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Wiral, England This ancient place called Wallasey Golf Club just down Bayswater Road from Hoylake is a bit like a movie set. Like something one would find along a desert highway somewhere in the American west, a front for yesterday's heroes. One-dimensional, a framed portrait, as though you might turn the corner and find nothing behind it but today. For surely as you approach the edges, you seem to be entering a world of wool knickers and mashies. Though sparkling new cars sit in the front parking lot, they might as well be carriages. Across the street, on land owned by the golf club, the bells atop St. Nicholas Church begin to toll. A stained-glass depiction of two golfers carrying their bags is etched between Jesus walking in a cornfield and healing the infirm. The church, established more than a century ago, has an early service to allow the good members of Wallasey a chance to make their regular Sunday tee-times. Standing, then, between heaven and what sometimes feels like hell, you begin the journey. Lugging a trolley-load of weaponry, the first steps around the corner are a cautious few. The portrait, however, has depth. The bricks, and the ivy, are real and old and sturdy and clinging. The place has a feel and a smell and a sense about it, someone has been here before, someone very important.  Last year's ace Retief Goosen. And then you breathe in the overwhelming vista immediately behind the clubhouse, and you know whoever that person was surely came back time and time again. For if ever there were a golf course with built-in character, it's sprawled here, what seems like miles and miles of rolling links, the Irish sea just beyond. Keeping your balance as you stand on the edge of a dramatic plunge directly onto the 18th green is difficult. It's a rather dangerous precipice and the view is so breathtaking that the combination could be perilous. The fact that many members stand along that man-made balcony immediately following their rounds, reveling in both the ale and the aftermath, says much for their inner-workings. So who was it? Who was that someone? Old Tom Morris himself laid out these links in the late 19th century, taking what the land gave him, finding a fairway here and a green there amidst the glory of it all. But Old Tom seems to have laid out most of the tracks up and down the Isles. A familiar face caught my eye as I turned the final corner. Through a window at the rear of the clubhouse, Bobby Jones stared back. An old and familiar portrait, hanging above a fireplace near the bar, the blue sweater atop white shirt and tie, the placid, handsome half-smile. This, however, was not the reproduction seen in so many of the great one's haunts. This was the original, done as he qualified here for the 1930 British Open Championship on his way to the second leg of the legendary Grand Slam. Original and signed by Jones himself. Still, there was someone else. Jones, like Tom Morris, was as much a part of the British and Scottish landscapes as the heather and gorse. No, Watson, I sense there is more to this than what we've thus found. The course, just up the northwest coastline from Royal Liverpool and perhaps a bit overshadowed, can hold its own with the best. The first hole, edged in deep rough, down the brown valley and back up again to the green, is testament quickly. The bells continue to toll, an oddly-quieting beat.  The man behind the mark, Dr. Stableford. And there on the second tee box is the answer. "Here," reads a bronzed plaque, "on this spot in 1931, Dr. Frank Stableford invented the golf scoring system known forever as The Stableford System." Stableford. Yes. My man. The savior of every man never to approach par. Why he waited until the second hole will remain a mystery forever. Perhaps he got so fed up with the normal method of scoring after one hole that he simply said "enough is enough" and decided to conjure something better. The Stableford, as it was born, accorded points for what you score on a hole. Instead of a five (or a bogey), you would get one point. Par was two points, birdies three, eagles four. Anything the other side of bogey received nothing. The method has become modified somewhat at tournaments like the International on the PGA Tour, but it's rarely played anywhere else outside the United Kingdom. As it works here, every hole is worth two points to a total of 36 for 18. You subtract your handicap, and that is your destination for the day. If you are, for instance, a ten handicap, you need to earn 26 points to break even. Anything better is plus, anything worse is minus. Don't take an eight on that hole, friend, take zero. Think of the humanity in that. Stableford was born here. Behind the portrait, around the corner from the false front, as the bells chimed and as Jones beamed down. When you come to this part of the world, you just never, ever, know. Author, producer and writer Jim Huber spent 16 award-winning years at CNN. His accolades include an Emmy for his writing during the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta and the Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in writing. |
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