up to your ankles, maybe, but you're shortening the hole if you're up to the challenge. Far more interesting, right?
THE PERCEPTION (2): "If I drive a ball down the middle of a fairway, I want a fairway lie, thank you very much; not to wind up in a bunker."
THE REALITY: This was the aggrieved whine of an actual newspaper golf correspondent, believe it or not, proving that even those making their living from the game can be oblivious to its environment.
The designer of the course in question had chosen to put a bunker in the centre of the fairway. Only if it could not be seen from any of the tees would this have been remotely unfair or improper.
Consequently, anyone driving into that bunker hasn't actually driven "down the middle of a fairway". The middle of the fairway is the middle of the strip of fairway on either side of the bunker.
Moral of the story? An architect who puts a hazard exactly where you'd like to hit your ball is not the Antichrist but someone who's doing his job. Stop whining and get your sand wedge out.
THE PERCEPTION (3): "It should be fantastic: the greens are running at 11 on the Stimpmeter; almost the same speed as the pros."
THE REALITY: You wouldn't tackle the Hahnenkamm after two skiing lessons. Why on earth would you want to subject your 20-handicap to an afternoon of putting on marble?
Golf's great charm – courtesy of handicaps, variable tees and tweakable green speeds – is that you can measure your game against the typical you. A worthwhile, reasonable endeavour. Not the futile gig of trying to breathe the same air as golfers who play for a living.
Because I can tell you how that's going to play out. And how quickly it will cease to be fun.
And however they might bruise your machismo, green speeds better matched to us mortals also give the greenkeepers more leeway with pin positions.
When balls aren't threatening to roll off the green at the merest brush of a butterfly's wing, they can look for more adventurous hole locations, with borrows galore on all sides.
There's your challenge, you self-flagellators. A fair challenge rather than a suicide mission. You might even enjoy it.
THE PERCEPTION (4): "The course was mostly ignored for years, principally because its back tees stretched only just over 5,700 yards", from Golf Architecture
THE REALITY: Ye gods, what an indictment on us all. The most fun I ever had playing golf was on a course just a whisker over 5,000 yards. It was 30 years ago, mind, when drivers looked like golf clubs, not weapons of war, and golfers made do with the rangefinders Nature had planted on either side of their noses.
A lost era? Do me a favour. It could be your era right now, if only you were smart enough to match your artillery to the course in question, instead of waiting for somewhere that matches your Tour-slanted perception of what 'a proper golf course' looks like.
Leave the woods at home for once, tee off as far back as you're allowed to and you may be surprised at how much pleasure you can still have playing the course Golf Architecture was speaking of: Cavendish Golf Club, in Derbyshire, England.
An Alister Mackenzie design, no less, and yours for between £40 and £65 a round (as of Feb. 2024).
THE PERCEPTION (5): "I need to talk to the secretary. People are leaving the bunkers in a dreadful state."
THE REALITY: Excellent. More power to them.
As much as we all love Augusta National, this is part of the ongoing disservice it does to the game. Its dazzling white sand and blue ponds have filled too many heads with the notion that unless their course looks like golf's version of the Ideal Home Show, something is terribly wrong.
Harangued by finicky members, golf clubs have brought feng shui to what is supposed to be a voyage through terror. Bunkers shouldn't be pristine and neatly raked: they should sport weeds, flat sand, broken glass and the occasional serpent. It's a hazard – the clue's in the name.
Every time a TV commentator says, "The smart play would be to aim for the greenside bunker. It's an easier shot out of there," you know three things.
The greenkeepers have failed. The architect has failed. Golf has failed.
THE PERCEPTION (6): "Fingers crossed but if it's voted through, we'll have the only island green in the county!"
THE REALITY: Again, I've been of a similar mind in the past. Nothing like a sexy new pond to turn your dowdy course into the golfing version of a trophy wife.
Like many a trophy wife, however, the concept fades, especially if that same pond entails a forced carry – you can't go round it; you have to go over it. Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.
When that unavoidable encounter with the 'penal' school of golf course design repeatedly leaves a bomb crater in your scorecard, aquaphobia is not far behind. Nor are logjams on the course if every third golfer needs three attempts to clear the water.
Suddenly, whoever said that you should be able to play a course with just your putter if you so wished, wasn't quite the fool you thought.
Look, water can have its place as a more tangential threat. A modest greenside pool, perhaps, or a burn dissecting a fairway, Carnoustie-style. As long as you merely have to avoid it rather than go mano a mano with it at every time of asking.
And that's why the only place for an island green is during the The Players Championship in March. There, it works. Tightening the tension by one more ratchet as the best in the world chase one of the game's biggest prizes.
Everywhere else, the concept looks forced, derivative, tired. A lame stab at me-tooism feeding on countless golfers who just aren't up to it.
We're back to the skiing analogy. When your skis are heading in opposite directions and you're falling tush-over-tit down a mountain at 60 mph, exhilaration is not your predominant emotion. The same applies when your Sunday Stableford meets a PGA Tour landscape.
THE PERCEPTION (7): "It should be good, the website says it's a championship course."
THE REALITY: Oh really? Phone the place up and ask someone in charge exactly how many championships their 'championship course' has hosted and which championships they were, exactly.
Maybe they'll have a ready answer. Maybe they won't.
Just know that certain phrases start being tossed around like confetti once course builders hand their creation over to marketing people. 'Championship course' is one of them. Don't get me started on 'signature holes'.
THE PERCEPTION (8): "It should be good, it's a [INSERT FAMOUS PRO'S NAME] signature course."
THE REALITY: There are two kinds of touring pros-turned course architects. Those who fully invest themselves in it and are hardly ever away from a site until it's finished.
Think Ben Crenshaw and the late Tom Weiskopf, to name just two.
And then there are those whose team does most of the work. The pro merely turns up at the eleventh hour to cast an eye over a few token blueprints for the benefit of the camera. You know who you are, you charlatans.
But theirs is the name that sells, so the course owners make it worth their while.
You want to know the smart play in this scenario? Look for a signature-free course instead.
Just as gifted people rarely make gifted teachers, professional golfers aren't always the best people to be designing golf courses. They've operated in a sphere of excellence for so long, visualising 18 holes from the viewpoint of Joe Public doesn't come easily to them. And it shows.
The professional architect whose handicap's never ventured into single figures, on the other hand; he stands where we do, knows our pain and our limitations.
When it comes to finding a course that excites and stretches you without beating you up, don't be surprised if he's your guy.
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