Michael Whitehead

Continuing the Golfing Herald mini-series of ‘shining the spotlight’ on various professions within the golfing industry, this article features golf writer Michael Whitehead, author of the hugely popular books ‘The Golf Lover’s Guide to Scotland’ (first published in 2019) and ‘The Golf Lover’s Guide to England’ (first published in 2020).

Under normal circumstances, I would have met up with Michael for a ‘coffee and a chat’ but because of the ongoing restrictions due to the Coronavirus in the UK we resorted to Microsoft Teams (and yes before you ask…the audio and video options nearly worked at the first time of asking!!).

We chatted about Michael’s love of golf as a player and latterly as a writer, his previous career in banking and of course the staple item in all of my interviews…Fantasy Fourball…which this time had a very interesting twist!!

Hope you enjoy

First Tee

(Paul): Mike…how, where and when did you first get into golf?

(Mike): I wasn’t brought up in an area that was noted in golfing terms. I was born and raised in Dewsbury (West Yorkshire, England) and the nearest proper course to me was Dewsbury and District but it wasn’t really that close to me as a kid. I had a friend who was a member so I did go there with him. But my earliest interactions with golf was at my local (Rectory) park which had an 18 hole Pitch and Putt course. The Pitch and Putt is now closed and it always saddens me when I drive past visiting my Mum and Dad who still live close by. So my earliest memories of golf would be during the school summer holidays when we would go up to the Pitch and Putt and I used to really enjoy it. I wasn’t necessarily very good at it but just loved playing there with my friends. I guess that relationship with golf has stayed with me…not very good at it but love it anyway.

Two Clubs No Putter

(Paul): What was the next leg of your golfing journey after the (Rectory) Park Pitch and Putt?

(Mike): When I got a little bit older and into my teens, my mum bought me a Driver and (I think it was) a 4 iron through the catalogue…and I gave her some money every week from my milk round to pay her back!!

(Paul): Fantastic…though I am not sure what the collective noun is for ‘2 clubs and no putter’!!

(Mike): All I remember is that the Driver was beautiful and looked amazing!! My sister is a few years older than me and she had a boyfriend at the time who was very good at golf. So he and I would walk up to the very large field close to where we lived with a big bag of balls and just hit shots from one end of the field to the other…up and down, up and down. It got to the point where during the summer he would come to the house, say hello to my sister but then say to me “Are we off up to the field to shoot some golf?” I think my sister was starting to get a little bit miffed with him and they split up soon after (I did feel a little bit guilty about that). But then after a while, golf fell by the wayside when I started college and stuff.

Remembered Conversation

(Paul): What was your first job after college?

(Mike): I spent some time working for a car dealership arranging car finance for customers. Then I left to move into the Financial Services industry and I went to work for HSBC. At the time I had just met my (now) wife…and then we got married and had our first child Hermione, so golf very much fell by the wayside for quite a few years. I worked for HSBC for about 3 years in the UK and then out of nowhere a colleague, who I had met during the induction course when I first started with the bank during which we had talked about wanting to live and work abroad, got back in touch. He said that he was moving to Jersey (in the Channel Islands) to work for the (HSBC) International Bank and that he would be travelling around the world giving financial advice to UK ex-patriots and that he remembered what we had talked about a few years previous…and that they were looking for other people so why not come over. So we went over to Jersey and stayed with him and his partner for the weekend. I then got a job interview, got the job and within a matter of months we were on our way to live in Jersey.

Les Ormes Golf Club

(Paul): A great example of how the topology of life can change through unexpected meetings and chance conversations…and of course from a golfing perspective, several famous golfers herald from Jersey, with none other than Harry Vardon being the most famous.

