10. The golf course is awake!
My back is screaming and I have thorns in my fingers but I’m confident the course for this year’s RNGC Invitational will be the best yet
A slash of yellow in the top corner of the orchard where primroses are bursting into life at the foot of a hedgerow once covered in bracken. Small stands of dark, healthy grass sprouting on the greens. The first fronds of daffodils under the apple trees nearest the clubhouse/animal shelter. Songbirds in the trees and hedges, scrambling the collie puppy’s mind on our daily tours of The Sacred Acre. Hello spring, how I’ve missed you.
There’s little I relish more than time in the orchard, and this weekend was a much needed tonic. Sustained focus on the things that make you happy can only be good for the soul, and the golf course in the orchard delivers a timely reminder.
The menial nature of the tasks required to create this tiny course — constant strimming, mowing, weeding, rolling, filling, seeding, raking, planning — become more than the sum of their parts on days like these. They not only nourish a sense of achievement, they relax my mind, allowing my thoughts to unspool in familiar and comforting patterns.
As I work, it’s always the same: the sun is shining and my friends are playing RNGC. It’s late in the day and greens are firming up and rolling nicely. They’re enjoying the course, and they’re really playing it. The matches are tight. Someone is very probably locked in the portaloo.
Music drifts across the course from the DJs in the clubhouse. I hear laughter and roars of delight at great shots, cackling at awful ones. These people, friends from different parts of my life, many from Royal North Devon Golf Club, some not even golfers, are constant companions as I trudge across RNGC’s pathways and greens, heaving ancient mowers up the orchard’s gentle inclines. Soon enough, I tell myself, they will be here in the flesh.
As these daydreams play out, I am subconsciously monitoring what’s growing, what needs clearing, what to do next. There are always projects – top dressing and reseeding greens, enlarging surrounds, clearing the weeds from the stream, establishing better grass on the playing areas, playing with cuts and angles. Each job seems to end with the raking of cuttings into piles. Of all the quotidian tasks, I find raking to be the most meditative.
The orchard has taught me many things, not least the panacea of giving oneself to a physical task and letting your mind unclench. I believe this is what’s called mindfulness. I have tried many different balms for my mental health over the years but nothing compares to turning myself over to the inexorable rhythms, sounds and small movements of the orchard. Ideas, decisions, solutions reveal themselves while I’m outside and looking in the other direction.
Sustained focus on things that make you happy can only be good for the soul
This less than an acre of rolling pasture has taught me other things, too, such as what it means to connect with the soil. It will be a constant presence under my feet, on my skin and beneath my nails in the months ahead. This soil has given me a better understanding of nature. Working with it leaves me feeling fitter, healthier, better.
I have mapped and looked at and longed for this small valley a million times. Caring for a piece of land binds you to it, the elements and the seasons. But you are only ever a custodian.
What I love most, though, is this is a picture that I can alter and toy with but never hope to finish. Each small intervention impacts the overall effect, offering instant feedback, but the inexorable cycle of things means that every tweak, every change, can only ever be temporary.
This is our fourth spring here. The playing areas of the golf course are becoming more established with each year. They have been walked on, cycled over and trodden down to the extent they now seem to know what is required of them. The grass has been trained. It can now be cut tighter and more often, accentuating the pitch and roll of the terrain.
Walking the puppy around the orchard these last few weeks has given me a renewed appreciation of its nuances. The first thing that people who have seen photos of the course comment on when they walk through the gate for the first time are its slopes. Photos don’t do justice to the undulations, they say. People have said similar about a certain well-known course in Georgia.
My back is screaming. I have thorns in my fingers and dirt ingrained in the lines of my hands but I’m feeling confident. The clock is ticking. June 7th is now within reach.
Hole Videos
Hole 1 — ‘Apple’: Huge piles of soil have been excavated and piled up during the barn conversion taking place next to our house. I’ve managed to commandeer some of it for a tee box near the gate for what will be the first hole at this year’s RNGC Invitational.
I want the 2025 edition of the RNGC Invitational to about the kicks, bounces and slopes, as well as the infamous bund. Cutting the grass short has revealed subtle inclines around ‘Apple’, in the centre of orchard. It was the green I saw immediately when first setting eyes on the orchard. It’s probably the best green on the course. If I can create run-off areas around the green, and get the new tee seeded, I think this version of the hole will be the best yet.
Hole 3 - ‘Molehill’: I want drama this year. The cheers that greet great shots sustain me through the long months before and after the RNGC Invitational, and I plan to introduce more risk and reward on a few holes, such as on ‘Molehill’, where the green has been expanded and the thatch of rough removed from in front of the green.
Hole 4 — ‘Top’: Another ever-present on the rota of tournament holes, ‘Top’ has a green that repels almost every kind of shot. I love the militancy of the test but still feel there should be a way of finding the green for the person who plays the bravest and most precise tee shot. Hence, the re-introduction of the Oakmont-style ‘church pews’ in the bund on approach and a new ‘speed slot’ on the high side of the hole.
2025 RNGC Invitational Meeting Official Invitation
I hope to send official invitations out this week for the 2025 RNGC Invitational Meeting, which takes place on Saturday June 7 and Sunday June 8. If you are not an existing club member but would like to be put on the waiting list, drop me a line by clicking below.
Labour of love, enjoyed reading about your process of the continued work to your masterpiece⛳️
Cheers Selwyn. It is love, I can safely say that. I didn’t know it was possible to love a field, however pretty that field. Looking forward to seeing you at RND soon and at RNGC in June