TRAVEL: A trip through Scotland's Best |
Upon the request of many readers over the years, Golf Guides USA visited Scotland in order to experience the homeland of golf and report back our findings. What follows is a single narrative of that virgin trip, told as it happened to a traveling group consisting of both golfers and non-golfers. The focus, of course, is on all the great golf we played – yet it was a very personal experience, and far from comprehensive. Certain places, including golf courses, are highlighted in bold, if you wish to skip ahead. Further inquires about golf in Scotland can be forwarded to
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Follow Brett on twitter, @BrettCyrgalis
By BRETT CYRGALIS
The lords of life, the lords of life,– I saw them pass In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim . . .
It’s all a little chaotic when we land. The man meeting us at the airport is not the man who is expected. The big, soft-covered bags carrying our golf clubs are slow to come out on the baggage carousel, and when they do, they seem heavier and more cumbersome than when we packed them into the van on our way to Newark International.
Now it’s adrenaline carrying these aching legs and cracking knees. Rarely in my 26 years has so little sleep translated into my overtired body moving with such purpose. So we drag ourselves and wheel our luggage to the van in the parking garage, following our part-time leader, Ed, with the first great Scottish burr to hit our ears. He is taking us to our soon-to-be-leader and his boss, Roy, who waits 45 minutes up the east coast of Scotland in St. Andrews.
We’re in the van and we’re moving, and as Ed points out where his house is located in the town of Darsie, all I can do is stare out the window at the rolling fields and think of The Eden, Hell Bunker, the Valley of Sin . . . And we keep moving, all four of us. My father and I have talked about this journey for over two years; our pilgrimage to golf’s Holy Land. Although it took some time for me to convince him that where we’re headed is truly Mecca, it finally got through and the thin smile on his face from the front seat of the van is tantalizing. The others are two women along for the ride, both who delight in seeing and experiencing the world outside of their comfortable New York circles. Even if this is a country that always expects cold and rain, both my mother and my girlfriend have packed admirably and are ready to laugh. After countless traffic circles and field after field growing with bright yellow grape seed (which Ed tells us the Scottish government pays farmers to plant), we finally see the spire of the Holy Trinity Church in the distance, with the low-lying medieval town sitting below it in the mist. Before I can think, we’re upon it, and I’ve already glimpsed the Swilcan Bridge behind a row of buildings. Just when I’m about to jump out of my seat to ask Ed to stop the van, he does. And he couldn’t have picked a better place to do so. Looking at the entrance to the Macdonald Rusacks hotel, it seems like some understated lettering was placed on the façade of a 200-year-old gray stone building, and the beautiful stained glass windows that adorn the foyer give you only a slight indication of how elegant the inside might be.
But before we can get in, we are accosted by Roy Anderson, the man who owns and operates McLaren Travel and will be our driver and guide for this trip. He has agreed to drive us all over Scotland for the next week, taking us from one coast of the country to other and back again. He is slight man, standing about 5-foot-9 and skinny as a stick. He’s well put-together, with moderately gelled dark hair, pinstriped pants and a sleek gray pullover, while carrying an air about as if he knows something you don’t. Most of the time, it’s because that’s just the case, and he often tells the said thing while looking away and clandestinely dragging an occasional a menthol cigarette, as if not to make too much of his exclusive and extensive knowledge. Those assets of Roy's are uniquely Scottish, and make him the ideal tour guide while doing this - or any - golf trip to the British Isles. What we learned over the next week was the Roy is unparalleled in terms of the information he has about both golf courses and his native country. He delivers everything with a dry comedic touch and a charm that made our trip exponentially more enjoyable. He's a caring man, with a warmth that warranted a hug when we parted ways. When Golf Guides plans its next trip, probably to Ireland, there is only one person we will consider calling. But now he’s got something important to tell us. “Ray,” he says to my father in his toned-down accent, “Aye’ve git a bitter tee tome fa ‘ya today.” My Dad shoots me a quizzical look. We were supposed to tee off on the New Course at St. Andrews around 3 p.m., which was the time allotted to us when we hopefully applied for it nine months prior. How we got the time in the first place is quite easy, but it’s also because we had a bit of luck. There is about a two-week window open every September when any golfer with an official handicap of 18 or better can apply, through the St. Andrews Links Trust website, for a tee time on the Old Course. You give them a block of days when you would like to play, and they send you either a date with a tee time or a letter saying better luck next year. (The latter of which we received the previous year.) If you do get assigned a date on the Old Course, you are also required to play on one of the other six courses that are part of the St. Andrews compund. Turns out it's almost necessary to understand the place, as the ancient links are so much more than just the Old Course. For this trip, I chose the New Course as our other track, which is an Old Tom Morris design and opened in 1896. But now it’s about 10 a.m. on a cool but bright morning in late April. My Dad and I, along with our counterparts, were planning to check in, shower, have something to eat and breathe for a minute. Then we would head out for our first Scottish golfing experience, and the girls would head out to engage the royal town of St. Andrews. Roy has a different idea. He had a foursome from Atlanta get their flight delayed, so we can tee off at 11:30. Ok, so no shower. We couldn’t check into the hotel yet anyway, our two rooms not being ready. So we said yes to the new tee time, shimmied into a small storage room, shuffled through our luggage for some suitable golfing clothes, got our clubs and cleats out of the travel bags and headed for the Links Trust clubhouse, about a driver and 5-iron away from the backdoor of the Rusacks.
After changing in a small locker room in the bottom floor of the hotel, we walked out into the open air to get the first real sight of the hallowed grounds. I pressed against the white picket fence that lines the right side of the 18th fairway of the Old Course, which joins with the first fairway to make for a huge field of beautifully, short-cut grass, about 200 yards wide. In the distance was the West Sands, a public beach where the penultimate scene of Chariots of Fire was filmed; to my right was the imposing structure of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club’s clubhouse, with its Rolex clock just ticking away; and to my left snaked the Swilcan Burn, traipsing over it the famed Swilcan Bridge, smaller than expected and made of pale stones that ached with history. I’d like to say that the smile on my face was that of some sort of instinctive recognition, as if in my DNA somewhere I knew this was a place where I belonged. But I have no idea if I was smiling, or frowning, or laughing like a lunatic. I was focused on running the film in my brain in order to document this scene, crystal clear in my mind’s eye, as if never to be too far from recall.
Use and surprise, Surface and dream . . .
The Links Trust clubhouse is new. And it’s not just new in relative terms, like the “new” course, which is 115 years old. In 2004, the town of St. Andrews got into a bureaucratic battle. Because the people of the town purchased the links in 1894, the running of the one municipal property that financially supported just about the entire town was in jeopardy. So the St. Andrews Links Trust was concocted, an organization made to deal with all things concerning the links and their business. (The Royal & Ancient Golf Club, which was founded in 1754, does not own a golf course. They preside over the entire world of golf outside of the U.S. and Mexico, yet play their rounds on the fully-public courses of St. Andrews, of which their clubhouse overlooks.) The Links Trust now needed a clubhouse, so one was built directly next to the Himalayas putting course, to the right of the first green of the Old Course and adjacent to the first tee of the New.
“Coffee,” I said to the waitress in the clubhouse, rudely not looking at her but unable to avert my gaze from the huge bay windows that face out over the links. By the time the coffee settled – followed by an egg sandwich with Scottish bacon (more like fried ham) – I was rolling putts on the putting green next to the tee. A young Australian man with a caddie bib walked up to me and introduced himself. “Tome,” he said. “Hi Tom, I’m Brett.” “Alright then,” Tom said, “cheers.” “Okay. . . Will it be a problem if I play from the back tees? I’m about a 3-handicap.” “No, no. No problem at all. Cheers.” Succession swift, and spectral wrong, Temperament without a tongue . . .
As I teed my first ball up on St. Andrews New Course, I noticed in the tight-cut grass of the tee box a small flower. It looked like a dandelion, but 1/100th the size. Turns out they are all over the peninsula that reaches out into the Eden Estuary that is home to six of the seven courses at St. Andrews – the Old, New, Jubilee, Eden, Strathyrum and Balgove. The Castle Course, a David McLay Kidd design opened in 2008, is up in the hills a bit.
These little flowers are not overly noticeable, but if you look hard at the turf, you can spot them everywhere. That first one brought quite a smile to my face, and I had to stop for a quick second to realize where I was and what I was about to do. I thought of a passage from the famous golf writer Bernard Darwin’s Golf Courses of the British Isles, published in 1910, when he says that on the New Course the “daises were growing freely, and daises, though extremely charming things in themselves, are not pleasant to putt over.” I read that passage many times, including on the plane while I sipped my Dewars. I wondered if these little flowers were the same ones Darwin once referred to. Probably not, right? I wondered . . . And so I slid my tee securely into the ground, and I immediately felt something very different than American soil. It was sandy, and firm, and as you touched the grass you could almost feel how old and strong the roots were, how many years of golf they hosted and how many great men and women have come and gone over their ancestors. It felt sturdier than American grass, so dense as if it would take a lot of force to move it. Shaking the cobwebs loose, I hit a 4-wood, as per Tom’s instructions, and found the first fairway. My dad cut a driver right of the fairway, and we were off.
