The Gentleman
Medal Winner
I love this quote from ‘Preferred Lies’ by Andrew Greig. What do you think is the ‘travesty’ - the perfect/sanitised golf courses sought by so many or the raw, natural courses of a bygone age - sculpted by nature. What is the true test?
‘Then the epiphany comes. Looking around for a likely site of the next tee, with the nearby shore resounding all the way up the island, the island itself resting in in and improbably turquoise-to-Indigo sea, I realise it’s the manicured courses of much modern golf, landscaped and planted so beautifully with trees and ponds, with their colour coded distance markers, their artificial bunkers shored and raked, their greens watered and rolled to eliminate every bit of moss or crabgrass, aiming for the perfect course where there is no unevenness, no unexpected breaks, no pebbles, rabbit skeletons or sheep droppings or distracting seagulls, indeed to complete banishment of all animal life - they are the travesty.’
‘Then the epiphany comes. Looking around for a likely site of the next tee, with the nearby shore resounding all the way up the island, the island itself resting in in and improbably turquoise-to-Indigo sea, I realise it’s the manicured courses of much modern golf, landscaped and planted so beautifully with trees and ponds, with their colour coded distance markers, their artificial bunkers shored and raked, their greens watered and rolled to eliminate every bit of moss or crabgrass, aiming for the perfect course where there is no unevenness, no unexpected breaks, no pebbles, rabbit skeletons or sheep droppings or distracting seagulls, indeed to complete banishment of all animal life - they are the travesty.’