Terroir of Golf

Taba Dale

Description

In 2016, I had my heart set on playing golf at two places in particular-Shiskine (Isle of Arran) and Machrie. Bounding around both of these golfing gems and many places in between, I discovered parallels between creating a unique wine (one which we savor when we drink), and that of a unique golf experience that we drink in while playing a course. As with a fine wine, it is equally intoxicating when a superb golf course delivers a powerful connection with nature. And so, while meandering around the dunes of The Machrie, all the elements coalesced for me into a single phrase: Terroir of Golf.
I borrowed from the world of wine; terroir (French from the word terre, or "land") refers to the specific environment where a particular wine is produced. The concept of terroir, as it relates to a crop of grapes, starts with the physical habitat-the soil, climate and the topography. This epiphany occurred to me while on Islay, much better known for whisky than it is for golf, thus I'm loosely borrowing from the world of whisky-making too.
I rather doubt that even the most sophisticated distilleries would use the word terroir to describe how they craft whisky (or whiskey in Ireland). Perhaps there is a Scottish word for the importance of the ground and the grain that goes into the making of uisge beatha (or uisce in Irish Gaelic) which translates into "water of life". It was the Irish monks of the early Middle Ages who used the Latin translation of aqua vitae to describe distilled alcohol. But that discussion requires a red, white or brown liquid, poured into a lovely crystal glass, with or without a stem, to be properly and luxuriously explored at great length. Taba Dale

Sujets

• Cuisine
• La cuisine et son histoire
• Sport
• Autour du sport
• Histoire du sport
• Culinary
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Ryan Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781876498863
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

First published 2023 by Ryan Publishing
PO Box 7680, Melbourne, 3004, Victoria,
Australia
Ph: 61 3 9505 6820
Email: [e-mail]  Website: www.ryanpub.com

Terroir of Golf
ISBN(s): 9781876498849 Hardback
      9781876498856 Paperback
      9781876498863 Ebook