By the time we got to the third green, we got our first real taste of St. Andrews golf. This 511-yard dogleg left par-5 shares a putting surface with No. 15, a par-4 coming in the other direction. As I chipped my third shot on, a ball came bounding across the surface from the 15th fairway and finished about 30 feet short of our flag – almost 70 feet from theirs. My dad made his journey from up over the hill to the left, where he was playing his third shot from a far-off-line position somewhere on the opening holes of the adjacent Old Course, and he crested the mound to see three balls on what looked like one huge green. Then he saw the second flag in the distance, and just laughed. It was interesting, for sure, and something we would have to get used to.
After that third hole, the fourth was a short par-4 with a wonderful approach shot, over a trio of bunkers that are 20 yards short of the green and are atop a hard slope that runs to the putting surface. Then the New Course really hit its stride around the eighth hole, which has a great green complex. A par-5 of just 481 yards, the green is defended by two huge mounds, 20 feet high, on either side, both with deep, small bunkers at their base. On this day, the pin was tucked into the left side of the green, and was completely invisible to an approach shot that wasn’t from the right rough. I played from the left rough, and had to do a double take before trying to flip a wedge blindly up over the mound and bunker for my third. “This is one of the coolest shots I think I’ll ever hit,” I said to Tom, feeling like a 10-year-old getting autographs at Yankees Stadium.
“Yea, it’s something,” Tom said with a laugh. “Knock it close, huh. Cheers.”
I flailed it right and three-putted for a bogey six. Which was soon forgotten stepping to the ninth tee, one of the prettiest spots on the whole peninsula. It is a demanding hole, a long par-3 of 225 yards that plays uphill, with the estuary all down the left side and broken ground if you go too far right. The firm fairway swells just about 20 yards short of the green, and then falls into a punchbowl putting surface, making for a enjoyable walk – a subsequent ball sighting – if you’ve hit your tee shot over the hill on anywhere moderately on line. The tenth started taking us back home with a blind tee shot aimed a white stick set on the sandy dunes. When I teed my ball up, I thought the top of the stick was painted black. When I made contact and looked up, I saw a crow come flying off the stick with serious urgency. We all laughed hysterically. The back nine is filled with holes of moderate length and difficulty, and is highlighted by two par-3s: the 157-yard uphill 13th with a two-tiered, backstopped green, and the 229-yard 17th, with a bunker short to make the putting surface seem closer. The course from the back tees gets to reasonable 6,625 yards and plays to a par of 71, finding itself somewhere between difficult and easy. Fair is a word often associated with this track, and that’s apt enough. We can’t forget that the New Course sits in the shadow of the most important piece of land in the history of golf, and no matter how good a job Old Tom Morris did laying it out over a century ago, it could never be the Old Course. Back in Darwin’s book, he goes on to say: “No doubt the new course does suffer some considerable injustice, and always will do so. It has ‘relief course’ plainly written all over it.”
When I reread that on the plane, I couldn’t wait to get out and see the course and make my own judgment. “Relief course” is a pretty harsh term, and I had a feeling Old Tom wasn’t about to build a pitch-and-putt on this sacred land. Now, after playing it, I disagree wholeheartedly with what Darwin said. The New Course isn’t spectacular from first tee all the way through the 18th green, but there are some holes that are more than worth the price of admission. It certainly was no relief course. And I was surprised at how much I liked it, maybe because I couldn’t stop smiling thinking about where I was – and maybe Darwin had lit a small fire under my critics seat. No matter, I found out early on in this trip that sometimes here in Scotland, the best things are those you weren’t expecting.
WHEN I got back to the hotel room, my girlfriend was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the TV playing a subdued British game show. She had spent the first couple hours of a vacation in a new country cooped up in a room, albeit a spectacular one.
Looking out the window, it's clear the Rusacks hotel is the ideal place to stay while in St. Andrews. When the Open Championship does come to town, every five years of so, most of the professionals stay at The Old Course Hotel, which juts out into the 17th fairway (the Road Hole) of the Old Course. The Old Course Hotel was bought by the Kohler family in 2004, and is an outstanding five-star resort, gym and spa included, with many different dining options.
The Rusacks, on the other hand, is on the road to the right of the Old Course’s 18th fairway, closer to the green than it is the tee. The room we had was on the third floor, the Jack Nicklaus suite. It looked out over the gorgeous opening-and-closing scene of the links, an expanse of green grass, with little toy golfers walking to and fro, the beach in the distance and the rest of the links stretching out into the North Sea. Many times I had to be pulled from that window, just watching golfers hack their way over and around the Swilcan Burn, putt up the Valley of Sin, and hug each other as they start or finish one of the most memorable rounds of their lives. When staying in a room at the Rusacks that overlooks the golf courses, it’s hard to think there is any better view anywhere in the Old Course hotel, and people we talked to throughout the trip confirmed that sentiment.
The Rusacks is in a great location for non-golfers as well, as the street it abuts on the town side, called The Links, turns into North Street and you head, well, north. The town, which has been a hub of Scottish culture for a least a millennium, is easily divided by three north-south streets: North Street, on the western side; Market Street, down the middle; and South Street, on the eastern side. All three come together as you head north, and they converge at the Cathedral ruins, at a point looking out over the sea. The Cathedral of St. Andrews was completed in 1318, and from all the old drawings, looks to have been one of the most majestic Cathedrals in the British Isles. While here, it’s necessary to climb St. Rule’s tower – a harrowing climb of 150 or so spiraling steps – but the view from up top is breathtaking. The tower stands in the middle of the graveyard where you can find the resting places of Old Tom Morris and Young Tommy, along with the first pro at St. Andrews, Alan Robertson, and the writer James Milton. Walking south down East Scores Street, just west of the Cathedral and following the coastline, there are the ruins of St. Andrews Castle. On a cliff that hangs out into the water, the castle ruins are still enough intact that you can climb them and peer through lookout holes, gazing at the horizon in every direction.
After this quick first exploration, we decided to stop for a pint. There is no shortage of pubs anywhere in Scotland, and St. Andrews has many which to chose from. Because it is essentially a college town – the University of St. Andrews is the third oldest in the world, dating back to 1413 – the vibrancy of the social life is omnipresent. The college buildings are everywhere you look, and college-aged kids walking around with backpacks and loafers mix with the tourists quite easily. So we stopped at a place called the Cross Keys Inn. It was a local pub – very local, as we found out later – and it was carpeted from wall to wall. It was a small place, with some short tables, a dart board, and the stools at the bar all filled with men speaking in heavy accents. Turns out the same building has been an Inn since the 1500s, and after the hotel part of the Inn closed, the current pub has been just about the same since the mid-1800s. By the look of the carpet, I’d believe it. Enjoying how nice the people were, I could’ve stayed until we knew each other’s family histories. I ordered two Guinesses and we savored them.
And the inventor of the game Omnipresent without a name . . .
Waking up on the morning you’re going to play the Old Course is a strange feeling. It’s one of those days when you know you’re going to remember for the rest of your life, so you want to capture it all in a shinning light, crystallizing the memories forever in your mind.
So after doing more touring of the town in the morning, we were set to tee off at 3 p.m. A lot has been written about the Old Course over the years, so to describe it hole-by-hole would be redundant. If you want that, you can see it here. The necessary facts to know about the Old Course are few. It's never more than two fairways wide, as it was the originator of the out-and-back routing – heading to the sea, then heading back to the clubhouse, all along the same route. Holes seven through 11 criss-cross playing paths in order to turn the golfer from going "out" into coming "back." Every bunker is named and every swale and dip has a story, all of which you should listen to and note. The only time there is water is when you have to carry the Swilcan Burn on the approach shot to the first hole, and then when it's about 30 yards in front of you on the 18th tee. (I managed to put my downwind drive on No. 1 into it, then chunked a wedge back into it and made 7. My father, a 18-handicap, made par, and won't let me forget it.) There are a lot of blind tee shots, not made by elevations changes, but with gorse and humps close to the tee obstructing the view of the fairway.
There's not a single green that forces you to carry the ball onto the putting surface, but to successfully traverse the dramatic undulation around the huge greens takes as much imagination as skill. There are only four individual greens on the whole course – Nos. 1, 9, 17, and 18 – with the other 14 holes sharing seven massive surfaces. The point is that a round on the Old Course is so much more than a round of golf. It's not about what club you hit over Hell Bunker (a trechorous fairway bunker on the par-5 14th), or if you flew it over or putted it up the Valley of Sin (a depression fronting the 18th green). It's about the spirit of the experience, about connecting to the birthplace of the game that is so mysterious in its nature. You're going to remember some shots you hit on the Old Course for the rest of your life, and you're going to forget some. You'll never forget the experience, in all the esoteric meaning of the world. So instead of going through each picture my father and I took together, someday to be put in frames and hung in each of our offices, I’m going to tell two stories about what it means to play this strange and wonderful golf course. The first is mine, the second is from someone you should know, the famous American golf course architect, Tom Doak.