(Mike): Absolutely…Jersey is a wonderful hotbed for golf and when I started working there, a number of the guys in the office were keen golfers. At that point, I had a very old set of Dunlop golf clubs with which I started playing golf again. The main course we used to play was Les Ormes which is a beautiful, cliff top 9 hole golf course right next to the airport…literally next to the runway. I wasn’t a member there, just pay as you play. There was a group of us who used to play there quite a lot. It was just perfect as it was only 9 holes so I wasn’t there playing golf for ‘hours and hours’. About halfway through our time in Jersey, I bought my first set of ‘major’ clubs…a set of PING, really nice. All in all, it was a lovely 2 years in Jersey, beautiful courses and surrounded by people who were very much into golf which really got me back into it.

Royal Malta Golf Club

(Paul): So where did you and your family move to next after those 2 years living, working and playing some golf in Jersey?

(Mike): The (HSBC) International Bank were setting up a new operation in Malta as Jersey was not in the EU and they needed a base in Europe to enable the International Bank to see clients around Europe…so we moved from Jersey to Malta. In terms of my banking career that was my most enjoyable time. I was there for 3 years…our 2 boys were both born in Malta and it was the best time. We had a beautiful house in Madliena looking out over the coast with a stunning sea view. It was a very stressful job…based in Malta but travelling around Europe. But every morning before I headed out to the office, which was only a 2-minute drive away, I would stand at the top of the steps in the front garden and I would look out at the sea view that would greet me every morning. It always made me feel good about the day. No matter how stressed I got I always had that.

(Paul): But more importantly (only joking!!)…what about your golf?

(Mike): Well, there is only one course in Malta – The Royal Malta Golf Club, which is connected to the Marsa Sports Club. I became a member of the Golf Club and that was the first time that I had my handicap assessed…I started at 28 but I think by the end it came down to about 22. Every Saturday morning I used to look forward to playing a round of golf…it was just great. They have made huge improvements to the course over the years…though we have not been back since 2009. Every year in the summer each town has its own festival and the firework displays are amazing. But each year the course would be covered in confetti from the fireworks for about 3 weeks…you have never seen anything like it!!

(Paul): Golf is difficult enough with leaves on the course during the Autumn so not sure how I would cope with navigating confetti!!

(Mike): Or me…but you would just not believe the amount of confetti. After we’d left there was a stray firework that actually landed on the clubhouse in 2009 and burnt it down!! I have not been back since, but I know friends who have and they say the new clubhouse is beautiful.

Montgomerie Golf Club Dubai

(Paul): You were out in Malta for 3 years and your golf handicap was down to 22…what next for your banking career and golfing journey?

(Mike): From Malta, I moved to an established office in the Middle East, again with the (HSBC) International Bank and I spent just shy of 3 years based in Dubai…which has become a real golfing mecca. Golf was really taking off when I was out there, just before the financial crash of 2008. When I arrived the office already had a corporate membership in place for the Montgomerie Golf Club Dubai so I played there. A really nice course which I used to enjoy playing and the club is lovely.

But I also used to play at lots of other courses too. In fact, I was out in Dubai when The Emirates Golf Club first put up floodlights at ‘The Wadi’ course and you could start playing night golf there, which was just phenomenal. A few years later they put them up across The Majlis course too, I believe.

Arabian Ranches Golf Club

(Paul): There is something magical about playing or watching sport under floodlights.

(Mike): It is just a different experience…we lived in an area/compound called Arabian Ranches and one of the oldest courses in Dubai is located within the complex. It is regarded as an original desert course because all you have got surrounding the fairways is sand and desert. I will take the ‘Pepsi Challenge’ with anyone about having the worst slice in golf!! And the Arabian Ranches is a course that is not very forgiving for a player such as me who slices!! Very difficult with very thin fairways…but a lovely course. So we moved our membership to the Arabian Ranches Golf Club…and only a one minute drive from home to the course!! But I was caught up in the financial crash in 2008 and the aftermath so almost overnight Dubai went from hip town to ghost town. The (HSBC) International Bank took a real hit… unfortunately I was made redundant and that came into effect early 2010.

One Door Closes

(Paul): Did you try to find other opportunities in Dubai or did you have to widen your job hunting search?

