#TwoBits: ‘Tis the set of the sails

One ship sails East and another West
By the self-same winds that blow,
‘Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

I came across this poem “Tis the Set of the Sail” after a gloomy week. The words were a lighthouse seen from far or, to offer another cliché, a light at the end of a long tunnel. A very good friend, Vaughan McDonnell, had suddenly taken sick and died.

Vaughan, Neal Roberts, Malcolm Mann and I golfed together at Umhlali for about 25 years. Most Saturdays we teamed up for a round of not very good but hugely entertaining golf. Four quite different characters, but we never seemed to tire of one another’s company, the constant jokes, especially Vaughan’s humorous stories and his legendary capacity for Castle. “There is no bad beer,” was his motto.

This week I am reminded of our boys’ trip – the four of us – to Scotland in 2007 to play St Andrews. It was a lovely experience, and my story comes from our first game on the Old Course, the sacred shrine of golf.

All went well until we came to the 11th hole. This is a medium-length par three that plays to an elevated green, guarded by a deep bunker named Strath. It is the deepest bunker on the course. Standing in it, you can’t see the putting surface above your head. As luck would have it, Vaughan played his tee shot straight into it.

Our Scots caddy, a cheerful ginger fellow, then told us the story of legendary golfer Bobby Jones, considered one of the greatest golfers of all time, who achieved the unprecedented “Grand Slam” in 1930 by winning the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, British Open and British Amateur in the same year. But the 11th at St Andrews defeated him.

Jones was making his debut in the Open Championship in 1921 – and struggling. Thanks to the 11th hole, he never finished his round. Instead, after four earnest attempts to escape the bunker, Jones tore up his scorecard and walked off the course. Jones later called the episode “the most inglorious failure of my golfing life.”

Well, enter Vaughan McDonnell. Generally a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, he welcomed difficulty and had a deft hand with a sand wedge.

He got down on the sand in the darkest depths of the Strath bunker and yelled out “Watch out Bobby, here comes Vaughan!” and took a swing. Out popped the ball on first try, soaring majestically and plopped onto the green a few feet from the hole. Which I snapped just at the right moment, as you can see from my photo.

We called him Bobby for a long time after.

What I enjoyed about Vaughan was his “get up and go” attitude, always ready for a challenge. Failures happen, but you just move on. Bad things happen. But you really can’t allow those to determine your life. We have to hope for better outcomes.

So this last verse of the poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox is testament to Vaughan and an attitude that we could all do well to emulate:

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
‘Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

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