PLAYING THROUGH

Canadian author Gillespie makes his US debut with a pleasing, personalized tour of one of golf’s woolly precincts, the links in the Scottish town of Gullane.

In the mid-1980s, Gillespie was a graduate student at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland; as a member of the varsity golf team, he got the opportunity to play some fabled courses. Having sampled their elemental pleasures, he knew that his father, a stalwart working man who enjoyed golf for the pleasure of the game itself, would likewise revel in the play, but it was not to be: his father died of a stroke before they could walk a round in Gullane. Here, we travel through the year that Gillespie spent in Gullane with his wife and daughters in the company of two veterans, Jack and Archie, who between them have a century’s experience on the town’s course. They’re guys who consider 15 rounds with the same ball to be standard practice. They also have much to say when the club is considering going public; the author himself has decided opinions about those who think golf ought to remain the private reserve of the well-to-do. From his father’s canny card playing, Gillespie learned the art of reserve and a touch of humility when it comes to acknowledging one’s shots. But he can’t share with Dad the pure and utter beauty of the linksland: wind-wracked, swelling, grassed-waved, the sea just there, green and gold and full of sky, blue or gray. Gillespie endeavors to take the course’s measure, but its hoariness keeps him at arm’s length. In the end, he is just happy to have had the time there with his family and to have imagined how his father would have addressed the links, and his son’s life.

A heartfelt slice of time, twining Gillespie and his father’s love for each other with their love for the game of golf.