A windswept round at Royal West Norfolk Golf Club

Tom Cox and his friend Simon at Royal West Norfolk golf club

It might be thought that golf is only good training for golf, but that’s not true. Since hitting my first ever shot in the summer of 1988, I’ve learnt all sorts of skills that I can apply to the rest of my life. Without golf, it is doubtful, for example, that I would have such high standards of lawn care. And had I never had to size up a seven-iron shot without a yardage book, it is unlikely I would be anywhere near as good at correcting people when I’m trying to find their house and they give me the wrong yardage from the post office. Whether these skills have actually made me a better person is up for debate, but that they are skills cannot be denied.

Royal West Norfolk’s anemometer

Another talent golf has given me is the ability to judge the wind. Show me a conifer at 7am and, by looking at the movement of its leaves and the sky, I will be able to give you a detailed report on the ensuing 24 hours of air pressure. I do think life would be easier if I had an anemometer instead, though – preferably a pretty, antique one like that which takes pride of place in the clubhouse at Royal West Norfolk. Today, its hand flicks between 15 and 20 miles per hour, which, I’m assured by Royal West Norfolk’s Club Secretary, is “a mere draught”.

You won’t find anemometers at many golf clubs, but at Royal West Norfolk – or Brancaster, as it’s also known – the contraption takes on great importance. Here, the wind is not so much an extra component of the course as an extra playing partner. Maybe that’s why the committee only allows players to set off in twoballs.

The only time I’ve been to Royal West Norfolk before, as a spectator, during the Faldo Junior Series, the fluctuation in wind strength was so violent that the difference in playing the 129-yard, par-three fourth from one day to the next was the difference between finessing a wedge shot and belting a two-iron with all your might. On the same hole today, my friend Simon and I fall foul of the namby-pamby 17mph breeze, our shots rising up high over the green, then falling into the bunker.

Tom Cox hits a water trap

Thankfully, a protective sea wall prevents the wind’s teeth from being even sharper. It is also this wall that forms Royal West Norfolk’s sole shield from the outside world. The open nature of links courses always makes it hard to cordon them off from society, but Royal West Norfolk, which four different members of the royal family have captained since its founding in 1892, seems almost uniquely … available. The lane that leads down to it and passes between clubhouse and first tee is also one of the two main routes for holidaymakers to get to the beach from Brancaster village. The only other course I can think of that seems so intertwined and at ease with the landscape is the Old Course at St Andrews.

Like the Old Course, playing it can feel like being inside a golfing watercolour from a century ago. But unlike St Andrews, playing a shot from its closely mown fairways feels as good as biting into a perfectly baked fresh doughnut.

I’m not quibbling with the standards of Old Course greenkeeping, but Royal West Norfolk’s are something else: baked, seemingly, from a secret family recipe involving the perfect mixture of grass, earth and something else, which might actually be Victoria sponge. Every time I take a divot, I’m tempted to sneak it into my bag, take it home and place it on my mantelpiece.

The south side of the course is protected by salt marshes, which today are murky and threatening, and linger in the mind darkly, even when you’re facing away from them towards the more important business of getting your ball out of a giant bunker. Five times on the front nine, Simon and I lash balls out of bounds and into the marsh’s squelchy depths. There is relief when we manage to hit the fairway on the eighth, until we realise this is the saltiest of all: a dogleg par five bisected by a tidal marsh, which proves a fearsome prospect with the wind coming into our faces and from the left.

But Royal West Norfolk knows how to forgive, as well as how to flummox. Its back nine is surprisingly short and, with the wind helping, provides a chance to repair some of the damage and make the most of the turf’s erogenous potential. These putting surfaces were designed for low, bumped approach shots that use the contours creatively.

A Royal West Norfolk yardage booklet

Unfortunately, I wasn’t designed for such a thing. However, I find that Royal West Norfolk complements my high-flown, Americanised game. I know I’m cheating slightly, but that doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of pinching lob wedge shots off tight lies on the 17th and spinning each of them back 20 or 30ft, to make a birdie and par.

It’s too little, too late, since Simon, taking the lower, more traditional route into the greens, has already secured his victory. But then I’ve never really held with those people who say “you don’t get pictures on the scorecard”. Sometimes you really should be allowed to paint pictures on your scorecard. Mine from Royal West Norfolk would feature me at the moment of ball-turf contact on that final wedge shot, in dusky light, with the glow of the clubhouse in the background. If you looked closely through the window, you would be able to see the barmaid pulling my pint of Guinness. With artistic licence, I might also add a couple of loose impediments flying through the air overhead, just to show that, by normal golfers’ standards, it was pretty windy.

Tom Cox is the author of the golf books ‘Nice Jumper’ and ‘Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia’

pursuits@ft.com

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The details

Royal West Norfolk is inaccessible at high tide. See www.rwngc.org