The Kopu Bridge that crosses the Waihou River into the Coromandel is the gateway to Thames. This was the busiest one-laned bridge affair in the country, until 2012 when the new bridge was completed with 2 full lanes.
I stopped before the bridge to fill up the tank and get provisions, unsure if I’d find an open clubhouse at the golf club with drinks on show. The man at the gas station was stout and had a baritone tonality to his voice. Deep but smooth as he bid me a good day.
A quiet car park at Thames Golf Club, but the golf shop was open, I felt a little disquiet as I wasn’t for adding any revenue to the club on this occasion. The lady in the clubhouse shop was dressed in shocking pink and welcomed us with husky gravel in her timbre.
Was there something about this area that attracted this type? Golf club manager by day – Jazz singer by night? She was interested, like most Jazz singers. Where we were from and do we know the course?
I bought a pitch marker repair tool with the Thames Golf Club logo on to make up for the previous lack of confidence in the drink supply.
She pointed out that we start playing toward the hill and this loops back into the flat of the early part of the course. The back nine is back out towards the hill for another loop.
From the car park, I thought the course was on the flat, no she affirmed not so flat. It does venture up the hill. Not quite as testing as the Pinnacles – a local stiff climb which needs a ladder ascent near the summit to get you up top.
Near Death Experience
I played a few weeks back with a couple of older chaps. The conversation turned to which golf courses were the hardest walking. This quickly led onto which course had put my playing partner in the hospital. Waitakere was the obvious first choice. He nodded and mentioned the 18th at Maungakiekie, and how he fell over at Pupuke, ” you need one long leg and one short leg to play there every week.”
Thames Golf Club was not that bad! A few hills out the back of the course to get the thirst up but generally manageable without a cart.
A flat start and a 163-metre par 3, I was glad of this. The driver had a month of excellence but has recently hit a speed bump. Bryson Dechambeau won the US open with only a 41% driving accuracy. I was doing the same but just significantly further from the green.
I had a lesson with the trusty Ross, which gave me a focus on how to straighten the long stick somewhat. We all know it takes 2 games and some practice to get out the other side of a lesson. This was game 1 – it could spell danger!
The course here looks like a simple affair. There was only a handful of game souls out there on the day. So I was full of inaccurate assumptions that it wasn’t much of a course.
The elevation changes start a the 3rd, 15 metres up from tee to green. Then another 10 metres up on the 4th.
The 5th is from an elevated tee in case your legs hadn’t had enough. A 295 metre dogleg par 4. A sloping fairway and tricky green made this shorty much harder than it appeared on first viewing.
The course has 7 par 4’s 300 metres or under. This should make for good scoring if you can get your drive in the right place. My driver was doing okay following the lesson, but I wasn’t feeling it. Too much thinking was getting in the way.
The front nine was a success due to a good run of pars, including a nice par on the 8th – “The Drop” a 169 metre (all downhill) par 3 – followed by a nice birdie on the par 5 nineth. I felt good about my score at the 10th tee, only 3 over the card.
Our Jazz singer appeared on the 10th tee, “not as flat as you thought eh?” she improvised.
Getting Jazzy
Following on from a front nine to be (quite) proud of, the back nine took a hold of me. I slowly realised that my golf life was like being in a big Jazz band. The marriage of golf and music came to me as I hit an off-tempo slice into the trees on the 11th.
I knew my golf game was inconsistent, it was proud and daring and stupid and brilliant. I couldn’t just learn a simple rhythm and stick to it. Always tweaking or improvising. Never happy with the pop song cookie-cutter approach.
I am Jazz in a golfer. There no definitive explanation or definition of what Jazz is. The Jazz musician has a keen sense of improvisation that allows them to thwart all attempts of confinement.
A long line of questions around where the term Jazz comes from has provided no answers. One hundred years of the birth of Jazz was celebrated in 2017, the answers to the questions of its origin and what it actually is, remain elusive.
It is spontaneous, improvised, a syncopation of ideas. This is the accenting of a note that usually would not be accented. Often described as offbeat, the true essence of Jazz. If this is not my golf game I don’t what is.
Add the realisation, the “swing” is a large part of what Jazz is and I now agree with myself that golf is Jazz. The spontaneity of Jazz allows a Jazz man to have no planning, he can walk into a Jazz “Club” that he has never visited, with guys he has never seen, and just play. Golf affords the same luxury.
When you look at a hole called “Temptation” (the 5th ) or the “Devil’s Elbow” ( the 12th) – these are risk or reward holes. If you have seen La La Land – the jazz pianist Seb frets endlessly about what is and isn’t jazz – “it’s conflict and it’s compromise, it’s new every time…” Yip that’s Jazz and that’s the choice between the Driver or the 6 iron, conflict, compromise and a new outcome every time.
I stumbled through the back nine, not playing to my full potential or to the audience. But I really enjoyed this part of the course.
There were 4 cracking risk or reward drives, a short par 5 and a cool 100 metre directly up par 3, called “Summit.” This was the opposite twin of “The Drop” on the front nine.
I’m not sure how I dropped 7 shots over the nine holes to put me back in the pack, but I enjoyed the ride.
Devil’s Elbow required a clever iron off the tee and a precise wedge into the green. The course for me came to life on the back nine and filled me with the jingling sound of a great golf course.
I think running through the hole names of a course gives you a sense of what is in store. Thames had all the classics, including “Donga”, an overly used name that should be impeached. It means a dried up ravine formed by an action of water. Why is it so prevalent across the country?
I do favour the “Hopeful” and “Calamity” they no doubt are phycological warfare on the weak minded golfer.
Back to the quality of Thames Golf Club, it is a great course over some lovely countryside. If you are crossing the bridge into the Coromandel swerve off and enjoy all that this course has to offer.