One of the most recognized holes in all of golf is the 11th hole at the Old Course, a 174-yard par-3 that plays to the backdrop of the Eden Estuary. Because it has been redone in the United States so many times over – most notably by C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor at their countless courses lined with “template” holes – I thought I knew what I was getting into. It is a very wide green that’s not very deep, fronted by a harsh pot bunker called Strath. To the left of the hole is a rectangle bunker running the length of the green called the Hill. The putting surface itself slopes harshly from back to front. That’s your "Eden." What I didn’t know was that in this part of the Old Course is where hole Nos. 7 and 11 crossed, and hence they share the same huge green. So, while hitting to the Eden green, you need to carry a bunker that I thought was only in play for No. 7, the famously treacherous Shell Bunker. About 30 yards wide and 10 feet deep, the Shell Bunker makes for an intimidating carry for the second shot into the 359-yard 7th. I hit a great one over it going out, nestling the ball up to about 15 feet for an easy two-putt par. Now, on the 11th tee, there she is again, about 20 yards before the Strath bunker that fronts the green. Shouldn’t be in play, right? With a little wind into us and the pin to the right of Strath, I went to knock down an 8-iron (we only played it at about 160 yards) and thinned it. The wind smacked the ball down quickly, and it dove into the face of Shell Bunker, about a foot from the vertical wall taller than my 6-foot frame.
When I got to the ball, I knew it couldn’t get it out anywhere near the flag, so I had to play right. I hit a magnificent shot from a semi-buried lie, and got the ball back into play. From there, I chucked a chip and three-putted for a triple-bogey six. Who knew that Shell came into play on the Eden? Well, now I do. The next story keeps us at the Eden, a place that after only a few moments you know has some sort of undeniable magic. Tom Doak is now one of the world’s most renowned architects, having built three courses in Golf Digest’s Top 100 in the past 10 years, including one in our area, Sebonack in Southampton. A week after I came back from this trip, I had lunch with Doak for a story I wrote in the New York Post. After talking a bit about his reverred cult book, The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, where he made his name being wonderfully honest about his opinion on famous courses, I brought up Scotland. I knew Doak was crazy about the place, and I sat and took mental notes while he endulged me in his stories. Back in 1982, Doak was a Cornell graduate living in St. Andrews on a scholarship to study horticulture. He said he had visited St. Andrews once with his family when he was about 15 years old, and even played the Old Course. He doesn’t remember much of it, but he does remember the first day he arrived there on his second trip. It was around July 4th, and he knew this time he was staying a while. So he got into the bed and breakfast where he was staying and immediately went to sleep. When he woke up, he had no watch and had no idea what time it was (for some reason, there are no alarm clocks in any of the hotels). Yet, he saw the sun up and decided to go outside. When there was no one around, no one on the putting green or on the tee, he looked up at the clock on the Royal & Ancient building to see it was 4:15 a.m. Because it’s light out for about 20 hours in Scotland during the summer, it wasn’t surprising, but it might have been a bit of a shock to his jet-lagged system. So Doak walked past an empty starter’s shack and out to the golf course. With the early-morning sun hitting all the bumps and dells, the shadows were thrown in every direction and the setting was awash in burnt orange and deep purple.
“That’s when the golf course is the prettiest,” Doak said, “in the low light.” By the time he got out to the tip of the peninsula, where the Eden and Shell Bunker cross, he found a threesome of men teeing off. It was still before 5 a.m., and this group had already played 10 holes. As Doak explained, back then the greens fee was ₤15 (as opposed today’s price of ₤140, about $225) so groups would go out before the starter got there and then the ranger would catch up to them to collect the fee. Now, everything is so regulated that it’s impossible for something like that to happen. But Doak stood there, a 22-year-old kid alone in Scotland, and watched golf being played in it’s truest form, with no pretense and no pomp, on ancient ground by men who had to go to work in a couple hours and were here for some reason that they probably couldn’t properly explain. Golf is an instinctual draw for a lot of people, and that includes almost all of the natives of St. Andrews. Here, Doak saw first hand how much this place meant to them – and it immediately began to mean just as much to him.
“That place still feels like home to me every time I go back there,” Doak said. “I love that town and I’m really comfortable there. I feel like I know it inside out.” My first real moment at the Eden will forever shape the way I think about the game.
"Can the same be said for you, Tom?" “Oh yea,” Doak said with a deep sigh, the silent smile saying more than words ever could about the birthplace of a game that at times seems so much more.
BEFORE leaving St. Andrews on Wednesday morning, we had a big Scottish breakfast, like we did almost every morning. In doing so, it was hard for us to avoid the item on the menu that was screaming for attention. Blood pudding is a food unique to Scotland – and the rest of the world doesn’t mind that it stays there. (We’ll be getting to Haggis a bit later.) In some places it’s called “black pudding,” but it always refers to the fact that blood of an animal was use as a congealing agent. So, at the recommendation of our very Scottish waiter, we ordered it in the Rocca Bar and Grill, overlooking the 18th green of the Old Course, at ground level of the Rusacks hotel. This black pudding was mostly oatmeal (some are closer to sausage), so it came as a little round piece, looking similar to a black cork coaster to keep a drink from staining a tabletop. It was neither moist or dry, and it tasted rather innocuous. After subduing a natural reflex that wanted to stop it from going down in my stomach, I swallowed hard and moved on. Not something I would necessarily do again, but something my father enjoyed immensely. I don’t want to get too caught up in the food of Scotland, but because most people are wary of the cuisine, I think our experiences need to be stated.
I’m not sure if it’s because we mostly ate at restaurants that were recommended from the hotel concierges, but it seems that there is a conscious effort in Scottish cooking to be overtly high-end. Going on a trip where I was looking forward to simple meals, with fresh ingredients and engaging menus, I got a lot of artistically plated masterpieces that were aimed to awe me rather than satisfy me. A lot of the menus were small – which I like – but were limited to dishes that were so complex, it was hard to find one where every ingredient seemed to be of your liking. But that’s not to say the food wasn’t good, because it was. All of us were afraid that we might not be able to eat well during this week, but we all ate wonderfully. The fresh fish was abundant (especially the Scottish salmon) and the lamb was of the highest quality. A standard fish-and-chips order can always do you right, while a Shepherd’s Pie, although on a surprisingly small percentage of menus, is a delicious staple. One thing that should be noted is that the service is Scotland is not comparable to that here in the States. Like most of Europe, the pace of service is slower. The people are almost all very nice, but you have to shed your New Yorker skin a bit and learn how to relax at the dinner table. It might take you almost three hours to complete a full meal, but more often than not, it’s worth it.
THE drive from St. Andrews to Carnoustie is about 45 minutes, and as we moved north over the River Tay we entered the industrial city of Dundee. Roy, our esteemed driver and Scottish Sherpa, pointed out Dundee's new oil rigs in the river, as well as the floating casino. Then he started explaining the town of Carnoustie, which we began to approach. “Dare’s rally nuthin’ ta do here basides a golf," Roy said, making the understatement of the trip. Really, the word Roy was looking for is dour. The narrow streets of Carnoustie were clogged with double-parked cars and were littered with people aimlessly walking around, staring at our eight-person bus rolling through. Golf is the only reason people come to this town, and they normally do as we did: drive right up to the hotel on the course, never stopping to look around. There is a beautiful old castle, Glamis Castle, only 30 minutes inland, that the women checked out and loved.