(Mike): I tried to find other work as we wanted to stay in Dubai but 6 months later I had drained all of my resources and so we ended up having to come back to the UK. I thought coming back to the UK, with my experience, I would find work quite quickly…but it felt as if I had just been let out of prison as in the Financial Services world companies were more focused on trying to get rid of people rather than hire people. So for several years, I was very much the ‘stay at home’ dad, doing the school runs and so on whilst my wife was busy developing her marketing business, which involved a lot of travelling. I then had to think about what else I could do as Financial Services was no longer an option. I started very tentatively around 2014/15 looking at doing some writing, so I ‘honed my craft’ a little bit on websites where you could write about anything you wanted really.

(Paul): Ah…that answers one of my later questions about your bio as on the back cover of your book ‘The Golf Lover’s Guide to Scotland’ it lists a range of topics that you have published articles about…sport, travel, social media and technology inter alia.

(Mike): I got some work for the National newspaper in the UAE where I wrote a Technology section for a few months…and I wrote about airport lounges…I wrote about anything and everything really!! Around the same time our local newspaper, the ‘Thorne Times’, was established by a lady called Karren Wake, who I know. Thorne is the village next to where we currently live and I began writing articles for Karren…

Sports Correspondent

(Paul): What type of articles were you writing?

(Mike): Mainly it was being employed as the sportswriter…so I got to be a sports correspondent for the local newspaper…I was literally only paid pocket money but it was great!! This included going once a month to the local rugby club, Thornensians RUFC…and every month they had a club dinner followed by the match. It was very much a ‘liquid’ lunch and then go and watch the match…then wake up the following morning and try to remember what happened and cobble together a match report!! Great times. I also got to write about the miner’s strike…I wrote a piece about WW1 and various articles about the local community and local businesses. It really gave me a good grounding.

Branching Out

(Paul): So set against the backdrop of writing articles about a broad spectrum of subjects, where did the idea originate to write a book which would eventually become ‘The Golf Lover’s Guide to Scotland’?

(Mike): It’s a funny story actually. My wife is also a writer and I would argue that of the two of us she is far more accomplished and has a much better grasp of grammar!! If anybody reads my books and thinks they are grammatically well worded it is highly likely there is a lot of words where I have had to refer to her to find different synonyms for example!! It must have been around 2018 when my wife dropped into a conversation that she had seen on a Facebook Page that a lady was acting as an agent for a book publisher, who was looking for pitches for a new range of guide books that they were going to launch. Pen and Sword are renowned for publishing history books…but they were branching out via their White Owl imprint into guide books and one of the examples they gave was related to Links courses. My wife wanted to pitch an idea…in fact, she pitched a few ideas. And then I said something like “Go on…let me have a go!!”. She was a bit reluctant and responded with something like “Find your own *$&&£* work!!”. In the end, we both pitched ideas thinking we both win if one of us gets commissioned.

(Paul): What did you submit to the agent/publisher in support of your pitch?

(Mike): I remember sending three pitches. I can’t remember all three but one was definitely ‘The Golf Lover’s Guide to the British Isles’ and another one was ‘The Golf Guide to the Middle East’…I think I was wishing for the latter as obviously, I knew a lot of the courses out there.

Playing Safe

(Paul): So you were very much pitching at a very high level with a sample of overarching ideas?

(Mike): Yes…I was pitching the ideas to them. Weeks went by without not really hearing anything and then I got a message from the agent saying they wanted an example chapter of how you would produce this book. So I played it really safe and I wrote a chapter on St Andrews. But unbeknown to me I had hit the jackpot because one of the ideas the publisher had was for a golf guide. The next thing I knew was when Jonathan Wright (the Marketing Director) got in touch and said we want to go ahead with this and we want you to do a golf guide to Scotland…and there may be potential for other books in the future depending on how this book goes.

(Paul): Dare I ask…what happened to the pitches submitted by your better half?

(Mike): My wife’s pitches, god bless her, were all rejected and mine was accepted!! As you could imagine it did lead to a little bit of tension in the Whitehead household!! Having said that, she has been incredibly supportive, and I am very lucky to have that support.

