Having a wild time on the links by Kim Lockhart....

.....Found in a Western paper today.....


You know the feeling. You're immersed in the strange and new, far from home
and off the beaten track, when the familiar urge arises to push a small
white sphere along a manicured field.
When the call to golf occurred, my travel mate Glynnis and I were hanging
out close to nature at Port St. Johns, in a wild scenic pocket of South
Africa known as the Transkei.
It's a hardscrabble place, Port St. Johns. Expecting guests for dinner? You
can buy a live sheep for slaughter off a bakkie (pickup truck) on the main
street. You can fill a pail of paraffin oil to light your home there. You
can whistle up 500 people with time on their hands in a minute, if you need
extras for a movie scene. But don't go looking for a computer store.
Golf?
Wonder of wonders, yes, there is a golf course. A relic of former times,
still open for business.
To find it, we have to ask around and ask around. Then we drive around and
around. The pro shop has no cars out front, not even a sign.
Inside, a young boss lady is alone on the premises. She pulls her eyes away
from the daytime soap on the TV, gives us a shy smile and takes us behind
the security grillwork to look over the rental clubs. A pristine set of Big
Bertha drivers and Dunlop Impact irons for each of us, plus a decent handful
of balls in a shiny new golf bag. Absolutely the finest rentals we've ever
seen.
At first look, the track itself looks good ... no, great. True, there's
hardly any demarcation between fairway and rough, and the scorecard lists
the holes in metres, which is a bit of a puzzle. A map or some kind of
course markers to point the way would have been helpful, but what the hey.
The first tee is steps from the pro shop, off a gorgeous elevation into a
valley. An attractive nine-hole layout has been sculpted into a treed and
rolling landscape. Let's play!
As we're about to tee off, a figure appears in the near horizon. A tall
young woman in Xhosa tribal dress, her baby swaddled on her back, begins to
sedately cross the fairway on an informal footpath leading to somewhere. She
is either oblivious or uncaring that she has strayed into a firing zone for
hard white pellets. We wait.
Then a car pulls up with burly sportsmen in their 20s. Four guys making room
for some golf in a full day of drinking. We wait again. They stomp around
the tee box and make a lot of noise, insult each other's swings, eventually
whale their balls into the distance and take off down the hill. They are the
only other golf group we'll see that day.
Once in play, we make a discovery. From a distance, the course has a
pleasing baize colour, but it seems the grounds staff have gone on long-term
sabbatical. The turf is hard and mottled with a coarse, weedy plant that
only a ruminant might accept as grass. Winter rules take over under the hot
South African sun; we roll the ball to find a workable cushion for every
shot.
As we approach the first green, two young teenagers appear over the hill and
head in our direction. Like townsfolk in a western as strangers on horseback
approach, we watch them and wait. Would we like caddies, they ask in awkward
English? Would we ever.
Dom and Nath, as we come to know them, become a treasured part of our round.
They take up vantage points to track stray shots, pursue lost balls like
terriers. They know the layout and they give advice on club selection, too,
although after I send an 8-iron two club lengths past a green, we realize
our lads are overcompensating for our ancient years and frailty.
Oh, and it seems the course is sitting on a giant ant hill. Here and there,
their brown-dirt habitations spot the fairways like teenage acne, but the
ants are lurking everywhere, really. The sound of a golf ball coming to a
halt on the turf seems to galvanize them. Scores of ants are dancing on the
ball when you get there. Arrive late and they're inching the ball away on
their backs, like a giant dome of dung. It's an impressive feat of physical
engineering even for ants.
When you take a stance, the ants swirl up your shoes in a race for bare leg.
These were red ants - biters. Forget practice shots. We learn to smack the
ball, stamp our feet to unload passengers and make firm strides up the
fairway.
Where the ants love to ambush is inside the cup. Peer into the hole and
they're swarming there by the dozens. It made for a problem. You sink your
putt, then what? Dom and Nath knew the trick. They'd crouch down, spear the
ball with two fingers, then slam it to the ground to knock off the ants. We
decided to leave ball retrievals to them.
Soon we ask if they'd like to hit a ball. Yes they would. Turns out we are
in the company of passionate junior golfers.
In rapid order, we become part of a foursome, then the lessers in that
foursome. The teens are hitting first off the tees, barely able to wait for
us before charging up the fairway.
A fine day at the links, in short, capped by cool refreshments for all as we
settle up in the clubhouse.
Green fees are 15 rand - a staggering $3 each. The club rentals total $10.
The caddies had asked for $2 each, and we double that. As we walk to the
car, our caddies are sprawled by the first tee, killing time and praying for
some more golf to happen. Plenty of daylight left, too. But the pro shop
lady had had enough. She asked us for a ride into town so she could do some
shopping.