#19 Keep calm and carry the cup home

Sunday's win in the Cawley Challenge Cup was totally unexpected. Not the winning necessarily (I can play a bit, so I like to think) but the the way I got over the line. A few of the previous golf lessons came into play as they flooded back. And the big lesson is...

Keep Calm and Carry On

You must be bored seeing the poster with its stiff-upper-lip font that’s been slapped on mugs, tea towels and your socials for decades. What you might not know is that it was designed by the British government in 1939 to be distributed in the event of the invasion that never was.

So, the artwork sat in a box and ended up in a Northumberland bookshop for sixty-odd years. That's until someone found it in 2000 and the internet did its viral thing. Which means the most-memed slogan in history spent an age doing diddly squat before anyone saw what to do with it.

As a call to action, it's golden. Simple, stoic, salient and just what you need to hear standing over a three-footer with a Cawley Cup win on the line. Especially given three straight bogeys is not opening with the flourish you dream of when you've been off the boards for five years. But somewhere in the middle I didn't force the issue I’d created for myself and just played what was in front of me, shot by shot.

It's just any old club comp to plenty of people (most members don’t even play in these and if you’re reading this on LinkedIn, you definitely couldn’t care less) but holding a trophy fought over since 1911 (and giving it a much-needed polish) felt like holding a slice of history that I'd sort of gatecrashed.

Five years really isn’t that long, in any case.

I was reminded of that by Nick who's put in thirty-five as a member, and this week called it a day. Nick's not the sentimental type. He'd tell you straight if your drive wasn’t. But he is generous too, always wanting you to do well. Encouraging words don't need thirty-five years to land, they land immediately and live long after they're spoken.

There's been another kind of shift at Leatherhead too and new faces everywhere. Memberships up, tee times a bit trickier, and the car park fuller on a Tuesday morning than it used to be on a Friday. A good problem to have, I suppose.

A little Smirke

Tomorrow, Leatherhead plays for the Charles Smirke Trophy. It’s almost exactly a year since I wrote about the man himself.

If that name means nothing to you yet, the short version: one of the greatest jockeys British racing ever produced, four Derby winners, a Hall of Fame career and, by most rankings, the greatest jockey never to be crowned champion. He spent his later years playing golf (another fierce competitor by all accounts) at Leatherhead till he ran his last race.

That's the thing about a club like this. The car park and faces change and the trophies tarnish, but some things hold their shape regardless. Like a name on a board since 1911 (or the one just added), a trophy played for every year whether or not anyone stops to ask who it's named after. New members inherit that whether they know it yet or not. Worth knowing.

Back to the back-to-back-to-back bogeys

Clearly, I'm no Tommy Fleetwood, though I did write about his win at East Lake and something must have rubbed off, right? Of course, I've not made anywhere near his 164 failed attempts. No one can control which putt drops, only the turning up for the chance for it to drop in the first place.

Three down after three, I had a choice to keep playing for the round I wanted or play the one in front of me. I chose the second, stayed patient, pushed when the pins gave me a chance to, and ended up with a shiny cup on the shelf (next to the hole-in-one trophy which is another story, thanks for asking.)

Bobby Jones put it better than I ever will:

”Golf is the closest game to life because you take the bad breaks with the good ones, and you play the ball where it lies.”

Forget the outcome. You are never in charge of that. Keep calm. Carry on. And the cup might be coming home, if you're lucky. And if it's not this year, there's always tomorrow and the day after that, if you're extra lucky.