I don’t know South East England at all so our 2025 season opener in Kent on 1 March was something of a revelation. We booked a cheap stay and play at Prince’s back in December, tacking on Royal Cinque Ports on checkout day, and got incredibly lucky with the weather.

I’d also not done a UK stay and play by the coast – and this place was insane. A playground for golf and golfers, with number one in the UK, Royal St George's, literally next door. After four hours plus in the car, the drive into the property via marshaled barriers guarding the estate with dinky signage for different golf clubs, and passing St George's alongside the beach track, was stunning. St George's Cross flags fluttering atop sturdy pins in holes on immaculate raised greens. Oh boy. I made full use of the huge practice facility at Prince’s while I waited for others to arrive the next morning. I could have gone home happy then.

Prince’s is extremely welcoming to visitors and well set up to cater for golfers. The bar shuts at 11pm, and the nearest shop outside of the private property is 15 minutes away in Sandwich. Everything is geared towards the golf. Prince’s has three loops of nine, 27 holes in total. We played two of the nines back-to-back each day – Shore and Dunes, the best regarded combination, on Saturday, Dunes and Himalayas on Sunday. There was a discussion on the Sunday to do another nine scramble after we’d walked off 18, but we’d had such a great day playing the immensely fun Himalayas, we decided against risking ruining it.

I remember being on a score coming down the last on the Himalayas, standing over my third shot, a relatively straightforward approach up the hill to an elevated green from the middle of the fairway, trouble lurking with runs-offs and deep, tricky bunkers. I played well all day and just needed to safely get on the green from there and two putt. Over the ball my mind went sideways for a moment and I felt like I didn’t know what to do, I was suddenly that nervous. Just hit the shot, Thomas. You do know what to do.

I’d met up with two mates from London, and a guy called James who they play with regularly and who I was keen to meet. James was a joy to play and hang out with; so much fun and similarly minded. He plays off scratch at Woburn and has a bigger swing than I do, something I was toying with drastically changing with recent lessons. Winter golf had been tough for my ego, distances are down in the cold and mud, no fluidity with multiple layers of clothing, and illness had moved my needle further back. I waste a lot of power overswinging but my sequencing and timing is much better at full tilt, and I can still square the face consistently. Fuck it.

Embracing ingrained habits meant that all weekend I was hitting compressed irons and feeling confident off the tee. I’ve said it before, but hitting off links turf is something special indeed; you get no margin for error with tight lies but the feedback is pure. I could hear James laugh up in the dunes after I struck the ball off the fairway below, sniggering at the thumping, crisp sound. The motto for the weekend was “bomb and gouge,” spray it off the tee as fast as you can and then deal with the consequences of occasionally gouging out from the rough. Unchecked aggression which reaped rewards.

My target for the weekend was to break 90, which I did twice and narrowly missed out the first day. You have to give yourself some slack when everything is as challenging and grand, though the calm and dry weather helped greatly. Scoring, however, was only a personal analysis of how you’d played, the overall experience was primarily having fun with mates and working it out together. Down there that weekend, with support from good, knowledgeable people and other networking, energised my ongoing plan of finding employment in the industry.

I’d been on the hunt for a golf or golf-adjacent job since taking voluntary redundancy last year and I was running out of road to make it happen. Not everyone gets to combine their interests with their job but, having now found my purpose, I am desperate to find a way in and for someone to give me a chance.

On Sunday morning, my second morning in Kent and now sharing a twin room, I was wide awake at 5am. Severely parched, too. I got up so as not to disturb my roommate sleeping, and had a mooch around the lobby area downstairs. The bar restaurant is closed until breakfast at 7am, there are no shops. There’s not even a vending machine or access to water outside of the toilets. It’s a beautiful place, I should stress, with views from the rooms and bar within sniffing distance of the course; I watched groups hit into a green right opposite the decking area of the bar in twilight instead of Manchester United capitulating again on the TV inside.

A night porter, Tim, took pity on me and offered up a cup of tea from the kitchen. My face melted at the gesture. Tim put the TV on for me in the bar and I had three cups with one sugar and we talked golf together for an hour.

Tim is 17 years ex-service and, having grown up and now living locally, works for the club on the night shift three days a week. He rates Prince’s better than Royal Cinque Ports, aka Deal, Deal being the town it's based, like Royal Liverpool referred to as Hoylake. And, surprisingly, above St George's. Prince’s, he says, is more forgiving, more fun, and in similar stellar condition. St George's is very exclusive and expensive, certainly out of my current budget, and you’re apparently expected to employ a caddie pushing the cost up further.

