BERHAMPORE GOLF COURSE (PART TWO)

Berhampore Golf Course is a public course.

The more observant reader would have read about this in the previous post BERHAMPORE GOLF COURSE (PART ONE):

Established in 1916 and based at the Berhampore Golf Course in Wellington, NZ, Mornington Golf Club was founded as a public course to make golf accessible. Originally the Wellington Municipal Golf Club, it rebranded in 1919 and has operated for over 100 years on a challenging, hilly 18-hole layout in the Wellington Town Belt.

I mentioned that the course is very hilly, has lots of gorse in the rough and the fairways slope off to the left or the right up or down steep inclines. At the edges are pine plantations which invariably means a misplaced or even an OK drive rolls off into the pines or gorse bushes. Bummer.

An advantage however is that the difficulty of the course means that it is never crowded or not that I've discovered so far. I don't play on the weekends though. Most public golf courses are teeming with wannabe golfers who have yet to learn the rules or golfing etiquette, which can be frustrating for other golfers. Berhampore in comparison is easy to get on and have a game without booking.

A big downside though is well, the public. The hoi-polloi, the plebs, the rabble, the masses, the great unwashed, the riffraff, the proles - the public in other words.

Not that I mind that much - after all I'm a member of the hoi-polloi classes myself. It's what hoi-polloi brings though to public amenities. Many years ago I wrote a post on this: ET YOU'RE FUCKED - YOU CAN'T PHONE HOME

Too often phone boxes (things of the past), bus shelters, corner shops, public toilets, playgrounds, street furniture, and automated payment machines get graffitied, vandalised and trashed by the people who most likely depend on them the most.

The same goes for public golf courses where many of the users don't give a fuck about others and ignore basic forms of caring and social responsibility - yes etiquette. For golf club members, golf etiquette is in the members' handbooks alongside club rules and the rules of golf. Simply it covers things like:

• maintaining a brisk pace
• yelling "fore" for wild shots
• repairing pitch marks on greens and replacing divots on fairways
• raking bunkers
• staying quiet and still while others swing
• preparing for your shot before it is your turn.
• limit searching for a lost ball to 3 minutes
• calling through faster groups
• not hitting until the group in front is out of range.
• replacing the flag on the green
• keeping carts off greens and tees
• Not standing on or next to the green while marking the card
• etc.

It's common sense and decency really.

I'm not an etiquette crank and a lot of the 'rules' I ignore as I don't play in groups and avoid playing when the course is crowded but one thing that really pisses me off is players not repairing their pitch mark (the dent or hole that a ball makes when landing on the green). It's so easy to do but for some reason many players on municipal or public courses thing that it's not their responsibility. I'm unsure whether this is ignorance or indifference but at some point, if they play regularly they must notice that the greens are peppered with dents and look like the results of gunfire in Beirut (or Wainuiomata shopping centre after a Saturday night).

The greenkeeper(s) at Berhampore golf course do a great job keeping the course in as good condition as their resources allow so must get pissed off that a few of the greens look like colanders.

That's it for today. Look forward to BERHAMPORE GOLF COURSE (PART THREE) coming your way soon.