Golf in Scotland
Golf in Scotland
My wife and I both grew up playing golf, and in my case a lot of golf. I spent the better part of my younger years in San Francisco hitting countless bags of balls on the “practice course” at Harding Park, playing twenty-five cent Nassaus with a rotating cast of junior characters and putting for dimes with a gang of other kids that sometimes included Johnny Miller, George Archer, Bob Lunn and others who went on to professional golf careers. I gave up the game in frustration in my twenties when I realized conclusively that my over emotional temperament would prevent me from ever reaching the level of my boyhood pals. Then along came a family and that precluded playing much anyway. Tennis happened to be more time and schedule friendly.
Just recently, though, with the nest empty and a little free time at hand, Joey and I have returned to the game we once loved. On a previous trip to Scotland we brought our clubs along almost as an afterthought and were able to play a couple of rounds in Fife: one on a beautiful “Parkland” course and one on the gloriously blustery “Links” of St. Andrews. On that day at St. Andrews, the golf spirit came alive in us again and our interest in the game was rekindled and reborn. Ever since, we’ve talked of returning and playing more seaside links courses.
The “links” have a particular charm for us, an appeal that cannot be denied. Part of that charm derives from the fact that the links land was once, and still is in many places, a commons area used by townsfolk for walking and recreation. And so, out on the links land one sees and meets many local people who are out and about with dogs, neighbors, friends and family for a breath of fresh air, a chat or their daily constitutional.
Another part of the links charm is the look of the land: it’s generally a wide-open swath of wind swept terrain running parallel to the beach. In fact, the wind has been blowing over it for centuries and has generally flattened the dunes into what looks like vast goat or sheep pastures, another of its ancient uses. The soil is so sandy and nutrient poor that not much grows on it, except for various grasses, heather and gorse. (Gorse, by the way, is a thick, sharply prickled bush that eats golf balls. It grows in patches that can reach six or seven feet high.)
Links land isn’t suitable for agriculture, which is the reason that it was available to the townspeople for recreation in the first place. There are many theories on how the game of golf started, one ancient form even dating back to the Romans. But it was on this common links land in Scotland that the “gawfers” elbowed the other townies out of the way long enough in order for the game to slowly evolve and codify its rules, form and decorum. Of course, once enough folks were bitten by the game, and once the benefits – economic and otherwise were understood -- everyone agreed that the use of the commons for golf was a good thing and the courses took their final form.
Now most of the time out on the links the wind blows and it’s cold. So you have to be a fairly hardy soul to want to be out there chasing the ball into the hole. At the same time, it’s marvelously invigorating and just plain fun. It was probably this realization that prompted our spiritual re-awakening at St. Andrews.
Since we wanted to be in London this particular summer for the unveiling in early July of a memorial window in Westminster Abbey dedicated to the Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe, a project that had occupied some of my time for the previous two years, I added a week to the planned trip and using the internet as a source of information and for booking reservations, put together a golf trip that would take us to four of most famous links courses in Scotland: Prestwick, Royal Troon, Turnberry and Carnoustie.
And so it was that on June 27th, after an all night flight from Newark we arrived in Glasgow fairly refreshed. On the descent in, the sight of the green valleys of Western Scotland in the early morning sun was truly magnificent -- other worldly really: completely uninhabited, completely wild and completely green. Maybe it was the Marlowe, maybe just my restless imagination, but as I looked at those stark green dells I kept thinking of the Bloody Sergeant in Macbeth describing
“... The merciless Macdonwald—
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that
The multiplying villainies of nature
Do swarm upon him -- from the western isles,
Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied...”
Were these the western isles? They were certainly as evocative in appearance as the poetry that kept running through my mind. They also looked like they would breed pretty tough men, perhaps like the merciless Macdonwald himself. Right away those views created the perfect portal that allowed us to pass from what we knew to what we didn’t.
A small surprise greeted us at the car rental counter when we discovered that the rental company didn’t have any more automatic shift cars available and that I’d have to drive a standard transmission, meaning that I’d be shifting with the left hand. I only hesitated for a moment thinking back to the last time I was going the “wrong way” around those roundabouts and feeling my innards seize at the sight of cars whooshing by me on my right. But we took it. And proceeded bravely to the lot to find the car, a Ford Mondeo – a nice little car that wondrously held all of our luggage: four suitcases and a large double golf bag. After a few moments on the road, shifting expertly, I might add, Joey observed, “that’s a lot like rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time, isn’t it?” I tried not to think of all the times I’ve failed to do that.
