Growing up in East Fife tends to leave its mark on a boy. Besides the chip on my shoulder, I also developed a soft spot for golfers. Leven, standing as it does at the front door of the 'world' famous East Neuk, is often bypassed by the traveller. This is their loss for it boasts one of Scotland's best kept sporting secrets. I am referring to the Leven links golf course. Jointly owned by two clubs, the Leven Thistle and the Leven Golfing Society, it is used as a qualifying course for the Open when it comes to St. Andrews. A tough, unforgiving course, liberally sprinkled with dollops of whin and thick tangled rough, it had broken many a man and on one occasion actually broke my 7 iron!
So, as a young boy growing up around this course, golf kinda got into my blood. My Dad was very active in the Leven Thistle, progressing from mere member to Secretary, to the giddy heights of Captain. I am sad to report that his standing on the course and those off the course did not follow the same trajectory. He stubbornly remained an 18 handicapper. I often played a few holes with my Dad and I think it was there, on that golf course, that I learned something about what it is to be a man. Besides learning how to swear I also saw a normal man struggling with a game that was obviously impossible to master. Time and time again my Dad would start his round by hitting the ball straight off the tee into the burn not 20 meters in front of us. This was humiliation indeed as the first tee sat alongside a busy promenade, bustling with Glaswegian tourists with hair like Irn Bru and for whom golf was a foreign country, a bit like England. These people would stand by the fence and watch in silence, seemingly out of respect for the player and the meditative state into which he seemed to be entering, but in reality, like on so many of the occasions when we stop and observe our fellow beings in their endeavours, we are hoping to see them make a royal arse of themselves.
Despite repeated failure and humiliation in front of strangers and club members, my Dad never gave up. Sure he would make me run and try and get the ball out of the river while he teed up the next ball, but he always got that next ball out of the bag, put it back on the tee and had another go.
It was the summer of 1979 and a man called Severiano Ballesteros Sota or 'Seve' to his millions of friends, had just won the Open at St.Andrews. With his good looks and muscular approach to golf, there was no reason to dislike him. In my family we loved him so much we even named our cat after him. I once managed to actually come into physical contact with Seve, the man that is! We were at a pro-celebrity golf match, in the days before celebrity had been become a dirty word. It was all quite low key and friendly. You could actually get quite close to the players. So there I was walking alongside Seve, just a few feet from his bronzed, muscular forearm. My Dad is elbowing me and saying, "Go on touch him, go on." And I'm thinking, "That's a bit weird, no thanks" when my Dad grabs my arm and hits Seve with my soft white Scottish hand. Fortunately Seve was great but not Christ and he didn't stop the crowd and demand to know who had touched him. I guess in all the jostling any number of people could have done it. He just strode on, smiling and waving. Very unChrist-like, but still seriously cool.
It is strange but when I think of Seve the man, I always end up thinking of my Dad. It might just be the golf connection but I sense that deep down there is another link, something more fundamental, more basic. I think in the end it boils down to what it means to be a man. My Dad, a fairly normal man playing off 18 and Severiano Ballesteros, a golfing colossus, both deeply influenced me as a young boy. They both came to represent heroic forms of masculinity. One the one hand my Dad, struggling on against the odds, getting knocked down but always 'getting another ball out the bag' and playing the game. One the other is Seve, handsome and strong, taking the challenges in his stride with seemingly effortless skill.
When you grow up, most of your heroes start to loose their cartoon status and become real human people with flaws and cracks just like you know you yourself possess. This brings some comfort against the howling wind that life starts to blow at you but it is a bitter loss none the less. At the end of boyhood, when we are just beginning to try on the images and roles we have seen other men display, we also see that these pictures which have played across the screen of our childhood are just an illusion, a movie, a play, a game.
Seve Ballesteros Sota grew old, stopped winning and finally, at the age of 54, died from a brain tumour. My Dad looked after me and my sister after my parents split. He worked all kinds of jobs, made all kinds of sacrifices. He suffered, was broken but came back. I couldn't see it at the time because I was still really just a selfish little boy. I grew up and can now appreciate what he did. When all the rubbish I've talked about masculinity and role models is stripped away, there he stands, his failings eclipsed by his love for me. When I understood that, at the age of 40, that was the end of boyhood.
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