8. Man vs Machine
The ongoing challenges of preparing a tiny championship golf course on zero budget with antique equipment that hates me. Plus, an update from the frontline of the war against the moles.
Horses don’t like me
They can feel my apprehension. I transmit fear.
As a three-year-old I was put on a horse for a photograph. The horse went berserk and took off around a paddock, bucking my infant self from its back and onto the concrete, head first. I was not wearing a riding hat. My relationship with horses has never recovered.
I have a similar relationship with garden machinery. It’s personal rather than practical; mental rather than mechanical. Machines seem to sense my lack of confidence. In my hands, a contraption, device or software becomes flighty, erratic and unreliable. With Victa, the second-hand Australian mower bought from a bloke who helps my parents with their garden, it’s worse. It’s downright cruel.
Victa is known by name at my local garden repair shop. The guys that work there know me only by extension: the owner of Victa, a machine that has subsidised their Christmas party for the last few years.
Victa and I are currently on an extended break from one another. Last spring, I tried to rekindle the spark by teaching myself some basic maintenance and repairs via YouTube channels run by shorts-wearing, mullet-sporting, oil-stained Australian men called Brad or Jeff or Blake. I invested in parts, which took weeks to arrive from the other side of the world. I bought tools and lubricants, downloaded user manuals, and looked forward to returning Victa to the powerful, all-terrain, grass-munching monster that I all too briefly knew.
An unfamiliar glow of relief and satisfaction briefly flowered into the hope that a corner might have been turned in our relationship
It wasn’t to be.
The guys in the repair shop ask how Victa is doing and when I’ll next be bringing him in. I tell them that we’re no longer together.
Inevitably, talk turns to the spanking new ride-on mowers they have on display in the showroom. This happens around this time every year. The fact I am even in the shop, looking at gleaming garden tractors I can’t afford, having this conversation while clutching a part from one of my own double-crossing mowers confirms that nothing has changed in the few months since I last required one of them to work.
And yet last weekend the stars miraculously aligned. A period of dry weather coincided with the ancient Honda ride-on I bought from David the farmer not only starting but making it around the side garden without breaking down.
As I looked back at the freshly cut lawn, an unfamiliar glow of relief and satisfaction briefly flowered into the hope that a corner might have been turned in our relationship. Predictably, this evaporated without trace on the 40-yard drive back to the greenkeeper shed when a puncture of the front left tyre left me with same feelings of doom experienced during the last wheel-based saga, which lasted months and is captured in the short video below.
If a 16th-century court artist was to be brought back and commissioned to paint a portrait that captured the life and essence of my Honda Hydrostatic 1211, he would surely produce something like this.
And here is the contemporary version.
Always on my mind
I was hoping the weather might hold this week, giving the course a chance to dry out sufficiently for the greens to be given a quick trim with the Honda push mower bequeathed to the club by Christy Worthington, who I wrote about in Issue 4 of The Sacred Acre.
Sadly, the last few days have been utterly dreich, as they say in Scotland, and there is little prospect of doing much more than walking the puppy around the Sacred Acre, monitoring the progress of the latest subterranean attacks by the moles, and stressing about how many days remain between now and June 7th, the date of the fourth RNGC Invitational.
This time of year is the worst. Winter lingers like a bad Bovril fart when what we want and need are the first signs of spring, which fire the starting pistol for work to begin and hope to blossom.
These frequent, rain-lashed circuits of the course, pulling a tiny and reluctant collie, have given me things to chew on — much like the puppy, which is devouring everything from the lengths of lino I bought to protect the front room carpet from accidents, to socks, toilet rolls, shoes and the limbs of my youngest child.
Here’s a quick nine of what’s been occupying me on those walks:
Timing it right to put sand, seed and topsoil on the new tee (below) for what I’m thinking will be the first hole at this year’s RNGC Invitational.
The new ‘tee box’ with Apple Green and Top Green beyond Cutting down the ugly tree (above, centre) growing from the outlet into Ray’s Creek, opening up the vista of this new tee shot.