We made our way carefully through the gorgeously rolling farm country about forty miles south to the little town of Ayr where we found our hotel, Fairfield House. It abutted the links land of Ayr, a long green commons for use by the town that was adjacent to the water: the Firth of Clyde.
Originally a wealthy tea merchant’s seaside mansion, Fairfield House is now a nice, comfy small four star Hotel. Over the course of our travels we’ve learned that we are happiest in small hotels, and, in fact, there is an organization called Small Luxury Hotels of the World whose members we always try to use when traveling. Since there were none around Glasgow in the SLH handbook, I looked for the closest thing and Fairfield House seemed to be it.
We had the “Carnegie Suite” replete with wine dark reds on the floor and walls, heavy oaken furniture and a monstrous wooden four-poster with carved gargoyles on top of the four posts. One of the gargoyles had had his head severely notched in order to fit him snugly under a ceiling truss. I wondered whether or not this was an omen for the trip. Or worse, for my golf game. I couldn’t help looking at that little fellow at every opportunity. As we took a midday nap before heading out to our first round of golf at Prestwick Golf Club, I had to force myself to think of a long slow back swing, big turn and balanced follow through and forget about the smiling little man above me with most of his head missing.
Prestwick Golf Club
Now, “Golf in Scotland” was the theme of our trip, but I don’t think that either of us expected to be immediately overwhelmed with a golfing experience. I had chosen Prestwick as our first course because while the British Open originated there, it hadn’t been played on this course for seventy-five years, and I thought that we would gradually work our way up to the premier courses.
Ha! Nothing of the sort. Right off the bat, this course was flat out brilliant, beautiful, charming, unbelievably difficult, picturesque, unforgiving, terrifying, unusual, cranky, mean, loving, peculiar, unique, enchanting, strange, bewildering, beguiling, and simply defied almost every notion one might have about what a golf course is. On most holes, there are no fairways, for example, just patches of mown grass scattered here and there amid the seas of humped and twisted and tortured dunes of rough. And this rough is rough: the kind where you can’t advance the ball no matter what you try to do. I would venture to say that no machine like a mower or spreader or tiller or dozer or anything else has ever made its way over the roughs of this course. It’s exactly as it was 150 years ago when the Open Championship was first played over the course’s original 12 holes.
Right away you’re introduced to a new concept: possession golf, or the “possession shot.” It means “hit less than you normally would and keep the ball in play,” but I think it really means, “don’t lose the ball!” Scottish caddies hate to lose balls.
On the first tee, the first thing the caddy always asks is, “What’s your handicap?” You answer and they have you clubbed. At Prestwick, my caddy Colin didn’t blink an eye when I said, “scratch.” He replied with no hesitation, “Okay. Now I want you to play a 190 possession shot,” as he pulled out the four iron, “right between the two boonkers there.” As I looked down the first hole (called Railway, because of the train line running down the entire right side) I saw that if I didn’t hit the 190 yard shot and land it between the “boonkers” I’d be basically dead: Railroad and O.B. on the right, gorse and a high sand dune to the left (just forget that, you’ll never find it in the gorse), and hillocks and rolls of rough short and all around the humpy little green (all you could see was the top of the flag waving merrily right next to the brick wall of the Railway).
So there was this small patch of fairway about 190 yards from the tee, like a bulls-eye on a shooting target. And you have no alternative. You have to hit it. This is target golf. That’s what we call it now, as one of the more recent innovations in golf course design. Only, it occurs to you as you see it hole after hole at Prestwick, it’s not so recent. It was a part of the game 150 years ago.
I parred that first hole by following Colin’s instructions. It was a little like playing hop scotch, when after throwing the charm into the appropriate box, one then hopped from box to box on one foot until completing the course. I parred the Second (Tunnel) as well when I made a terrific sand save from long distance. But on the Third (Cardinal) the course began to extract its painful toll. I couldn’t stay within the boxes and there were penalties to pay.
Any error at all in the flight of the ball is magnified by the wind and winds up costing you strokes. So the tee shot blown off course and into the rough on this par five means a safety “out” shot to the fairway, and then another crack at it with a Spoon and so forth. If the wind doesn’t get you then the unexpected bounces do. And if the bounces don’t get you then the pot bunkers and high shoulders and slick lumpy greens do. You’re just going to get it, that’s what you quickly understand, and you resign yourself to it. In fact, that quickly becomes the challenge: finding some way to overcome the never-ending disasters that befall you.
