Dear Harvey,
Last weekend, we took a little boondoggle to The Isle of Wight. Our second visit.
Picture this. You wander into London Waterloo on a rainy morning, coffee in hand, the great iron ribs of the station arching overhead like the first page of an adventure you didn’t quite plan but knew you needed. No rushing. No drama. Just the gentle hum of a city stretching awake.
You board a southbound train — one of the good ones, the kind that still feels like it’s taking you somewhere, not just shuttling commuters. And in minutes, London thins. Fields take over. Villages flick past like quiet reminders that England, beneath all the modern noise, still has a heartbeat built on hedgerows, church spires, and honest work.
By the time Portsmouth slides into view — cranes, gulls, that unmistakable port-city shrug — you’re already moving at a different tempo. Portsmouth has a bit of a fighter’s chin, Harvey. The Blitz nearly flattened it. Shipyards boomed, collapsed, then reinvented themselves. It’s a city that’s been knocked down more than once but keeps turning its face back to the sea. There’s something steadying about that — passing through a place that reminds you resilience isn’t loud. It’s just what you do next.
And then the ferry
Ah, Harvey… you’d have loved this part. You walk straight from train to ferry without the usual maze of modern life. Someone, long ago, designed this handoff with elegance.
That silver-blue stretch of the Solent isn’t a crossing — it’s a recalibration. You stand on deck because some things in life deserve to be done the slow way. The mainland softens behind you. The Isle of Wight gathers ahead — chalk cliffs, Victorian rooftops, boats rocking like punctuation marks in a long, lazy sentence.
Things move slower on this little island. And thank God for places that still do. We went back for a couple of reasons this time.
- First, I had a session with my coach, Shereen Hoban, to keep shaping this book of mine — RELEVANCE — the same way you used to shape swings: quietly, patiently, without ever forcing the moment.
- Second, we wanted some tennis knocks at the Ryde Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club — a place that feels like it was accidentally left outside of time. Grass courts. Floodlights. New padel courts popping up beside old croquet lawns. Century-old iron gates. A club history that reads like the island just refused to let the modern world rush it.
But the real surprise wasn’t the courts.
It was the pro: Simon Jenkins
A strong junior tennis player and then University and into the business world as a successful trader. Then life took him on a detour: bond trading, betting, adrenaline highs, physical lows, a sleep disorder that nearly pulled the floor out from under him. A long cruise to recover. And somehow — through table tennis on a ship, through laughter from an old doctor, through scraps of grace — he found his way back to racket sports.
Now he teaches tennis and padel on this little island, and Harvey, the man teaches from scar tissue, not trophies. You’d recognize that kind of wisdom instantly.
And of course — his horse. Simon once owned, and loved, Fox Norton. What a story!
Fox Norton
A champion who thundered down the turf in the biggest races. A star. A story people cheered for. And then, as happens to all of us in some form, life turned. Injuries. Retirement. Uncertainty.
But here’s the part that goes straight into the quiet philosophy you taught.
Fox Norton didn’t fade. He found another purpose. He now lives at Greatwood — a sanctuary for horses who have nowhere else to go, and in return, they help children who feel the same way. Kids with anxiety, trauma, autism. Kids who don’t speak… until somehow a retired racehorse nudges them toward stillness, toward courage, toward presence.
That’s relevance, Harvey. A life re-purposed. A story turned outward. A second act that matters more than the first.
‘One boy latched on to a horse as he said they both had nowhere else to go’
The island handed us all of this
Shereen’s wisdom, Simon’s honesty, Fox Norton’s resilience, the simplicity of The Seaview Hotel with its naval memorabilia and warm rooms, and The Halland, where we had a Friday happy hour under art, wine, and the kind of community you can’t manufacture.
Nothing dramatic happened.
And yet everything did.
You taught that the game — any game — comes down to showing up with a quiet, steady heart. No flourishes. No theatrics. Just presence.
This island, this weekend, this odd little collection of tennis lessons, wine bars, chalk cliffs, and the ghost of a racehorse’s past, it all said the same thing back to me:
Relevance isn’t about staying on the main stage. It’s about staying in the story. Even when the story changes.
And Harvey, I’m learning to love the slow crossings, the second acts, and the small places that remind you who you are when nobody’s watching.
Make it a great Monday, Harvey,
gPage
P.S. More Isle of Wight images from an island bike tour, at bottom of this nugget: The Secret is to Show Up, Do the Work, and Go Home
“Millions of people were charmed by the homespun golf advice dispensed in Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, a sports classic that became the best-selling sports book of all time. Yet, beyond the Texas golf courses where Penick happily toiled for the better part of eight decades, few people knew the self-made golf pro who coaxed the best out of countless greats — Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, Betsy Rawls, Mickey Wright — all champions who considered Penick their coach and lifelong friend.” – Kevin Robbins, author of Harvey Penick: The Life and Wisdom of the Man Who Wrote the Book on Golf.
