Musings from the Jar
July 2023
The 151st Open: The Champion Bag of the Year
Before you start reading, I must warn you that I’m about to enter down a very niche and rather weird golf equipment rabbit hole, but its Open week and I’m here for it. During a brief escapade on the course during today’s practice round, the mad dashes of colour bobbing down the fairways of Royal Liverpool were offering up a stark, but welcome contrast to the menacing clouds drawing in overhead. The Open staff bags have arrived. Am I really writing this? Yes. We march on. Here at Cookie Jar Golf, we love stash, and it is a central cosmetic part of any major week. So, we have decided to critique and rank the staff bags produced for this year’s 151st Open at Hoylake. Don’t worry, this is all being done rigorously and scientifically, so there will be no questioning whatsoever of which bag earns the prestigious title of [...]
Hoylake to Hong Kong: Two Clubs Intertwined
Words by Charlie. In December of 1857, in Greenock, on the south bank of the River Clyde, a boy was born who would etch his name into the history of Hoylake and who would play a pivotal role in the transporting of the Royal and Ancient game to Asia. His name has understandably been overshadowed by the greats that line the oak-panelled walls at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, but he was a golfing pioneer, nonetheless. That bonnie lad was Gershom Stewart. The young Gershom’s stay in Scotland was to be a mere sojourn for he was moved to Merseyside, on the Wirral Peninsula early in his boyhood. It was during this period that he first picked up a set of brass-heads and wandered the linksland around the racecourse at Hoylake. From a young age, he was characterised as a ‘stranger in a foreign land’, a facet, perhaps, of [...]
June 2023
The Muddyman Torpedo: A Mid-Amateur Scratch Event (28th July)
'The Muddyman Torpedo ' Blackwell Golf Club Friday 28 July 2023 36 holes scratch medal Mid Amateur event (aged 25 or over on 1.1.23) Those of you who follow our content know how passionate we are about the amateur game - particularly those great anecdotes and characters who sadly seem to be less common in today’s more professionalised, sanitised world of golf. Well, in fighting for the true spirit of amateurism, we’re delighted to resurrect a famous event of the Blackwell calendar - The Muddyman Torpedo. ‘The Torpedo’ was an annual contest hosted at Blackwell by one of the legendary figures at the Club, Paul Muddyman, aka 'Muddy'. Muddy encapsulates many of the great attributes we all strive for in golf - a friendly, welcoming personality, a brilliantly sharp sense of humour and one of the most prolific short games in the country. The Torpedo was the name of the [...]
May 2023
Match Report: Spring Meeting MMXXIII
in partnership with The second Cookie Jar Spring Meeting was held on the 10th & 11th May at Moortown and The Alwoodley Golf Club. A two day handicap Stableford competition for 33 supporters, friends, and golf obsessives. Moortown & Alwoodley both hold a special place in the history of golf course architecture: Alwoodley being the first design by the great Dr Alister MacKenzie who would go on to work at Royal Melbourne, Cypress Point and Augusta National but not before Moortown which was his second creation and our first stop of the tour. The story is well documented in his seminal book; The Spirit of St Andrews (which we would highly recommend buying), however in short his first effort at Alwoodley was a universal success. Colt was requested by the club to come along and check the work that this young physician had turned his hand to, and provide [...]
April 2023
Match Report: Cookie Jar Masters Friday at Blackwell
The ‘Cookie Jar Masters Friday’ not only coincided with the Bank Holiday Good Friday, but also the best day of weather Britain had seen so far this year. Our 6th event and 4th ‘Mixer’, Masters Friday event saw 44 golfers from all over the country make a pilgrimage to Blackwell Golf Club for a traditional jacket & tie club lunch, 18 holes of golf and an evening of watching trees fall down at Augusta National. Everyone congregated outside the clubhouse to take in their first healthy dose of Vitamin D, mingle and enjoy some drinks. The course was looking sharp following a dreadful month in March which saw a truly biblical amount of rain fall. The normal anxiety about how people will mix and get on with one another quickly faded for the hosts, and seeing people come to their first Cookie Jar mixer on their own, strike up conversations [...]