Golf Education

(Paul): So what was your approach for ‘The Golf Lovers Guide To…’ books following on from your successful pitch about St Andrews which secured the publishing deal and to start realising your dream?

(Mike): I don’t consider myself a golf aficionado and I wasn’t selected and headhunted to write these guides based on years of golf writing experience…I had none at the time. Both the Scotland and England guides are my first forays into golf writing and I guess with Scotland you can’t really go wrong!! Everyone wants to know about golf in Scotland and therefore I felt I was on very safe ground. My dream was to start with Scotland and then hopefully develop a series of country guides. These books have been an education for me about golf in Scotland and England…and then passing that on to everyone else. There may be some people who already know the information I am presenting and that is fine. I don’t include any ratings as the guides are not about comparing one course against another…and I didn’t feel equipped or experienced enough as a golf writer to be able to do that straight away. So I took the decision very early on not to try to become a professional golf writer overnight but rather to try and tell the story of a golf club in each chapter.

Information and Desire

(Paul): How did you go about telling the story of each golf club that appear in the respective guides?

(Mike): There is a chapter for each golf club and each chapter is divided into three sections. The first section was always designed to be where you would expect to see course information in a golf guide. What I found with a lot of golf reviews I was reading is that they would only ever quote one Par and yardage for the course. But golf courses have a number of different Par scores and yardages aligned to the various tees. I guess I was doing that as a ‘shout out’ to golfers such as myself who won’t be playing off the back tees!! So I wanted the course information to be as inclusive as I could possibly make it. I wanted to put information about Handicap Certificate requirements, times when you can play, how you would book, etc…so the first section is what I would consider being the ‘heavy lifting’ providing all of the information you will need about a course. For me, a golf guide has two main priorities. One is to provide enough information that a golfer would need. The second is to create a desire for a golfer to go and play a particular course and that comes in the sections about the history and the playing of the course. For me, a golf club and course history are as fascinating as actually playing the course itself. In the history section, I try to go that extra mile and find that little nugget of information that you haven’t seen on a golf club’s website.

Hogan’s Alley

(Paul): That must have involved lots of personal research and varying levels of engagement with each golf club?

(Mike): What I do is engage with the main people at each course…club secretaries, club professionals, historians, members, etc. These are the people who know the course ‘like the back of their hands’. I could go and play a course then come back and write a chapter…but that is just me…a fair-weather golfer having played the course once. But I don’t think you really get to know a course unless you have played it a few times. As much as I would have loved going and playing 150 or so courses in Scotland and England and writing a book, I think the guides are much richer for the engagement and time that I spent with those that know the courses far better than I do. That is where I got the anecdotes and the information that you don’t necessarily see on a website. For example, in the chapter about Carnoustie, I spent some time with Keir McNicoll (now the Head Professional at Carnoustie). I sat with Keir in one of the clubhouses next to the Hotel and we had a good chat for an hour or so…and it was Keir who told me the story about when Ben Hogan hit his second-round tee shot on the 6th hole (now called Hogan’s Alley) into the same divot where his ball had landed from his first-round tee shot earlier in the day!!

Bond…James Bond

(Paul): True stories such as that are just brilliant to hear and/or read about…

(Mike): Another one is for Royal St George’s Golf Club in the England Guide. I met with Tim Checketts, the club secretary, and we were talking about the Ian Fleming connection. It was Tim who told me about the story of the homage (to the course) that Fleming put in the Goldfinger novel about Goldfinger practising on the putting green before his match against James Bond whilst Bond just walks straight to the first tee. Not sure if it is still the case but at that time the speed of the practice putting green bore no resemblance to the actual greens on the course and Bond knew this but Goldfinger didn’t!! I thought that was just fantastic and so I put that in the history section for Royal St. George’s. I am sure there are some old members of the club who remember Ian Fleming (who was also a member of the club) and they will love that story. This is where I feel I have grown as a writer between the Scotland and England Guides, looking to add more of a personal slant on the History sections. For example, when you read the Silloth Golf Club chapter you get to hear about Cecilia Leitch’s connection with the course.

