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.

The 18th green of the Old Course, with the 1st tee and the R&A Clubhouse behind.

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.

The "spectacles" bunkers on the par-5 5th hole of the Old Course. The white flag (right) is for No. 5, while the red flag (over left bunker) is for No 13, coming in the other direction.

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.

The famed "Eden" hole, the 11th at the Old Course, with the Strath bunker to the left of the red flag and the Shell bunker short.

One of the most recognized holes in all of golf is the 11^th 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 7^th.  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 11^th 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.

In a trecherous spot in the Shell Bunker, while playing the Eden hole.

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 4^th, 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.

The Old Course during the final round of the 2010 Open Championship. (photo by AP).

“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.

A look at the town of St. Andrews from the Old Course.

“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.