Where golf is in the blood

Golfers, I have to admit, can be great bores. Just listen to the pros discuss their performance after a round in a major championship or ask a golfing friend about his game and you can be stuck listening to tales of triumph and tribulation with as much chance of escape as the Wedding Guest from the Ancient Mariner. So it was with some misgivings that I began to read John Greig’s reflections about taking up golf again after a gap of many years and a debilitating illness. Would it be all I, I, I — I hit this magnificent drive here, I then sank a monstrous putt 20 feet from the pin and so on? But Grieg has three qualities in his favour. Firstly, he can write and has six books of poetry, two mountaineering books and five novels to his credit. Secondly, he is a Scot and understands the somewhat dour, pessimistic mentality that helped them create the game, and thirdly he was brought up on the Fife coast next to several famous traditional links where as he says golf is as natural as breathing, swearing and eating fatty foods. He did not have to take up golf. It was always there.

With these advantages, and the added bonus of a father who played golf and taught him the etiquette of the game as well as how to play, he became a local hero, winning the boys’ championship at Anstruther. But at 16 he discovered the guitar and the joys of folk music and the songs of Bob Dylan. Golf slowly became less important in his life and he gradually stopped playing. Writing and climbing now took over until even these activities were brought to an abrupt conclusion by a life-threatening cyst in his brain.