Adding sand, seed and topsoil to the rather pathetic hump I created next to Home Green by dumping a load of topsoil from the neighbouring building site.
Closely mowing a bigger area around Top green, accentuating the wicked bounce players produced by an accurate tee shot.
The approach into Molehill green - whether or not I should closely cut it or allow the patch of deep bund at the front to grow back. I like the way the course evolves each year so I might stick to my guns on this one, and try to bring the slope on approach into play.
The approach to White Apple green, which is the one closest to the gate and the clubhouse. Do I keep this short and bring another wicked bounce into play? It was an idea I toyed with last year before being talked down by the Course Consultation Committee.
Bog Bunker: a reliable source of angst Bog Bunker (above), which is the new name for the hideous swamp in the middle of the course. I cannot see how this area is going to dry out by early June. On a tour of the course this week I tried to dig a channel with my boots to drain one particularly soft section and sank up to my knee. I’m beginning to regret cutting the rushes down.
The banks of Ray’s Creek. Can they be kept under control between now and June? I like Ray’s Creek at this time of year. The one upside of all this rain is that the stream is running and the weeds, which have all but killed the watercress, don’t have a chance to take root. I’d like to open up RNGC’s signature waterway so we see more shots like this one, played by Che Guevara (aka club member Julian Milner) from the H20 at last year’s Invitational.
The alarming run of large, fresh molehills running along a little gulley between the tee to Top green and Gerry’s green. Gerry’s could well be their next target.
News from the frontline
Johnny, the trainee mole catcher who works on the building site next to our house, has made a fast start to his first unofficial training camp. While I was in London for work, and wondering whether he would actually follow through with his threats to lay traps for the burrowing vermin laying siege to Molehill green, I got a WhatsApp message from Darren, the site manager on said building site (and BBQ supremo at last year’s Invitational).
They look like they’re asleep; huge, George Foreman-like digging mitts splayed out beneath tiny, unseeing eyes
I opened it to find a photo of Johnny holding two moles (below), seemingly unmolested but dead nonetheless. Another picture shows the two moles lying on a box in the site office. They look like they’re asleep; huge, George Foreman-like digging mitts splayed out beneath tiny, unseeing eyes, filaments of hyper-sensitive hairs sprouting from their lifeless snouts.
I must confess I’m now unsure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I’m delighted Special Agent Johnny has removed two clear and present threats to RNGC. On the other hand, I’m sad that the golf course has claimed its first victims. But then I reflect on how many rodents the cats have disemboweled and think, ah well, fuck it.
I catch up with Johnny and Darren one morning. There is a palpable sense of jubilation in the air; Johnny is the cock of the walk. He launches into a fresh download of mole-catching insights. To summarise: his mentor has recently been earning as much as £9 per mole on agricultural jobs; the mentor’s latest haul was 17 moles from a single acre; farmers often pay per mole because moles can transmit disease to cattle and are also responsible for broken legs in horses; he believes there might be as few as three moles in the cell responsible for the attacks on RNGC.
Members Poll
News of Johnny’s early success is relayed to RNGC’s members on the WhatsApp group. James Bledge, Head Greenkeeper at Royal Liverpool Golf Club, and the man responsible for presenting the superb test for the 2023 Open Championship, will take up his RNGC membership this summer. Bledge finds a moleskin blazer on eBay, which is swiftly secured as a prize for the 2025 RNGC Invitational.
Cookie Jar Golf produced a brilliant film about James and the build-up to the 2023 Open Championship. Treat yourself here:
The membership is asked to vote on what the jacket should be awarded for. Early exit polls show a preference for slipping it on the winner of Club Championship, the only individual tournament on the club’s calendar, which is contested the day after The Invitational. We shall see.
2025 RNGC Invitational
Official invitations will soon go out for the 2025 RNGC Invitational meeting. Club members take precedence but RNGC does operate a waiting list. If you would like to be considered for this highlight of the extreme backyard golf season, message me by clicking the button below.