I’ve wanted a caddie round for a while now and it’s simply a matter of timing. Some people just want their bag carried, others, like myself, will want to fully nerd out and get all the guidance. I’ve been told that when a caddie hands you your putter after you’ve just hit a green in regulation is, as you’re striding down the fairway, worth the price of admission alone. I only found out on the first tee overhearing the starter at Deal on Monday that caddies were available for an international group behind who requested one.

It was too late for me by then, we were about to tee off after a rushed start following a 1-hour 40-min delay due to thick fog which refused to burn off. Visibility was down to 50 yards, you couldn’t see any of the course and the lavish practice areas were also closed. We just wanted to get going and I had plenty of time to stew on one of the most intimidating opening tee shots.

Folklore suggests that the front nine is where you make your score at Deal, with the majority of holes played with the prevailing wind at your back. But there’s one minor issue – you have to navigate the first hole before you turn downwind – a par four that plays 420 yards into the teeth of the ever-present breeze, with a public road, the clubhouse and carpark all very much in play for anything that starts to leak off to the right. The rowdy crowd on the club’s first floor balcony will be only too happy to advise whether you need to re-load.

There was no breeze to negotiate, I suppose explaining why the fog took so long to lift, but the clubhouse was certainly in play for me and my miss right with driver. I took advice as we talked it through and last minute decided to pull my mini driver, which is more reliable and straighter. I’d done my homework in the bar with a coffee twiddling my thumbs so I knew the line but asked the starter anyway for the chitchat. The bridge in the distance by the burn. I piped it right at it, “You’ll have no trouble finding that.” Cheers, skip.

I quizzed Tim about where he’d played golf – everywhere – and his stint at caddying. JCB Golf and Country Club, local to me back home, are recruiting for caddies at the moment and I had applied. JCB is an interesting golf club to say the least. Built only a few years ago in Uttoxeter at their global headquarters with no expense spared to do two things raising the profile of the already prolific brand: entertain clients, and host tournament events.

JCB created a sensational course, which has further mythical status as you cannot play there unless invited, and they are now the exclusive UK host for LIV Golf, the breakaway professional men's tour event. 2025 is the first year they are offering caddie services at JCB, which will further enhance the status of the private country club. It’s also the only course in the area local to me who might have club caddies, so this opportunity to work and train as a caddie is very much all or nothing.

Caddying could genuinely change our life. I love the idea of looping for a job, it’s currently all I can think about, and I just want the opportunity to prove that I would be good at it. I have no grand delusions of getting on someone’s bag on Tour – you never know, though, right? – but my mind has drifted 10 years into the future living by the coast with my wife and two dogs, while my son is at university, looping on a links full-time.

Meanwhile, returning home, another job lead came in. Everything happens all at once, I guess. On 1 April I will be starting as a golf technician in a Trackman golf simulator bar called Bunker, in Nottingham city centre, with a view to providing marketing support in the future. They've one already in Derbyshire, that I visited with my son to take a peek, which he loved, and they intend to open more.

The directors currently running the business know what they are doing and the market is ripe for it. I’ve done my own research and the "simulator golf market will double by 2030 with increased interest from golfers," so it’s an exciting project to be involved in. If things pan out, I will hopefully be able to do both jobs. Wish me luck.

On our last day together in Kent, my friend Matt gave me a ball maker from Augusta where he’d attended in 2023. That got me good, bless him. A consolation prize for our rollover fourball match play in the background of our rounds to make it interesting, which we lost. That marker is now in my bag for the season, and I met up with mates the weekend after to play Rushcliffe. I got to the club before 6am, an hour before my partner arrived for our 7am start, itching to get going at home boosted with confidence playing away.

I started drafting some notes for this edition at the back of the 18th, as usual, while the sun came up. Everyone milling about the club later looked delighted at the prospect of a sunny Saturday morning with dry ground and highs of 17°C. I found myself in two bunkers, which no longer seemed scary after Kent, and had an unhinged back nine of, in order: quad, bogey, birdie, double, bogey, birdie, bogey, par, birdie.

It was the best fun, warm rays on our backs, swinging freely, and champing at the bit for the new season. I’d also landed myself a golf job.

I’m cautiously concerned that April will no doubt set us back soon, like the horrors of last year, but there was no mistake last weekend: we are back. Love golf. Love my mates. Let’s. Fucking. Go.