The story of the Carnoustie Hotel starts with the pinning for the Open Championship to return after their last Open Championship in 1975. The Links Management Committee was told they needed a luxury hotel in order to secure the tournament, so the way to get back into the rotation was clear. A local businessman named Michael Johnston put up the ₤4 million to build the thing. The Open came in 1999 and resulted in the dramatic and historic collapse of Jean Van De Velde, who threw away a two-shot lead on the 72nd hole by making a double-bogey. Now there on the second floor of the hotel sits the Paul Lawrie Suite, the no-name winner of the Open’s return to a historic venue after he beat Van De Velde and Justin Leonard in a playoff. Before the Open returned again in 2007, Johnston had taken a financial bath and sold the property to Oxford Hotels, who now slapped its name in big letters (see: eyesore) on the façade facing the golf course. They put in a lot of money in to spruce it up, and then Irishman Padraig Harrington came along and won the championship, much to the delight of the Scottish people. (The Scots and Irish get along splendidly. Funny enough, although Scotland is still under the Queen’s rule, the Scots and the English aren’t exactly chums.) The hotel is a nice place to stay if you’re there to play golf. If you’re going to Scotland just to visit, there is no need to go anywhere near Carnoustie. The rooms in the hotel are tidy and functional, while the ones that overlook the golf courses are the real treat. On the ground floor, out the back doors of the restaurant and bar area, there is a nice patio with ample seating that overlooks the flat links land. There are three courses at Carnoustie – the Championship, the The Burnside Links, and the Buddon Links – but the Championship Course is the one you’re most interested in. (The other ones are shorter, but are acclaimed by many as more fun and enjoyable.) It’s easy enough to get on the championship course through their website, and it will cost you ₤135 (about $220) if you’d like to play just the Championship. (Better deals for combo packages.) From that back patio, you can see the infamous Barry Burn snaking its way through the treacherous final two holes, and you can’t wait to get out there, at the very least to see where Van De Velde folded up his pants and changed his fate from famous to infamous. The course starts with a semi-blind uphill tee shot on a 400-yard par-4, out of bounds all along the left side, deep bunkers and sandy, rough-covered knolls to the right. The second hole is much the same, only 459 yards from the back and a more narrow landing area, made so because it’s 200 yards from tee to carry Braid’s Bunker sitting in the middle of the fairway. The presence and name of this hazard should remind you of the twisted history behind the layout of this famed links.
Locals say the game has been played over this land since the 1500s, but it wasn’t until the original pro at St. Andrews, Alan Robertson, came up here and laid down 12 holes in 1850 did it become somewhat organized. About 20 years later Old Tom Morris came and extended it to 18 holes. Then in 1926, James Braid redid the majority of the course (hence his bunker on No. 2). Prior to the second Open in 1937 – the first being in 1931, won by the esteemed Henry Cotton – the club was still not satisfied with the finish. So a local man named James Wright reconfigured the final three holes and made it the toughest finish in Open Championship golf – and possibly anywhere. With many tweaks between 1937 and now, it all adds up to the fact that Carnoustie is a conglomerate, which might explain why it’s so difficult. From a design standpoint, if you are laying out 18 holes, to draw up a couple easier ones is necessary. If you’re only redesigning a handful of holes, you’re going to make them tough, strong holes, to show your acumen as an architect. After 150 years of tweaking, there are no easy holes at Carnoustie, and it’s corny nickname of “Carnasty” is nothing if not appropriate.
After those opening two holes, we reach the high point of the course, the tee on a 355-yard par-4 3rd hole. This hole, short and seemingly easy, played as the ninth hardest on the course at the 2007 Open, with a 4.11 stroke average. Most of the 10 double-bogeys came with players hitting it into the ditch, which runs up the left side of the fairway and then cuts in before the green. With the pin in the front, it could be easy to spin the ball back into the hazard. At the sixth hole you get to a boarder of the course, where all along the left side is a picket fence that signifies out-of-bounds (on the other side, the Burnside Links). Between the fence and two large bunkers in the middle of the fairway is the famed “Hogan’s Alley,” a strip of land no more than 20 yards wide that is where Hogan hit it every day on his way to winning the 1953 Open, the only one he ever played in. It takes a courageous shot to put it there – unless you’re my Dad, who started a comfortable 30-yard slice over the fence and brought it back with ease. Although we played in very, very benign conditions, we had a slight wind at our backs here. With the tees moved up to have the hole play about 500 yards (instead of the tips, back to 573), I hit driver, six-iron just left of the green. The course guide calls this the “signature hole of Carnoustie Golf Links,” but it was clear those came later. When you get to holes eight through 10, all of a sudden, on the periphery of the fairways are tall pine trees. It’s an oddity, for sure, but it doesn’t feel too out of place. That’s because although Carnoustie is technically on linksland – the sandy soil between the fertile inland and the coastline – you never see the water. Our caddies said that on clear days you have a chance to see the North Sea from a select number of vantage points, and although our day was calm and clear, we couldn’t spot it.
The tenth hole is unique in its own right because there is a single tree sitting next to the green. It lurks over the right side of the putting surface, and any approach coming from that angle has a good chance to get swatted down into the Barry Burn that runs in front. It’s named “South America” because of its distinctly different feel, and Bernard Darwin wrote in 1910: “Certainly this hole seems at first sight to be dragged in by the heels, but we readily forgive it its inland character, because it is really a very good hole indeed.” We can’t agree more. Although the par-3s at Carnoustie get ridiculed quite a bit, I very much enjoyed No. 13. Playing only 171 yards from the back tees, the green is the real showstopper here. Shaped like an hourglass with a deep horseshoe bunker in front, there are a handful of delicate pin positions (especially back-right) that can lead to big numbers. The next hole is Carnoustie’s version of “The Spectacles,” and it certainly resembles an actual pair of eyeglasses more than the original at St. Andrews. Either a 510-yard par-5 (for amateurs) or a 461-yard par-4 for the modern pros, the approach over the humps is a very exciting blind shot. It was here in 1968 that Gary Player hit what he called the finest 4-wood of his career to two feet for an eagle (it was still a par-5 back then) that helped him beat out Jack Nicklaus. It’s also here in 1975 when Tom Watson and Jack Newton teed off tied for the lead, and when Watson chipped in for eagle, he was on his way to his first of five Open Championship victories.
Now we get to the three closing holes; the trio of reasons which bring you to this place. The 16th is a monster par-3, 249 yards from the back tees, which has a hill crest about 20 yards short of the putting surface. After a little swell, the ground rises again to reach the green, which is 46 yards deep. If it’s into the wind, it’s a tough par-4. The 17th is named “Island” because the fairway is just that. The tee shot has to carry the Barry Burn only a couple yards away on this 460-yard par-4, but then the Burn snakes around the left side of the fairway and cuts it short at about 260 yards from the back tee. I hit a 4-iron up the right side, and with the wind helping, came up short of the burn by about 20 yards. Then the approach is to a green that is highest at its front near a small opening, with four small, penal bunkers surrounding. Then there is No. 18. With out-of-bounds all down the left side, the burn again comes into play off the tee, cutting in at the start of the fairway and then heading up the left side, near the OB markers (and the adjacent Buddon Links). With bunkers up the right, including the Johnny Miller bunker – “Don’t know what it’s called that,” my caddie, Derek, who’d be there 40 years said. “The man’s never here.” – it’s a tough tee shot to say the least. Maybe that’s why Van De Velde played a mile right into the rough between here and the adjacent 17. With the burn cutting back just yards before the long narrow green, you have to make a decision if you are going to go for it, or if you’re going to be smart and layup short. We all know what Van De Velde did, but as I approached my ball sitting on a sidehill lie in the left rough, I knew I only had one option.
“I didn’t travel across an ocean to layup,” I told Derek. “No,” he said, “most people say the same thing,” and he handed me my 4-wood. From about 225 yards, into a breeze, I hit a towering high draw that carried the burn, landed next to the front pin and then ran all the way to the back of the green. A lot of risk-reward golf architecture requires shots that people deem “heroic.” It’s a stupid term, because there’s absolutely nothing heroic about playing golf. But if I’ve ever hit a shot that deserves that title, this was it. So maybe that’s what allows me to think on Carnoustie with a smile. Some people say the links are a reflection of the town, dour and bleak. The author James Finnegan called it “a meadowy plain, a landscape monotonously pedestrian, covered with holes that, too often, are neither memorable nor inviting.”
Nicklaus, in the early 1990s, described it to Finnegan like this: “When I first went to Carnoustie in 1967 . . . I thought Carnoustie was the worst golf course I’d ever seen. And by the time I’d finished the Open in 1968, I thought it was the hardest golf course I’d ever seen, but a darn good course, and I really had great respect for it. And the last time I went back in ’75, I had even greater respect for it. Now Carnoustie is one of my favorites.”
Well I’ve only been there once, but I found the respect to be inherent.
Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched from east to west . . .
We left Carnoustie in the morning after a good meal of fish-and-chips in the hotel restaurant the night before. Having a couple pints with a Welshman afterwards, we watched the first leg of Barcelona-Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League semifinals, and it was a hoot. Even more so was him trying to explain why the Royal Wedding – now only two days away – was actually a thing of importance. He was a barrister by trade, and imagining him in a powdered wig seemed just about right. So now we were leaving the east coast of the country and heading west, all the way to the other coastline, final destination being Turnberry, just southwest of Glasgow on the Irish Sea. It was a trip of about 150 miles, so we decided to make a couple pit stops. The first one came highly recommended by Roy and is a place of magnificent inland beauty.
