Your competitive days are never over as Mid-Amateur Golf thrives

All different, aren’t we? Some are bag in, some are bag out. Some are left, some are right, some are red, some are blue.

Some like their golf casual and comfortable. I have always liked competitive, away-day golf against good players. I like playing the pseud. I like suspending reality to get in some foam rolling and yardage book use like I was born for a life on the road playing tournament golf.

In an earlier life, let’s call it pre-kids, or my twenties, I was a full-paid-up member of the white belt brigade. Enormous tour bag, a top battery-powered trolley, daily mantras scribbled in a mole-skin notebook, days set aside for practice rounds, outfit scripted weeks in advance and balls marked with uniform lines. I was that guy.

Truth is, I still am that guy. It has just become a bit unbefitting, whilst still cutting, as I reach my dotage to be so thrusting. I am now a single-strapping, single-colour, motifless entity confined to the mid-week medal.

It does not feel good. All this Instagram golf. I feel homeless and bereft. Too old for real golf and too young for the cocoon of the seniors. But I miss it. I miss the card and pencil and the first tee nerves, and the battle for respectability, and the order of it all, the discomfort of strange people and strange places. I miss white tees and a properly prepared golf course. I miss the day feeling so orderly and rarefied.

And then I found, 13 years too late, The Mid Amateur Golf Tour – a home for the yellowing white belt, a home for the stiff of back and long of putter. A place where the competitive itch can be scratched without fear of being outdriven by a prospective son-in-law, where like-minded competitors are fighting the same fight against ageing bodies and full diaries. A place where we can all still hope.

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I am playing in the South of England Mid-Amateur at Hunstanton in North Norfolk. It is one of my favourite places. Home to a long-since-abandoned annual trip with my best friend. It is evocative for me of good times. I am happy here.

I travel late in the evening before and stay locally. I get to the course early and meet Richard, the owner of the tour, still on the tools of day-to-day operations. It is clear from the outset that this is a labour of real love, he knows all of the entrants who greet him by name.

He has played some holes with a few of them the day before. Many here have played in 100s of these events. This is a huge testimony to him. Richard and these events are serving a real purpose, feeding fires that still burn for able and willing golfers.

He has created a place where there you realise there was more to your competitive wanderlust than just the courses and scores. There is genuine camaraderie here.

I warm up for a long time, and there is a lot of conversation on the range. Normal stuff, the stuff we carry about in our heads. Golfers are individuals, it is not a team sport, but that doesn’t mean we don’t find comfort in company and the convivial buzz on the practice tee is disarming for me, expecting the somewhat stiffer experience at open age events.

This continues on the golf course where my playing partners are happy to chat. We cover a lot of ground, our families, our jobs, our lives. It’s helpful. Talking to the unencumbered. You present yourself, and you reflect on what you are presenting. These brief, temporary relationships. They still have meaning. They bring perspective.

One of our three is older, and a member. He plays a beautiful brand of unfussy simple golf. Tidy draws find fairways and two scores in the low 70s were inevitable.

The place of play is exceptional. Three hours 40 on a full-length course, with due care given to every shot. The event is scratch-ish. There are scratch prizes, and nett prizes, but the standard is good. I notice some other plus figures and some as high as 8 or 9. Regardless, it feels like everyone knows their golf, and a quick scan down the roster of venues will tell you instantly that Richard does too.

My own golf is good, I am pleased. I have brought too much of the range to the course to challenge. But I will learn. And I will be back on the The Mid Amateur Golf Tour . Perhaps I have found a home.

See you at Trevose for the British.

If you are interested in playing in any of the events on the Mid Am Tour, check out their website – The Mid Amateur Golf Tour – they have a great selection of venues in the UK and overseas, including the Spanish Mid Amateur at Camiral.

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