On Cloud Nine
Golf all started for me on a school geography field trip to the Isle of Arran in 1981, the week of Charles and Diana’s wedding. Granted a day off from studies and having no great desire to follow proceedings on the telly, a group of us headed down to the nine-holer at Lochranza, where I enjoyed my first ever round of proper golf using hire clubs. I don’t know whether my memory is playing tricks after so long, but golf seemed pretty straightforward then.
By the time I returned to Arran for my first ever golfing holiday three years later, I was all too aware that this golf lark wasn’t quite as easy as it had at first seemed. We played most of the island’s courses that week, including the nine-holers at Corrie, a delightful little layout with fabulous mountain views, and Machrie Bay, where we went round five times in one day just because we could. I still have a photo of