The Gleneagles Hotel is one of the spectacular places we saw in all the country. Sitting equidistant between Dundee and Glasgow, Gleneagles inhabits a landscape of big rolling hills, and dramatic, sharp dells (called glens). From the croquet lawn of the majestic old hotel built in 1924, you can see for miles and the view of lush greenery is just intoxicating. The five-star resort has a highly touted spa and numerous swimming pools, even one that has a small cut-through from indoor pool to outdoor hot tub. There are many wonderful dining options, ranging from a small, intimate, two Michelin-starred restaurant called Andrew Fairlie, to the wide-open area of a high-end food emporium, where cured meats and cheeses hang on display. The activities at Gleneagles are also abundant, with things like falconry, a shooting and fishing school, an equestrian school with ponies, off-road 4x4 driving, and a “gundog school,” where you get your own personal hunting dog. And, of course, there is golf. There originally were two courses built on site, the best being James Braid’s “King’s Course,” opened in 1919. From all we’ve heard, it’s an exciting and tough layout, carved into the big rolling hills. The European Tour’s Scottish Open was held there for many years. There is also the “Queen’s Course,” which is supposed to be a little more inviting, along with a newer short nine-hole course, PGA National Academy Course.
Then there is the brand new PGA Centenary course. It was built by Jack Nicklaus in 1993 for the direct purpose of bringing big events to Gleneagles. It hooked a huge one when it was awarded the 2014 Ryder Cup matches, and although there has been some negative feedback from the pros about the place – the designs of Nicklaus are a far cry from the understated grace of Braid – it should make for a very interesting competition.
From Gleneagles, we drove about an hour west to Loch Lomond, one of the country’s large inland lakes. There is a golf course around the water with the same namesake, designed by Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish, that has hosted the Scottish Open in recent years. But we didn’t stop there, instead Roy deciding it was a good idea to take the women to the quaint little summer town of Luss. With a narrow street bordered by old, small, and seemingly straw-roofed houses, Luss exemplifies the country living of inland Scotland. At the end of the street is a small beach with a pier that goes out into the loch. Small boats scurried around, and sunbathers threw tennis balls into the water for their shaggy dogs to retrieve. The water was still too cold for anybody but the bravest of souls, yet the setting was beautifully idyllic.
“Dees howses ir n’er ona markek,” Roy said with a nod. It wasn’t hard to understand why.
DRIVING into Turnberry is an experience that in its own right is worth crossing the Ocean. Coming down A77, you crest a hill and as you start the decent, in the distance you see the famed Ailsa Craig. A huge rock island in the Irish Sea, the Ailsa Craig is the halfway marker between Scotland and Ireland, and it looms out in the water like a sentry guard, often covered in mist and ominous. It’s now a vacant bird sanctuary, but its importance seems imminent. The road then turns right and after a minute, you look up back into the hill and there is the Turnberry Hotel, bigger than in any pictures you’ve seen and more elegant than imagined. It sits atop the third tier of a three-tier climb, at least 200 feet above the road.
To the left of the road, on the land abutting the water, are the golf courses. In addition to the famous Ailsa Course, where they have played four Open Championships, there is also the estimable Kintyre Course, which gets rave reviews and is said to have a handful of even better views than the Ailsa (of which we’ll get to soon.) Next to the road, on the first tier heading up the hill, is an 18-hole pitch-and-putt course. Now I haven’t played a ton of pitch-and-putt in my life, but I can’t imagine anywhere on the planet there being a better, more difficult little track than this one. It is a collection of 40-to-80-yard holes, littered with deep, penal pot bunkers and tiny greens carved into the hillside. It’s just a bear of a course that can’t play more than 1,200 yards, but, as a 3-handicap, if I finished at 10-over, I’d have played a good round. If you’re taking a beginner out there, be ready to walk off after a couple of frustrating swipes.
Before we left for the trip, while in talks with Roy, he told us Turnberry is his favorite resort in all of Europe. Getting into the hotel, we found out why. With an assortment of outdoor activities similar to that of Gleneagles, Turnberry offers a complete resort package. They have 4x4 off-roading, ATV rentals, horseback riding on the beach, biking, fishing trips, archery, falconry, and a shooting range. They also have one of the world’s most renowned spas. In an adjacent building to the hotel – with an underground passageway between the two – people walk around comfortably in bathrobes, looking completely relaxed. The pools and assorted spa treatments look to be a delight. So as we walked in the front door, there was a fire crackling in the lobby and the kilted doormen cheerily welcomed us. Once through, I went straight to the back of the grand room, where there is a little sitting area for afternoon tea, set against a panel of bay windows looking out over the golf courses and the sea. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun was still bright and high in the sky. Our two rooms, up the regal staircase to the second floor, both looked in the same direction. We passed suites with the names of previous Open winners, none more impressive than the Tom Watson suite, at the top of stairs and doublewide. Our rooms, standard size, were as five-star as you could get, including heated bathroom floors. Our large window was filled with sunlight, and the room was bright and felt very open. Much like our room at the Rusacks in St. Andrews, it was hard to pull me from starring out at the scenery. This time, my girlfriend was right next to me. Turnberry is a place that is beautiful beyond words, and it has nothing to do with what’s on the linksland.
Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians tall . . .
Our plan for this playing golf on Friday, our last golfing day of the trip, seemed like a dream. The goal was to play 36 holes, first at 8 a.m. up the road in Prestwick, where they held the first 12 Open Championships, and then at 3 p.m. at Turnberry’s Ailsa course, where they’ve held four. That’s a full day of golf that’s so good, it seemed like crazy talk until we actually started moving. Roy herded my dad and I into the van – after I came downstairs without my golf clubs and he gave me a good ribbing – and we headed 45 minutes north, up the west coast, to the relatively large town of Prestwick. With an international airport that flies to just about every destination in Europe, and abutting the larger town of Ayr, Prestwick is a place that doesn’t necessarily obsess over its golf – although it could. Adjacent to the famous Prestwick Golf Club is Royal Troon Golf Club, where they’ve held eight Open Championships. Troon actually has two 18-hole golf courses, and because of its spaciousness – along with views of the water, which Prestwick doesn’t have – Troon has been able to stay in the Open Championship rotation. Where Prestwick is confined to a tight piece of land that was once clearly two separate farms, Troon is more expansive and subtlety rolling and therefore was able to expand in length as advances in golf ball technology ruined classic courses the world over.
Prestwick, although now able to stretch itself out to 6,910 yards, just isn’t long enough for the best players in the world anymore. Its last Open Championship, of the 24 total held there, was won in 1925 by “Long” Jim Barnes, the former pro at Pelham Country Club in Westchester. The official history of Prestwick decides to put it like this: “The crowds became so great that the players were insufficiently protected, and Macdonald Smith [a Scotsman] in particular, was put off his game, allowing Jim Barnes to steal the title.” The club does have a long history of holding the British Amateur, and most recently hosted that event in 2001. According to new Secretary Ken Goodwin, the club will continue to vie for that championship in the future, keeping the course from becoming a relic. Starting his post as hired Secretary in January 2011, Goodwin is the point man for all visitors trying to play Prestwick. As a club that “prides itself on its hospitality to all visitors at all times,” as the club booklet says, all it takes is a phone call or email and a time can be set up for you – just not on the weekends, when it is restricted to member play. (Check here for info.) Which is a shame, because the club is equally famous for its Saturday lunches as it is for its golf course. As Goodwin takes us through the beautiful clubhouse – most of which dates back to 1868, when the main structure was built – he first points out the smoking room, which still has ashtrays on each table (although smoking is no longer allowed) and has 15-foot high bay windows overlooking the links from ground level. On a table in the corner are displayed old club logs, dating back over 100 years. For some reason in the early history of the club, every time members walked in they would record the date and their weight. It’s odd, and it’s a tradition that has now stopped. One that hasn’t is the suggestion book. With oversized, unlined off-white pages, and bound in a hard red cover, the current suggestion book goes back to the mid-1960s, and Goodwin pointed out an entry less than a week old. “The guys like to vent in here,” Goodwin said, looking down at the florid penmanship. “Mostly it’s about the pace of play, but a lot of it is just fun and games.” The members sitting around a table on the other side of the room suddenly laughed, and with them all adorned in jacket and tie (a necessity in most parts of the clubhouse) it seemed to be a flashback to simpler times.
Goodwin then took us into the dining room, where there is a large cafeteria-style table made of rickety wood and surrounded by 30 or so chairs. On the walls are portraits of all the past 161 Captains of Prestwick (and counting, there’s a new one elected every year) and he begins to explain Saturday Lunch. Most of the members (about 600 all together, many international) whom decide to come for a Saturday will start by playing a quick two-ball match (twosome, in American terms) in the morning, going out around 8 a.m. and finishing in a brisk three hours, max. They then enter the smoking room, waiting to get a seat at the cafeteria table. When one opens up, they sit next to whoever is there. It creates a communal environment, a social atmosphere that is missing with the stuffiness of most private clubs. After an order of fish-and-chips, maybe a Gin and Tonic or a pint or two of Tennents, afternoon groups of four-ball matches are decided upon and out they go. Playing alternate shot, the four-balls expect to take as much time as the morning two-balls, and when you finish up in the mid-afternoon, you’ve played 36 holes of splendidly competitive golf, had a great meal, made some new friends and now have the rest of the day to do as you please. It’s so different than the slow tedium of the standard American golf experience that it’s not only refreshing, but enlightening. Yet for true golfing enlightenment, you get up from you seat in the smoking room, change out of your jacket and tie, go through the lobby and out the doors onto the first tee, no more than 10 feet from the clubhouse entrance. The golf at Prestwick Golf Club might rub some people the wrong way. It’s not always fair, it’s far from straightforward, and at times it’s overly quirky. There are a lot of blind shots, and a lot of swales and humps that can toss your ball offline. It’s a course where you really need to plot your way around, and you strategize with every shot.