(Paul): And she was the catalyst for our trajectories ‘first crossing’ back in May 2020 when I published an article about her glittering amateur career during the early twentieth century.

(Mike): That’s right…a fabulous article.

Playing the Course

(Paul): I am not so sure about that!! But for me, the history of a club and a course will whet the appetite to then go and play the course…and hopefully combining the pleasure of playing golf in the modern-day whilst soaking up the history of yesteryear.

(Mike): Again, what I have also tried to do in creating the desire, is to spend time at the beginning of the ‘Playing the Course’ section by setting the scene of what you should expect and what you should experience. So for example, for Silloth, the opening of that section talks about what I found when I stood on the 5th tee and I looked around. I played Silloth with the club secretary Alan Oliver, a lovely guy who was very accommodating, and playing the course with him resulted very much in a collaboration of views rather than just one person’s view…and again I think that makes for a more fulfilling chapter.

(Paul): Did you play all the courses that appear in the Scotland and England guides?

(Mike): I did try and play as many as I could. As much as I would love to say that golf guide writing is a full-time job it is actually part-time so I had to make my trips in between the day job. There were a few occasions where the timings were not right so that I was unable to play. If I didn’t play a course and it was a case of seeing a few courses over a couple of days then what I did was walk the course or go out on a buggy with the Professional or the Secretary. It is interesting as doing that I think you get a deeper view of how to play the course as you are speaking with someone who has played it dozens of times and I could focus 100% on what they were telling me without the inevitable distraction of searching for my ball in the rough!! A great example of that was Sunningdale, which I visited as part of a 2-day trip, which also included Walton Heath and West Sussex,…but there was a corporate day at Sunningdale so I was unable to play. Instead, I went around the course with (Assistant Professional) Richard Andrews who could not have been more helpful or more enthusiastic about his home club. We went through every hole in a couple of hours or so and he spoke so eloquently about the courses and about the design and how to play the (old and new) courses. In the guide, I have included a great quote from Richard about playing at Sunningdale:

“The framing of every hole is utterly sublime, showing you exactly where your ball has to go. You’ll enjoy your round a whole lot more if you listen to what the course is telling you.”

Golfing Community

(Paul): I have had the pleasure of interviewing many professionals, several of whom describe the Old course at Sunningdale as ‘Pure’ and without hesitation nominated it as their favourite course in the UK, but I have never heard such beautiful prose describing how to play golf and navigate a course…absolutely sumptuous!! Also, as I have found whilst researching articles for Golfing Herald the global golfing community could not be any kinder or more helpful.

(Mike): Totally agree…I can’t name you a course that has not been anything other than incredibly helpful. All of the course representatives really bought into what I was trying to do and could not have been kinder. When I drafted a chapter I would send a draft to the secretaries or the professionals and I would ask “Are there any schoolboy errors or is there anything you think I need to change?”. Some would come back and say “absolutely spot on” whilst others would come back with some minor changes or additional information….for reading the draft and providing feedback I will always be eternally grateful. I wish I could stress more that all those names listed on the Acknowledgements Page in the respective guides played a big part in the writing and the photography…top class photographers such as Mark Alexander, Kevin Murray, David Cannon, Kevin Diss, Steve Carr, James Lovett, Jason Livy and James Drake all assisted, asking only for an acknowledgement and credit in return. I should also mention the terrific contributions of both Matthew Rose and Graeme Roberts who both happily provided wonderful images of their home courses. I had a lot of help from some good people.

Look and Feel

(Paul): You definitely have…for me books published by Pen and Sword, including your guides, always have that immediate ‘look and feel’ of quality if that makes sense…so how did you feel when you finally saw your finished work in print?

(Mike): The design they came back with from the submitted text which was in an MS Word Document was perfect. When I saw the first draft in pdf format of the Scotland guide I just can’t tell you how pleased I was…if I had closed my eyes and imagined how I would want the book to look they got it pretty much perfect. I have a very supportive publisher. A very patient publisher…I was very late with the England guide as I didn’t want to finish it, I just wanted to keep doing more!!