February 2023
Tour Journal: Royal Hague (Koninklijke Haagsche)
A continued blog piece to coincide with our filming releases in The Netherlands... in partnership with Day 4: Koninklijke Haagsche (Royal Hague) Pulling into our hotel for the night in Wassenaar (an affluent suburb of Den Haag near the golf course), oddly enough it was the same brand of hotel we stayed in on our first night in Ghent - the sort of chain hotel in the Benelux region you would expect if Premier Inn and Village Hotels had a lovechild - ‘Van Der Valk’. We enjoyed a few scant minutes to throw our bags on the bed, a quick sink-shower and chuck a shirt on our backs. Bruce felt there was time to fill the bath and ring everyone in his phone book for twenty minutes, so after waiting patiently and exchanging pleasantries with Willem ahead of tomorrow, Sam headed back to retrieve Bruce from whatever was taking so [...]
Tour Journal: Noordwijkse Golf Club
A continued blog piece to coincide with our filming releases in The Netherlands... in partnership with Day 3 (Afternoon) - Noordwijkse Time was more than tight. I think all three of us are proud to say that we've never missed a tee time before, but this one was looking tighter than Rory’s episode at Medinah in 2012. We departed Kennemer 15 minutes before balls were meant to be in the air at Noordwijkse, Google Maps was showing the journey time as 20 minutes, and it later transpired that the Club was a further 3 miles past the pin location that we'd been aiming at... Bruce was his usual composed and efficient self, driving us safely and very much within the speed limit, whilst Sam rang Maarten to make some advance apologies. Fortunately, we had a small bit of leeway and it looked like we were going to make it. The [...]
Tour Journal: Kennemer Golf & Country Club
A continued blog piece to coincide with our filming releases in The Netherlands... in partnership with Day 3 (Morning) - Kennemer Day 3 of the Tour began with a shrill 6am alarm. Nursing sore heads, we quickly got dressed and packed up the car. This was the only day of the Tour where we would (attempt to) fit in 36 holes at two different courses - Kennemer and Noordwijkse, and two of the Jar were doing so on a heavy dose of Calvados from the night before. Thanks to some motivational quotes and general man-management from Tom, we said farewell to the lovely Utrecht house and the rubber hit the road just before 7am. One of the great features of Dutch golf is that these fantastic courses are all located (reasonably) close to one another, and so we were hopeful that in just over an hour’s time we’d be on [...]
January 2023
Tour Journal: Utrechtse Golf Club De Pan
A continued blog piece to coincide with our filming releases in The Netherlands... in partnership with - Day 2 - Utrechtse Golf Club: 'De Pan' Spirits were in the sky until approximately 5 km outside of Utrecht. The hour-long journey through the fairly anonymous Dutch motorway network had passed quite quickly, as we recounted the highlights of our day at Eindhoven, with Sam reminding the others in vivid detail how well he had played on the back nine to secure the win. Bruce was at the wheel when suddenly a light flashed up on the dashboard, warning that the tyre pressure had dramatically fallen. From the comfort of the backseat, Tom quickly dismissed this as a regular occurrence in modern vehicles and assured the others that the car was probably being overly sensitive. We decided to continue carefully to our accommodation in Utrecht just a few kilometres away. Parking [...]
Netherlands Tour Journal: Getting to Eindhoven
A continued blog piece to coincide with our filming releases in The Netherlands... in partnership with - Prelude - Rye Regular listeners of our podcast will know that a trip to the Netherlands to play golf has been a long term aspiration for the Cookie Jar Boys. In Sam’s case, it might be better described as a borderline unhealthy obsession, prompting more than the occasional outburst about how great it would be to see ‘The Old 9’ - the oldest clubs in the Netherlands, many of which were designed by the great H.S. Colt - soak in some Dutch culture, and enjoy a ‘shmoke and a pancake’ (said in his best Austin Powers’ Goldmember accent). So it was with a great sense of anticipation that our tour finally arrived. After the disastrous KLM debacle (of which more can be heard in the first episode of the Tour Diaries podcast on [...]