After many hours thinking about it, I don’t have a doubt in my mind that playing Prestwick Golf Club is the most fun I’ve ever had playing this game. It reminds you that golf really is just that: a game. You need to display all facets of being a complete golfer, from exacting approaches to uninhibited slashes, from the need for power to the need for touch, from conservative strategy to go-for-broke carelessness. It’s the kind of place where if you hit a poor shot, it’s easy to laugh it off, go find it, and play it again. There is the ever-present chance of redemption, with the difference between success and failure sometimes determined by the whims of luck. It starts with a short par-4, and one that should get you ready for the uniqueness of what lies before you. To the right of the tee and running down the entire right side of the hole is a stone wall, three feet high. On the other side of the wall are active railroad tracks, with Prestwick Station in plain sight. Local rules have recently made over the wall out of bounds, but many a story still circulate through the club of men taking their lives in their hands so they don’t have to face the embarrassment of hitting a second ball off the first tee. With a short tee shot and a short iron into a semi-blind green, you're off with a sigh a relief.
After the second hole, a downhill par-3, we get to one of the most famous holes here at Prestwick (of which there are many). The name of the hole is “Cardinal” for the huge bunker that bisects the fairway. It’s said that the bunker is named after a monk from the Crossraguel Abbey (now a ruin near Turnberry) who played a match here against a Lord of Culzean in order to settle a deadly feud. The monk wagered his nose, presumably lost by some twist of fate in this sandy ditch, and the bunkers became The Cardinal’s Nob (another word for nose). Is there a single story like that at any club in the U.S.? So it’s a 541-yard par-5 that really forces you to think off the tee. Well, maybe it forces you to layup, as the Cardinal bunker are no more than 240 yards away, and if you hit into those deep, gnarly depressions, you could spend a lifetime (or lose your nose) trying to recover. With the Pow Burn running along the ride side of this dogleg right, all you see from the tee box is the blackened wood that frames the far side of the divide. Once you walk up the fairway, you see sand sitting there, mischievous and waiting. The second shot is then mostly blind; if you’re far enough right in the fairway you might be able to see the top of the flag, certainly over 200 yards away. With the water snaking back into play right of the green, it’s one of the most enjoyable second shots into a par-5 anywhere in the world.
After the dogleg right, par-4 fourth hole, we come to one of the most famous holes in all of golf, “The Himalayas.” Standing on the tee, you have no idea where the hole goes. You’re facing a huge hill of broken ground, maybe 50 feet high, that’s probably 180 yards to the top. Without someone telling you that is the next hole, you might get totally lost, turn around and head back in for another Tennets. But my caddie, the affable 30-something Daniel in a bright orange cashmere sweater and Adidas golf shoes that exuded his single-digit handicap, told me to aim at a white dot atop the hill. “236 yards to the hole,” he said, “but into a little breeze, you’re going to need every bit of that 4-wood.”
I hit a little fade, came up short, and chipped up for a par. My dad hit driver over the hill, a little left, then found it in some matted rough, chipped it on the green and two-putted for a good four. I then went over and rang the big bronze bell, with the sign saying “PLEASE RING BELLS WHEN CLEAR OF GREEN.” The syntax in its own right is charming. After the Himalayas green, you cross a small demarcation and enter a section of the golf course with distinctly different character, as this new land was purchased in 1882 in order to expand the course into 18 holes. Before then, the course consisted of just 12 holes, over which the first 12 Open Championships were played, three times around in one day. The tournament didn’t change from 36 holes to 72 until 1892, once it became a standard that all courses be 18 holes.
Prestwick was the home of Old Tom Morris from the club’s opening in 1851 until 1864, when he was appointed to be the first "custodian of the links" for the Royal & Ancient Golf Club in St. Andrews. So when Prestwick called on him to come back and design the six holes to take it into the modern era, Morris obliged. Yet according to club stories, he decided that the new land was too bumpy, so he flattened a lot of the humps and swales and created a golfing landscape very different from the one that encapsulates the original 12 holes. (The original 12 were routed quite differently than they are now, but the character of the land remains the same.)
The six new holes are Nos. 6 through 11, and although not quite as memorable as the rest of the course, there are still some very good tests of golf. Most notable are the approach shot into the 407-yard par-4 sixth, where the green is slightly obscured by a mound to the right; and the approach to the 461-yard par-4 ninth, where the green is completely hidden and you must aim at a signal post behind the putting surface. No. 11 is also a splendid par-3, playing 215 yards with a good carry over some wispy grasses. From the tee, if you climb up a little dune, you can spot the Irish Sea, but from the playing ground it’s never visible
If you walk up onto the top tee box on No. 9, you can see the Troon clubhouse, a large portion of their golf course – and the trailer park that separates the two properties. It’s an eyesore for both prestigious clubs, and when they play their annual match that criss-crosses the two courses – the first nine holes at Prestwick, followed by the back nine at Troon, then lunch and back again – the trailer park becomes a point of contention.
Coming back onto the original ground on No. 12 is a very benign, if not boring, way to do so; a 552-yard par-5 with a small and somewhat compelling green. On the elevated tee at No. 13, you get a great panorama of the town in the background, and your first look at the famed bunker named “Willie Campbell’s Grave.” It was on the short par-4 sixteenth, which comes back on the other side of the large pot bunker, in 1887 while leading the Open, Campbell put his tee shot in the hazard and took four swipes to get out, losing the championship to Willie Park, Jr.
The fifteenth hole is one that everyone likes to call the narrowest fairway in all of Europe. It’s believable, as the semi-blind tee shot on this 347-yard par-4 seems to be aiming at an short-grass area about five feet wide, framed by rough-covered hills on either side. In reality, the fairway never gets more than 20 yards wide, and some 200-220 yards off the tee is a very deep and penal bunker that eats into the left side.
After avoiding The Grave Bunker on sixteen, you then step to the tee of one of the most famous – and replicated – holes in all of golf. “The Alps” is a hole that is of such high character, architects the world over have done their best to recreate it, yet none compares to the original. At only 391 yards, the tee shot is straight out from an elevated tee and is framed by mounding on either side of the narrow fairway. From the depressed fairway, all you can see is a large hill in front of you – similar to the Himalayas, but scaled down – on top of which are three wooden knobs, each separated by about 15 yards. On the old sandboxes that sit on every tee, there is a diagram of the hole’s location on the green. On this tee, it just said, “left.” As I stood in the right rough, Daniel told me to hit it at the middle knob. “But it said pin left, didn’t it?” “Aye, 'bot dant forget tha angil, Breet,” he said.
I didn’t trust him, chunked a mid-iron and just carried the crest of the hill. From there, you look down and see the great Sahara Bunker, all the way at the bottom of the hill short of the green, 40 yards wide with a 10-foot face. My ball got caught up in the rough leading down to the great sands, from where I hit it over the green, chipped on and two-putted for the most wonderful double-bogey I’ve ever made.
The finishing hole is quite weak, a pretty straight out par-4 of 281 yards that, with the firm turf, can be driven rather easily even for a moderately long hitter. There’s not much trouble up there, so it’s a good chance to end the day on a happy note. Coming in, I hardily shook hands with Secretary Goodwin and couldn’t thank him enough for his hospitality. I repeatedly gushed over each intricacy of the golf course until I started to feel embarrassed for myself. He just shook his head, obviously having witnessed this scene unfold many times before.
I can’t imagine it ever gets old to watch somebody fall in love at first sight. “A man is less likely to be contradicted in lauding Prestwick than singing the praises of any other course in Christendom,” Bernard Darwin wrote. Maybe next time I’ll get to sing the praises of the Saturday lunch first hand – in which case, they might never get me to leave.
Him by the hand dear Nature took . . .
Leaving Prestwick, now in Roy’s van with shirt and tie still on, I thought I had learned something about the game of golf that I never knew before. For me, it was a revelation about the game’s roots, about how different golf used to be and how golfers played the game strictly for fun. I can’t stress that word enough: Prestwick is just so damn FUN. But we were moving, back down the coast to Turnberry. As much as I wanted to stay in Prestwick and talk history with Ken Goodwin, to go ogle a replica Champions Belt like the one that Young Tom Morris was allowed to keep after winning the Open three times in a row, eat fish-and-chips and then head back out there again – we had to go. Our time on Turnberry was quickly arriving, and my excitement was only growing.