(Paul): In terms of the formatting and presentation of both the guides, what I really like is that in conjunction with your publisher you have found a way to ‘package’ so much information onto each page without any page being ‘overwhelming and confusing’.

(Mike): I am so pleased with that feedback but again that is a credit to the design.

Aldeburgh Golf Club

(Paul): I purchased both books as soon as they were published and they are both a great read and reference guides…all that is missing is being able to jump in the car and go and play at some of the courses, which we can’t do at the moment due to the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions!! The comments and reviews I have seen about both the Scotland and England guides on Twitter, Amazon, etc. have all been very positive.

(Mike): It is very humbling to hear people say such nice words about the guides, or tag me into a thread/post on Twitter, like the broadcaster Georgie Bingham who is a member at Aldeburgh Golf Club which is a Maritime Heathland course (looks like a heathland course but smells like a links course!!), a term I had never heard before. I took a bit of a gamble in the run-up to the England guide being published and put a few tweets out on Twitter with copies of the chapters, and Aldeburgh was one of them. I tagged her into the tweet and she came back in about ten minutes and said: “This is great…and I have found something out about my club I didn’t know…that the club had connections with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and the suffragette movement and how inclusive the club has been”.

Course Selection

(Paul): Returning to the Scotland guide, how did you select the courses that appeared in the guide?

(Mike): For Scotland a lot of the courses chose themselves. What I tried to do was capture the essence of what’s great about golf in Scotland as well as a selection of courses over a geographical spread (the same also applies to England). There are many courses I regret not being able to make it to…Askernish is one, Durness is another…amongst others. The guide is very much the starting point, encouraging golfers to then go and explore more courses for themselves.

Special Significance

(Paul): And the guide assists with that exploration by listing courses nearby at the end of each chapter. Also in the Scotland guide, you have a section titled ‘Courses of Special Significance’, featuring Shiskine Golf Club and Musselburgh Links. What was your thinking behind this section of the guide?

(Mike): I wanted to highlight those two courses…with Shiskine you hear and read about how cherished it is as a course and how beautiful it is. With Musselburgh, you are walking through history and there are still shivers when you walk around the course.

First Course

(Paul): The first courses covered in the Scotland and England guides are the Boat of Garten Golf Club and Silloth Golf Club respectively. Both fantastic golf courses but maybe not as well known as many other courses…was that a conscious choice in terms of sequencing?

(Mike): In the Scotland Guide it would have been easy for me to put St Andrews first, but if I did that I felt, in a way, I would be rating them and I didn’t want to do that…so I chose the easiest way possible by simply doing the Scottish courses in alphabetical order, which actually pushed some of the bigger courses down the list. One of the lessons I learnt from the Scotland guide was to include a map (why did you not put a map in, Michael??!) with the England guide and so the course order aligns to navigating England, starting in the North West with Silloth.

Further Education

(Paul): Earlier in our chat you said that your dream was to write a series of guides, starting with Scotland on the back of your successful pitch to the publisher. Was another guide dependant on how well the Scotland guide was received?

(Mike): My dream was always to write more…and my publisher was keen to do more. I was still editing the Scotland guide when they said: “we want you to do another one”. And so we started to think about locations and England had always been on my mind to do…a few people thought Ireland was the next natural step but I didn’t necessarily see that as the case. I felt slightly embarrassed as an Englishman not knowing a huge amount about the great golf courses of England…so again I saw writing the guide as an opportunity to educate myself. And England has a fabulous mix of inland and links courses, which would make the guide different to Scotland, which was predominantly links courses. So, it represented a different type of challenge. That is why I plumped for England as the second guide in the series and the books were written ‘back to back’. I’m very glad I made this choice.

Still Writing!!

(Paul): Unlike the Scotland guide, the England guide does not have sections on courses of special significance or a selection of 9 hole golf courses…what was the rationale behind this change in scope?

