After I've putted I wander over to look down into the ravine and a thought pops into my head: wouldn't it be great to find a golf ball. I find golf balls in the rough all the time and often I leave them where they lie because they're old and cut up. But today a fragment of my childhood mind is awakened and I feel again the not-yet blemished thrill of the search for something lost, and as I look into the quarry I see a vivid image of me down there forty-five years ago.

I crouch down low, look over the top of my ball and stare into the teeth of a wild Welsh wind, a wind that is wresting rivulets of sea-salted tears from my eyes and strewing them across my numb cheeks. I’m searching for some understanding of how the ball will move once I've struck it, but everything is just a watery blur.

 ‘Pilgrim’ and ‘Golf’ - for some, a strange configuration of words; for others, the association makes perfect sense. For a certain type of golfer the word ‘pilgrim’ will feel like home. Perhaps this is the first time you have come across it in the context of golf but when you read it you felt like a long-searching sufferer with an accurate diagnosis for the first time. Yes, that’s it - you may think - at last somebody understands me; I understand myself. A pilgrim.