Of all the things that made me want to head to Turnberry, No. 1 was the 2009 Open Championship. I don’t think that shows my youth, but rather my propensity for the history of the game. It was then when Tom Watson was so close to writing the most improbable major championship story since Francis Ouimet in the 1913 U.S. Open. Watson was 59 years old and he had a one-shot lead standing on the 72nd tee. If he made par, he was going to tie Harry Vardon with six career Open Championships. He was already miles above any American-born links player in history, and this would have been a way to show that youthfulness and brute strength don’t always equal the lowest scores; sometimes cunning and experience do win out. But Watson hit an 8-iron from the middle of the fairway just a little too good, and it flew over the green. From the fringe he then ran a putt past (later admitting he should have chipped) and missed an eight-foot comebacker for par, his bogey five forcing a playoff with the younger, more rested, and, at this point, more emotionally balanced Stewart Cink. Now the Stewart Cink Suite is just down the hall a bit from Watson’s, but Watson can always walk downstairs in the barroom named “Duel in the Sun,” after his epic battle out there with Jack Nicklaus in the 1977 Open. With pictures of a shaggy haired Watson adorning the walls, the place commemorates this St. Louis-born adopted son of Scotland and his second Open victory. When Nicklaus hit a shot from under a gorse bush to the front of the 18th green, Watson knew he had his hands full. One shot up, Watson stuffed a 7-iron to two feet. So when Nicklaus made the 40-footer that tied the two great champions, the crowd erupted and Watson’s putt got a lot longer. But he calmly drained it, and with overflowing praise, there is now a room with a large, red-felted snooker table that overlooks the course in reverence.
I doubt Cink will ever get something like that, but nonetheless I wanted to see the exact spots when an almost-60-year-old came that close to beating a man in his prime. So after a quick coffee and some pastries in a bastardized version of British afternoon tea (in that room in the back of the hotel lobby, overlooking the course and sea, remember?) we headed down the grand steps and to the golf course clubhouse to check in. At that point it was almost 2:30 in the afternoon, and we had experienced a week of shockingly terrific weather. Every day was mid-50s to low-60s, with the sun blaring and hardly a dark cloud in the sky. Walking over to the putting green, the skies started to look a little hazy, and although the sun was out, we should’ve know it’s impossible to play five rounds of golf in Scotland and not see some weather. It was only a matter of time. The first three holes at the Turnberry Ailsa Course are rather forgettable. A lot of people liken Turnberry to Pebble Beach, because the setting is so spectacular that it creates some truly magnificent golf holes, while the inland holes leave you a little flat. I think that’s a fair comparison, but here you are never out of sight of the Ailsa Craig, and very rarely out of sight of the famed Lighthouse that is a beacon at the tip of the coast.
The first three holes are all medium-length par-4s, running back and forth, eventually leading you to the fourth tee, from where you are now next to the Irish Sea. A 168-yard par-3 up a hill, the fourth is a nice hole, not too tough, in a great setting. It begins what I think is possibly the best eight-hole stretch in golf. Most critics like to say Turnberry’s best stretch starts at No. 6 and lasts for only six holes, but I enjoy No. 4 and the following 479-yard par-4 fifth enough to make it an eight-hole stretch. The fifth tees off down into a ravine and then plays up to a green that is still below the crest of the hill that separates the course and the water. It’s a protected little place, but makes for a nice green location. The sixth is a bear of a par-3, playing 231 yards from the back tees, all up hill, and is surrounded by bunkers. This is where the Cink-Watson four-hole playoff started, and Watson hit hybrid into the front-right bunker while Cink hit a long iron into the middle of the green. It was the beginning of the end for Watson.
From that green, you walk up a small slope to the seventh tee box, which now is on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the small beach and the sea. It is the first of many splendid views, and the hole itself is a dandy, playing either as a 538-yard par-5 or a 469-yard par-4. The tee shot is downhill to a fairway that has a big mound in it, directly at the place where it turns left to go up the hill to the green. It’s a tough tee shot with bunkers on either side of the fairway, and even a tougher approach, with two small, penal bunkers to the right.
The eighth hole is of similar design, a 454-yard par-4 that tees off on the edge of the cliff, goes downhill to the fairway and then back uphill to the green. This green is near the point of the property, though, so from there you begin to glimpse the sea not just to your left, but also over the green and little to your right as the course turns direction with the coastline. Walking off the back of the green, you head to the ninth tee, which is without question one of the great places in all of golf. The back tee sits on a small little perch in the cliffs, like this man-made piece of flat grass that juts up out of the jagged rocks. From there you have to hit a drive over the rocks and water to reach the fairway on the 452-yard par-4. Appropriately, it was here, the place where man meets nature in such a frenzied confluence, that the weather descended. A couple holes back it began to get dark, and as we kept trudging to this point, where we are farthest from the clubhouse and most exposed, the sky dropped a couple rain pellets here and there. But standing on this tee box, we met the defender of Scottish golf, the wind, with much anger. Whipping itself into hearty gusts, the wind was directly into our face and was blowing golf bags over. One of the men we were playing with, Chris, who is a member at the semi-private Turnberry, had his bag begin to roll away on its pushcart. It was a scene, and I teed my ball low and took an easy swing, just as Jack had always said was the way to play this shot.
It was a good strike, but a little left and started heading for the Lighthouse, which at this point is no more than 300 yards away, out on the cliffs to the left of the fairway. With the fairway itself being a slight hogs back, and falling off at the sides into the rough, I was just hoping I wouldn’t get a bad kick and have my ball bounce into the stoned off area that is out-of-bounds and used to be the garden for the Lighthouse. It turned out to be okay, and I whacked it somewhere up there to make a bogey. The tee on the tenth hole is similar to the previous one, as it too is a small piece of turf standing alone amongst the rocks. It is just on the far side of the Lighthouse, and the drive must carry over rocks and water again in order to reach the fairway of this 457-yard par-4. It was here in 2009 when Tiger Woods blocked one a mile right in the first round – his ball ending up on a rough hill where a monument to the two World Wars stands – and he ended up missing the cut. The second shot is over a round bunker with a grass island in the middle of it, well short of the green.
The eleventh hole is the one that wraps up this splendid stretch, a 175-yard par-3 that plays with the water all along your left side. It doesn’t really come into play, and you hit your mid-iron up a slight hill to a green with a deep, tough bunker short and another one along the right side. From there, heading in, the course goes back to being good rather than great. No. 12 is a straightaway par-4, named after the aforementioned monument that is well out of play, up a small hill to the right. It’s an appropriate place for the monument, as to the left of the fairway is a somewhat intact airplane runway, which is left over from when the golf course was used as an air base during both of the World Wars. The runway goes from this point to the clubhouse, and is in sight but never in play. Nos. 13 and 14 are both good par-4s, with 14 really exemplifying the great green complexes. Heading up a slight hill, 449 yards, the approach to 14 has to be exact, or it will roll over the green and into a collection area before the 15th tee. As we waited for the 15th green to clear, we watched a couple different approaches land 20-30 yards short of the green – and still run through the back. The ground was that firm, and the greens are that turtle-backed and undulating in places, that the rather benign hole designs more than hold up. This particular green is like many others at Turnberry, where your iron game has to be utterly precise and your judgment has to be sound in order to leave yourself with a legitimate birdie opportunity. Otherwise, you will be faced with a difficult up-and-down – just ask Tom Watson.
No. 15 is a long par-3 over some broken ground, and then No. 16 brings you to a place on the golf course that seems foreign. Redesigned before the 2009 Open, this green complex was moved farther from the tee and to the right, going from a straight 410-yard hole to a 455-yard dogleg right. The new green site also brings into play the “little burn” that runs through the property, here fronting the green and running up along its right side. The banks down to the “wee burn,” as the hole is named, are shaved tight. The green is almost reminiscent of No. 13 at Augusta National, but the shot in is not quite as demanding, nor are the slopes in the green as rewarding if you hit a good one. If you closed your eyes and opened them to see this green, it could be anywhere in the world – and although it’s a great complex that I enjoyed immensely, that’s not necessarily a compliment. No. 17 is then a long par-5 with a dip in the fairway from about 130 to 80 yards from the green, on the right of which are two pot bunkers in a semi-Spectacles fashion. Then the closing hole has a championship tee box that makes it a dogleg left, but for the rest of us humans, it plays from an elevated tee down to a fairway with three bunkers on the left and gorse bushes all down the right. From one of those bunkers is where Lee Westwood hit a spectacular 8-iron on the green in the 2009 Open, but because he thought he needed birdie, he ran his first putt way past the hole then couldn’t get the comebacker, missing the Cink-Watson playoff by one shot. After hitting my drive over near the gorse bushes – from where Nicklaus hit it to the front of the green (how, I have no idea) – I laid up and put a wedge to 15 feet, just left of the front-right hole. It was a straight-in putt. “To win the Open,” said my caddie and one of the assistant pros, Ross Leeds. I left it short and tapped in for five. “Unlucky,” Ross said, as he did most of the day in customary Scottish fashion. Turns out, he couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Dearest Nature, strong and kind, Whispered, “Darling, never mind! Tomorrow they will wear another face, The founder thou; these are thy race!