(Mike): I felt quite overwhelmed with England in the sense of the list of courses I wanted to include (it was huge) and I could name you at least 5 to 10 courses in a heartbeat that I wish at the time I could have done full chapters on. For the England guide, which you don’t see with the Scotland guide, there are clubs such as Sunningdale, Woburn, Walton Heath and The Berkshire which have more than one course…with each regarded as highly as the other. So each course, like the Old and New at Sunningdale, receives equal billing, resulting in quite large chapters in the book. As much as I would have loved to include so much more, there comes a point where you have to draw a line in the sand and hand your work over!! In my head I am still writing chapters in both guides as I think of golf courses that I would have loved to have included, time permitting!! I am dreaming of second editions for both guides as there are so many courses I would love to play and write about!!

Fantasy Fourball

(Paul): Linked to the Scotland and England guides…a bit of fun, but who would you pick to join you in a Fantasy Fourball and on which course would this Fourball be played?

(Mike): I know a lot of people would plump for Seve but I am not going to do that actually.

(Paul): In previous interviews for Golfing Herald most people select Seve or Tiger as their first pick.

(Mike): There is a part of me who would like to go back in time to some of the pioneers. If I could have a Fantasy Fourball then I would pick Harry Colt, Dr Alister MacKenzie and Old Tom Morris. I just think playing a round of golf with them and being able to ask them about their thinking when designing a golf course. If I could then bring them forward to today and show them golf now and show them one of their courses and solicit their views…that would be good. And as for the course to stage the match, I could choose any one of their designs such as Alwoodley or Burnham & Berrow. Hang on!! I guess I am missing James Braid!! Can I have a Fourball with James Braid replacing me and let me caddy for one of them?

(Paul): As I am allowed to make the rules up as we go along then I will allow this late ‘substitution request’ but with the caveat that you must nominate who you will caddy for?

(Mike): I would have to caddy for Old Tom due to his seniority.

(Paul): As Old Tom’s caddy would you carry his clubs or would you expect to be supplied with a quiver bag?

(Mike): Any type of bag would do and I would just sling it over my shoulder!! It would be great to transport them to today and just tap into their thoughts about modern golf course design and the changes made to their original designs…how do you think they would react?

Eternal Puzzle

(Paul): I would like to think that they would be impressed by how well golf courses they originally designed have been maintained and matured over the years…and I would hope they would embrace the changes that have evolved in course design since their days as world-renowned golf course architects.

(Mike): I agree…I guess it was great at Augusta when Bryson DeChambeau was going to ‘murder the course’ and the subsequent commentary. I have absolutely nothing against big hitters but I do remember the headline ‘Mackenzie 1, DeChambeau 0’ after the first round. I did have a wry smile at that. For me…

“Golf is an eternal puzzle that is never meant to be solved”

I think what frightens people about the big hitters such as Bryson is that it looks like someone is about to solve that puzzle…and, in our hearts, nobody wants that.

(Paul): But as you said earlier about Sunningdale Old course, that will never be conquered by long-hitting only…the puzzle remains unsolved!!

(Mike): Exactly.

The Nineteenth

(Paul): We have sadly reached the Nineteenth so just one final question…in addition to your freelance writing, what next for the ‘The Golf Lover’s Guide’?

(Mike): I would really love to complete the set. There is a lot of love for golf in Wales and Ireland and they are two countries I have never golfed in…so again there is knowledge and education for me there so I can then say:

“Here is what I’ve learned about the best countries in the world where you can play golf. These guides are your starting points…go and discover”

(Paul): Mike, a great way to finish. Thanks so much for sharing such an honest insight into your golfing journey to date and how the Golf Lover’s Guide books were conceived, developed, written and published…and all the best for the future and hopefully another book or two in the series!!

The Golf Lover’s Guide to Scotland’ and ‘The Golf Lover’s Guide to England’ can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com. Pen and Sword and high street bookshops.

Acknowledgements

And finally, a massive thanks to…

• Royal Malta Golf Club, Malta
• Les Ormes Golf Club, Jersey
• EMAAR
• Montgomerie Golf Club Dubai
• Arabian Ranches Golf Club

…who so kindly provided assistance and support for this article.