It took us a good while to cotton on to this idiosyncrasy. Typically I don??t find ??Strayan proper nouns to be overly nuanced on the pronunciation front ?? what you see is usually what you get. Like Australians themselves, come to think of it. But Lake Karrinyup on the outskirts of Perth is a different beastie, straight out of the Gullane (??Gill-In?) or Hunstanton (??Hunstan?) school of weirdness: all together now, ??Karrin-Nupp?. In the days preceding our visit to this illustrious icon of West Australian golf, I was beginning to wonder if the locals were orally challenged, or whether they just spoke so quickly that you couldn??t hear the elusive Y. Nope. By the time the penny dropped I??d already made a buffoon out of myself probably a dozen times (what??s new?). If anything I??d embraced the Y and given it extra emphasis.
Let??s put semantics to one side for now though, and talk about TKE (as I have creatively dubbed The Karrinyup Experience, acronyms being the latest party trick in my arsenal of Trying To Keep Your Attention For Just A Few More Weeks). You won??t hear much dissent against claims that LK is the premier Gowf Establishment in WA. And so it was with great excitement that I opened my Macbook to discover an email from one Ken Wong, inviting us to join him and mate Alan for a hit. The delightful novelty of receiving these emails has in no way faded.
Because the ??Strayan private clubs in their deity have decided to depart from 14th century traditions only gradually, ankle socks just don??t cut it with shorts. You need mid or full length jobs ?? white, of course ?? concealing the indecency of your ankle bone if you don??t want a scrap with the Gestapo. (No prizes for guessing who wins that scrap too...). Anyway I??ve now come to accept this ridiculous prejudice against ankle bones as just plain ??Strayan and no longer gripe about it daily as I once did (quite a feat for a Scot). Instead I prefer to stir the pot by wearing inflammatory logos. The most recent addition to the underwear pocket of my ??pack is a pair of Royal Fremantle numbers, a generous gift from host Ned Stokes (suspect he just didn??t want to wear them again after my athlete??s foot riddled paws had been in ??em). I believe wearing them to Royal Perth and LK is akin to wearing a Celtic strip in The Wrong Part Of Glasgow. Fortunately however I didn??t get stabbed for the indiscretion.
The first thing that struck me about LK was the family atmosphere. It??s a country club, you see ?? although some CCs can be a bit stuffy. Not this one. Little tykes running around or at least threatening to burst into a purposeful step. The short course at their disposal. A big red see saw in the courtyard. (Well, not the see saw actually). But you get the point. If I was a kid in Perth, Karrinyup would be the club I??d hope ??daddy? belonged to.
When we arrived there was a champagne breakfast going on ?? as far as I could make out, for no particular reason. Perhaps this crowd were celebrating not being disturbed by the Christ The King congregation??s procession that passed Ned & Martha??s front door step? Hmmmmmmm. Anyway we didn??t disturb them, instead opting to make full use of the empty dining room inside. Chicken wraps and a bottle of Kooyong pinot noir provided ample stomach lining for a birdie festival. Or so they were meant to. From our vantage point we spotted a garrison of lady golfers marking their territory on the 1st tee. Judging by the brightly coloured Ralph Lauren uniforms they were donning with distinction ?? I know I??m entering dangerous territory here, but I find that the more immaculate a woman is turned out on the golf course, the less immaculate her shots tend to be ?? we all agreed it would be quicker to tee off the 10th. Several other thickets of men also had the same idea (corroborating my theory).
Straight away we got a flavour of what LK was all about. Namely sharp changes in altitude demanding soundness of judgment and distance control. Be it elevated tee shots to fairways 40 yards below or pitches up into the clouds, pure striking is the imperative. Fortunately for me most holes that veer one way or t??other veer left, allowing me to snap a few hooks and look like I meant it. No doubt Ken and Alan being perceptive men of intelligence could pick a Gid Bad Ain when they saw ??un tho. However.
As you can see below, Ken is a cautious creature and deviates from the red lines painted around the course only when absolutely necessary.
The day grew steamier and so too did the shadows under the pits of our arms. Gazing deliriously at the supernatural ??Black Boys? (these days known instead as ??Grass Trees? in the interests of healthy race relations) I was not myself but rather Johnny Depp??s character in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. God they are strange things. A bulbous ball of tussock grass forms the bulk of the ??tree? ?? suspended some 3-6 feet off the ground ?? and out of that grows a cactus-like organism (at 2cm a year) reminiscent of a furry popsicle. See below. Also see the marvellous pink flowers whose name as ever escapes me.
Between the grass trees then and the ??roos roaming the fairways (Joeys in tow) it was a surreal episode of heat exhaustion ??Strayan style. One Joe in particular caught my eye as he searched for his car keys (below).
Ken & Alan as it happened were tremendous company. Because Michael??s been diagnosed about 56 times this year as having a gigantic melanoma on his nose, I had fun drawing Alan into offering some dermatological advice. Cut it off, he suggested. I agreed and offered my services as anaesthetist, surgeon, post-op nurse and therapist. Having been confronted with the unseemly brown growth for 328 days now I??d be glad to see the back of it to be honest. But I digress.
After putting the final nail into the coffin of my calf muscles by walking up the 8th and 9th (our final holes and bonnie ones at that) it was a minor miracle I made it to the bar. Then again we were thirstier than Dodgy Itself (wonder how he??s getting on these days; whether the Swiss got across the US?). Perched in the courtyard with a pint of Cascade Pale Ale I took in a deep breath, surveyed the situation, and acknowledged to The Idiot Within that Life is never going to be the same again!
Ken being the consummate gentleman took us back to his place to clean up before dinner. At the local Chinese joint we devoured enough food to feed Sezchuan Province for a week. And sipped a couple of bottles of Australia??s finest red (Ken??s quite the collector / aficionado, and fortunately it was BYO). The long and the short: we were entertained famously by this delightful pair of men; our Sunday at LK will live long in the memory bank. There??s even talk of joining up for a few days?? golf next year on the Mornington Peninsula!
A thank you of Burj Khalifa proportions, then, to The Good Doctors. See you when we see you!
(A dehydrated, sunburnt and delirious) JP
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