After Turnberry, our golfing excursion had ended. The next morning Roy had us up and out the door and we reluctantly said goodbye to this beautiful place, en route to spend the next two days in the city of Edinburgh. We had seen five of the most spectacular golf courses in the world – all steeped in history and each one giving us better perspective on what is actually means to play this game.
So we attacked Edinburgh the way a tourist would New York: via an open-roofed tour bus. There are three bus companies that operate these tours, but they all have the buses line up on the Waverly Bridge, which happened to be a half-block from our hotel.
Of all the great accommodations in Scotland, there can be no conversation of “the best” without mentioning the Balmoral Hotel, here in Edinburgh on Princess Street. The location is similar to the idea of The Plaza in New York being on 5th Avenue – except if New York had only one main thoroughfare rather than 10. Well, Princess Street is the man drag in Edinburgh, and it separates what is known as the “Old City” and the “New City.” To the south of Princess Street is the old part of town, encompassing all the old meadows and gardens. It also incorporates the beautiful Edinburgh Castle up on the hill, and down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Park and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, where the Queen of England stays when she’s in Scotland. In something that is wonderfully unique about this city is that this portion of town is also built on two separate levels, meaning that on the map one road can look like it meets up to Princess Street, but it was built in an earlier time so it is actually below the level of the main street. It’s strange, and can be confusing, but is dealt with pretty easily once you get the hang of it. What these two separate levels create is a series of bridges in the middle of the city. They all have something running underneath them, it’s just not water. There’s no water anywhere near the main part of the city, and only from the highest vantage points can you see out to the North Sea; east to East Lothian and north, over the Firth of Forth back in the direction of St. Andrews.
It was on one of these bridges where we got on our tour bus and headed up the hill to see the magnificent Edinburgh Castle. Up a very steep rocky hill that is plugged top of an extinct volcano, it is said that humans have been living atop this mount since the 800s B.C. Although it’s unclear what those early civilizations were, the castle itself can be traced back to at least the reign of King David I in the 12th century. Once up inside the walls of the castle, there are all sorts of wonderful things to explore, one of them being a small chapel that was built with that original structure in the 12th century. In another section the Queen’s Jewels are displayed, which normally creates a long (and frustrating) line to just see the lights glimmer off rocks the size of – well, yea, golf balls. The views from this vantage point down onto the city are just outstanding, and the castle is worth at least a couple hours of your time. Leaving through the front gates, you walk onto the Royal Mile, which is a downhill, cobblestone road leading you through a very touristy section of town. There are shops where you can go and buy your Scottish equivalent of the “I Heart NY” shirt, which is normally an English-made tam or a kilt made from a wool blend. There are many good shops along the road, though, and if you pick through them carefully, this is where you are best suited to find a good keepsake.
About halfway down, it goes back to being a quaint city, and eventually you reach the bottom, where Holyrood Palace is located. Although you can’t go in when the Queen is in town, she almost never is, so it’s free reign. With numerous buildings of regal nature, and a full large yard in the back where the Queen throws formal garden parties, it’s a site to be seen. Walking down the Royal Mile can be a bit overwhelming, with all the fellow tourists and hoopla. So one late afternoon after getting bumped into one time too many, my girlfriend and I decided take a breather in a small pub. It had been there since the 1858 and felt new. Following a pint or two, I looked at the menu and saw they had haggis. Before leaving for Scotland, I said I was dead-set on trying this national mystery food, predicting that I would even like it. Up to this point, I had avoided it, but that time was now over. “I think I’m going to get it,” I said. “Why do you look so scared,” my girlfriend said. “I thought you wanted to do this?” I did, so I placed an order. When it came, it looked just as I had expected. If corned beef hash can be black and not look completely rotten, than that’s how haggis looks. And that’s how haggis tastes, like a grainy corned beef hash. I was right, I liked it, and mixed with a little mashed potatoes on the side, I could eat it consistently.
Getting back to Princess Street from anywhere is easy, as almost the whole city of Edinburgh is walkable. Crossing to the north side, into the “New City,” the demeanor of the city changes quite a bit. The buildings are newer – anything mid-1800s is considered for the whippersnappers – and with a series of small squares and parks, the area has a little more geographical structure to it. Running parallel to Princess Street is Rose Street, which is a narrow road not meant for cars, which probably saves many lives over the course of the year. That’s because Rose Street has so many pubs and clubs that it rivals Hoboken for the most concentration of bars anywhere in the world. On the second night we were there, we decided to go explore these pubs, but apparently it was a weekend that was designated for “stag” and “hen” parties. That means they were filled with loud and obnoxious groups, the men loud and bawdy, the women dressed in costume and squawking. We ended up walking back to the Old City and found a moderately eventful little pub where we could sit and sip a properly poured Guiness. It’s odd for a New Yorker to hear last call before 1 a.m. – especially when you’re in a country known for enjoying its alcohol – but that’s when the lights flickered and we headed back to the Balmoral Bar for a nightcap. The lounge in the hotel is high-end all the way, and as we found out, late at night they will continue to serve you. They do it under the guise of room service, and in doing so they say you can’t stay in the barroom itself. So we “took our drinks in the drawing room,” as the bartender put it, which was moderately large room across the lobby. It was a strange place, packed with couches like a furniture depot and the walls were covered with strange art, including a large framed leopard-print cloth.
After the nice man brought us our drinks – and we felt completely guilty about making him serve us in some sitting room far away from the bar – he also placed down a couple menus. We had a wonderful meal that night in a restaurant called Stack Polly, filled with fresh Scottish ingredients, including a delicious appetizer featuring haggis (my new favorite) wrapped in puff pastry. But at 2 a.m. and after a couple beverages, when someone offers you Indian Nan bread, it’s hard to pass up. The waiter said he would come back to take our order. Before he could do so, a middle-aged man who looked like he tried to drink the town dry stumbled in and started talking. Well, mumbling is more accurate, and the only thing that I could discern from his liquid verbalization was “I’m pissed.” That’s an English term meaning drunk, and it was redundant. None of us could say anything, just sat there agape at this man’s glorious performance. He then turned around towards the door to exit, but in doing so shuffled his feet a little as if to do a small dance. “Ah, little jig,” I said. “Nice way to go out.” We laughed all the way back to the rooms, with the menus and promise of Nan bread still sitting there to greet the waiter if he ever returned.
THERE are two other places in Edinburgh that must been seen – and climbed, if one is physically able. The first one is a tall monument that you can’t miss, sitting directly at the corner of the East Princess Street Gardens, next to the street where all of the open-top buses congregate. It is a 200-foot-6-inch tall gothic tower that is dedicated to the Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. Easy enough to believe, it’s the largest monument in the world dedicated to an author.
Above a small rotunda where there is a sculpture of Scott sitting in a chair, the tower rises like a medieval church spire into the sky, and inside are 287 grueling steps leading you to the top. As you make your way up the spiraling stairs, the walkway continues to get narrower and steeper and it becomes tough to navigate. It’s not for the faint of heart, and the stairs themselves are just small slivers of stone that, if missed, will send you tumbling down for a serious injury. There are three landing areas on the way to the top, and when you finally get there, the view of the city is terrific. The other wonderful climb is in the eastern part of town, up on what is called Calton Hill. There sits the Nelson Monument, dedicated to Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, who defeated the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The 105-foot tower, looking like it could be at the corner of a Lego castle, was finished in 1817 and was placed at the highest part of Calton Hill, 561 feet above see level. It replaced an earlier mast that signaled ships in the Firth of Forth. After climbing another 143 steps, there is a viewing gallery from the top of the tower. From there, you look down on the whole city; from the castle up on the hill, to the Forth leading into the North Sea, to the coastline of East Lothian. The day we were up there, the sky was crystal clear. I squinted into the wind to look over the Forth to see if I could spot St. Andrews in the far distance. Maybe if I looked hard enough I could even see Carnoustie. Maybe if I looked west, over this beautiful and ancient city, I could see the Ailsa Craig, and the stunning links of Turnberry and Prestwick. Maybe all I had to do to see all those things was close my eyes. Yup, there they are. And they’re never going away.
“Experience” By Ralph Waldo Emerson The lords of life, the lords of life, – I saw them pass In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim, – Use and surprise, Surface and dream, Succession swift, and spectral wrong, Temperament without a tongue, And the inventor of the game Omnipresent without a name; – Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched from east to west: Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians tall, Walked about with puzzled look. Him by the hand dear Nature took, Dearest Nature, strong and kind, Whispered, “Darling, never mind! Tomorrow they will wear another face, The founder thou; these are thy race!”
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