Copyright © Taba Dale
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
Internal design by Luke Harris, Working Type Studio, Victoria, Australia. www.workingtype.com.au
Editing: Graeme Ryan | Cover design: Luke Harris
Cover photographs.
The 19th (or spare) hole at Kingston Heath Golf Club, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia - Gary Lisbon Golf Photography. Vineyard at Montalto Winery, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia – John Mitchell, Owner.
Special thanks to the following people for permission to use their photographs. Helen Keplinger of Keplinger Wines, Mike Aylward of Ocean Eight, Werner Roux of Goose Wines, Kirsten Nicholson, Manager of Shiskine Golf and Tennis Club.
The following photographs were taken by Taba Dale: Pages: 59 , 61 , 62 , 69 , 71 , 263 , 276 , 279 281 , 286 , 287 , 292 , 295 , 297 .
For, and with my amazing Kevin, whose handicap keeps dropping as he gets older .
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Turnberry
The Marcliffe: It’s Like Coming Home
Nairn Part 1 — Clubhouse Experience
Nairn Part 2 — The Course
Eden Mansion and the Old Course
Kingsbarns
Shiskine
Machrihanish
The Machrie
Lochgreen House
The Claret Jug
Terroir of Golf: What is Terroir?
Winemakers Talk Terroir
Mike Aylward
Jean de Boigne
Bartho Eksteen
Andrew Keenleyside
Bryan Parker
Designers Talk Turf
Jan Bel Jan, ASGCA
Bill Coore, ASGCA
Tom Doak
David McLay Kidd
Pat Ruddy
Jason Straka, ASGCA
Professional Golfers with Wine Labels
Luke Donald
Ernie Els
Nick Faldo
David Frost
Retief Goosen
Cristie Kerr
Jack Nicklaus
Greg Norman
Arnold Palmer
Gary Player
Annika Sörenstam
Jan Stephenson
Golf Clubs with a Strong Wine Culture
Adare Golf Club
Castiglion del Bosco
Grand Saint-Emilionnais Golf Club
Mayacama Golf Club
Real Club Valderrama
Royal Wimbledon Golf Club
San Lorenzo Golf Club
The Course at Wente Vineyards
The Hills Golf Club
Whistling Rock Country Club
Acknowledgements
Author’s Notes
About the Author
Foreword
It was all land for golf
I t is always a pleasure to meet or to hear from Taba Dale, the great romantic and lover of golf. She always smiles. She always has a delightful question or twenty and is interested intensely in the diverse answers offered by her myriad of friends and admirers. She opens minds to the great gift of life and to the most amazing elements of golf.
This time she came with a simple question: Tell me what you think about the land for golf?
I was struggling to regain lucidity after months in hospital struggling with sepsis and afloat in a lake of antibiotics. I was just hoping to get back on my feet soon and discover whether I could overcome my weakened state to get my drives past the ladies’ tees! Please Taba, don’t get me going again.
To make the answer a little less complex than it might be, one must state up front that the only land not suitable for golf, or attractive to the golfer, is a wet and smelly bog, land hanging off the side of Mount Everest, or land submerged under ten feet of snow. Everything else has potential, has promise, or is simply irresistible. Even a beach revealed to the gaze at low tide offers opportunities for play.
As a boy cycling along country roads, I was always captivated by the potential for a drawn fairway wood around an oak growing in the middle of a sloping meadow; the excitement that would surround a long iron over a duck pond onto a wee shelf of low-grazed land beyond; and the magnificence of a valley running far below and just begging for a great, soaring drive to the fairway below.
It was all land for golf.
We revelled in golf just after World War II. The courses were presented poorly for the most part as the game had suffered and machinery was still basic. At our club there was an arrangement that anyone who owned a lawnmower would take turns mowing a green or two. When it became obvious that not all greens were cut each week a local rule was introduced allowing the player to press with his foot a path through the grass from ball to hole so that it could be putted rather than chipped!
The comradeship was terrific. No matter what the score, the talk would be mighty as all retired to the local pub, except for the few swanky clubs with clubhouses, for a sandwich and pint of stout or three. It got boisterous. They knew their drink and how to chat to each other in the pre-television and pre-internet age. They talked face-to-face and shared without thought the great, big gasps of the smoke laden air.
They were worse in Scotland, they tell me, where one famous club, admittedly not today or yesterday, was enjoying its regular after golf dinner upstairs in a local hostelry when a waiter happened to be pushed or thrown out a window. When the head of the house enquired what should be done about the waiter, he was told, “Put him on the bill!”
Okay Taba, I will get back to the question of land for golf and give a glimpse into my mind which is always raging with images of hills, valleys, quarries, plateaus, ridges, meadows, dunes, deserts, gorges, canyons, peninsulas, inlets of sea and lake, ponds, waving grasses, eskers, mountains and vegetation from low grass to towering trees.
The desire to go golfing and the thrill of designing a golf course becomes fun once one realizes the advantages one has in the matter of the raw materials provided by nature.
The number of possible design combinations when creating a golf course is seemingly infinite as compared to the simple board game called chess in which two players with sixteen pieces each go face to face across a little board divided into sixty-four squares. Easy.
“The number of possible design combinations when creating a golf course is seemingly infinite as compared to the simple board game called chess.”
Not so, as one realizes when told that there are 400 different positions after each player makes one move; 72,084 positions after two moves each and this explodes to 9-million-plus positions after both players have made three moves. This, in turn, looks puny when one is told that there are 288-billion-plus possible positions later in the game.
One can only believe these numbers while recalling the excitement of world chess champion Garry Kasparov versus the computer back in 1997.
Golf is even more difficult when taking into account the multifarious locations and land types that the game is played upon, the varying weather conditions, the baffling array of equipment available to the players, the range of golf design elements employed by the sport’s architects — bunkers, undulating greens, narrow and wide fairways, optical illusions — and the widely varying physical and mental frailties and strengths of the players!
All that having been said, it is unquestionable that golf is best played on links land. On the free draining sandy deposits which link (ergo ‘golf links’) the seashore to the inland soil. It is here that the ball runs fast, there is bounce in the greens and all the primary elements of ocean, land and sky meet in convulsive grandeur sometimes sublimely calm and beautiful and at other times awesomely angry.
Ireland is blessed with a necklace of golf links dotted around its coastline. Just on forty of them, almost one third of the world supply of golf links, and all within a few hours’ drive of each other. Scotland is somewhat the same, while England and Wales have a lesser share. This is the original form of golf and so rare that when one runs the maths taking into account matters of season and access, fewer than 25% of the world’s golfers will ever get one game on any one links!
After links my favorite golf land is found in the deserts of Arizona and Nevada. Okay, this will surprise many. The desert courses are presented so beautifully with the contrast of maintained grasslands to the desert simply stunning to the eye, and just to crown this delightful visual cocktail add the stark lines and lovely shades of the mountains. It can’t get better.
The American parkland experience, especially when linked to wealth and the urge for excellence, is sublime. Apart from the obvious household names there are hundreds and possibly thousands of wonderfully designed and maintained golf courses with the grasses, the lakes and rivers, and the trees all combining to present a Garden of Eden effect.
So it goes from Japan, through Australia and South America, all over Europe and in 208 of the world’s designated 245 countries! They are donning their spikes, their colored pants, their golf caps, and socks in all those places and losing something like 250-million golf balls (luckily, they find some to balance matters a little) a year collectively! Fore!
At the end of it all, however, it comes to terrain that can be traversed, where grass can be grown and where the weather allows players to get out.
Ireland is blessed in this regard with a temperate climate, thanks in large part to the Gulf Stream bringing warm water over from Mexico and Texas, allowing golf most days of the year in relative comfort. At the southern and easterly seaside links the game is played over 320-days annually.
By contrast the season is short in Canada where I had the pleasure of building two, if I may say so in all modesty, fine golf courses for the Montreal Island Golf Club. They stop playing sometime in mid-October and open only in early April. Yet they really open with great enthusiasm as I found to my amazement with full car parks as early as 6 am The skies are