SOUTHPORT, England — The score was nil-nil, late in the first half of England-Argentina, and the golf course was empty. The driving range, the practice green, the clubhouse, the car parks — all empty. A security guard here, a security guard there, that was about it. “Good night, lad,” the uniformed gent at the press tent door, bent in his years, says to his shift’s last customer, aged 66.
It’s a flat and easy walking mile, from the course to the wee village of Birkdale, lined with red-brick shops, flats above them, with an impressive number of few tea houses and bars where Fleetwoods have sipped various beverages, hot and not, for generations. You walk by a large mural of one of the family members, Tommy, the professional golfer and a contestant in the Open Championship being here.
The course, Royal Birkdale, is a truly great links but also decidedly toff, if you know that bit of Brit-speak. (Posh, aged, superior.) There were backyard watching parties all along the walk. You could keep score by the roars and the crowd noises, much in the way you can keep track of the day’s events at the Masters, by way of groan and score. Football here is not a game for the toffs, not that it’s not. Soccer here is for everybody. England scores. The roar tells all.
The restaurants in town, or many of them, have closed early for the night, on account of the game. The bars are packed. The sidewalks are crowded. The plazas have been turned over to football.
Argentina scores. The groan ripples all along Liverpool Road.
Argentina scores. More groans through Birkdale.
The match ends. Town empties. A mile walk home. Home for the week. On to the golf.
