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.

A look back down the 4th hole toward the town of Prestwick.

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.

The famed dining room at Prestwick. (courstey Prestwick GC)

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.

The tee shot at No. 3 at Prestwick, with the Cardinal Bunker in the distance. Below is the famous bunker from the 1890s; it doesn't look too much different now. (photos courtesy Prestwick GC)

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.

Hitting over the hill at Prestwick's par-3 5th hole, "The Himalayas."

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.

The good par-3 11th at Prestwick.

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.

The difficult bunker in the middle of the already narrow 15th fairway at Prestwick.

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.

The tee shot at the famous "Alps" hole at Prestwick. The green is way over the hump in the middle of the frame in the distance.

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.

Looking down on the "Sahara" bunker fronting the Alps green.

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.

Heading back to the clubhouse at Prestwick, 18th green right.

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.