The next idea that follows logically is that golf was originally a match play game. It had to be. There are so many unexpected events that happen on this course, so many unpredictable situations, that luck and fortune become a large part of the play. And how you handle these crises becomes one of the bigger factors in your eventual success and enjoyment. Medal scoring on this course is for self-flagellators only.
Each hole has a name and a surprise, and almost always a nasty surprise. If it’s not the “fairway” where the ball bounces around like it hit the rocks of a dry creek bed going who knows where, or the roughs which are completely natural and untended terrain, then it’s the greens. I think there were only two holes, the Fourteenth (Goosedubs) and the Eighteenth (Clock) where you could actually see the entire green from either the tee or the fairway. On all the rest, it was only when you approached that you saw what fiendish details awaited you: the rills, the valleys, the burns, the protective collars and mounds of thick grass surrounding the greens, the bunkers, the waste areas, the hollows, the drop offs, the tiers, the wind, etc. It was as if John Cleese himself was nearby and practicing for his Titleist commercial.
The Seventeenth (Alps) was so astonishingly dramatic, difficult and beautiful that we returned the following day just to see it again and photograph it. Alps is today exactly as it was first created and played. To describe it as a 391-yard dogleg right par four doesn’t do it justice.
From the tee, you can see the first 340 yards. There’s a very thin landing area out there (maybe 20 yards wide) that starts about 200 yards out from the tee and then bends right around a thick gorse patch and proceeds about half way up a high dune of grass, rough, heather and gorse. On top of the dune there are three tombstone like wooden markers that constitute aiming points for your next shot. The wind blows across the hole from your right to left requiring you to aim at the gorse to the right of the dogleg and allowing the wind to blow it back into play.
But it’s not the drive that makes this hole so wonderful and memorable, it’s the blind second shot, aimed at or to the right of one of the tombstone markers at the top of the dune. Of course you have no idea what to hit and have to rely totally on your caddy.
When you finally get to the top of the dune and look over, what you see just makes you gasp: one of the biggest sand traps in the world. The far side of the dune is pitched downward at about 45 degrees and covered with wild rough. At the foot of the dune is this huge, huge bunker about 35 yards wide by 20 yards across and deep enough to require a staircase for exiting. And it butts up against a triple tiered green that is further surrounded on its backside by thickly covered 5-foot high shoulders of heavy rough.
In other words, if you don’t hit the green with this blind second shot, you’re going to pay: at least one stroke if you’re in the bunker; probably two strokes if you’re short on the down slope of the dune; and if you’re caught long above the green in the impossibly thick heavy grass, the only place you’re going is off the green and into the bunker. Make that two or three strokes as your penalty.
What a hole! All I could think of was how difficult it must have been to play a hundred years ago, or a hundred and fifty years ago. How did they do it?
One other hole deserves special mention: the Tenth (Arran) because it is so typically Scottish and so impossibly hard. Arran (or, the hole that never ends as I began to think of it) is a murderous 460 yard four par uphill and into the teeth of the wind so it usually plays at well over 500 yards. It just happened to be raining at the time we came to it, so we were getting the full Scottish test on this one. My drive, which was only slightly off center, was blown left and into the rough. I tried to play my second out to the fairway, but the rough was so long that it grabbed the club head and threw it left again with a vengeance. Wind, rain, a new club and a big swing for my third... and same result as the second shot. More wind, more rain, another new club and an even bigger swing for my fourth... and the same thing again; though I did manage to move it to the shorter rough.
So, ... four shots, still in the rough, still a hundred yards from the green, the wind still screaming in my face, the rain still pelting me, all my illusions about my game shattered and entertaining the thought that this wasn’t really very fair. I mean the course has all the advantages and you’re weak and alone, and obviously inadequate. I thought about picking it up and going in. But I couldn’t. The caddies and the wife were watching.
The fifth shot landed on the green but skittered into the thick fringe. My chip back came up about ten feet short. But when that ten footer went down for a seven, I pulled that ball out of the hole with the odd feeling that I’d somehow triumphed (I didn’t make eight!) in the face of all that adversity and promised myself that I’d never even think of Arran again.
The whole day at Prestwick was a full out, no holds barred, frontal assault of Scottish golf: wind, rain, cold, mist, dunes, sunshine, double bogeys, gorse, pot bunkers, rough, and caddies who’d say with such simplicity, “I want you to play it a wee bit to the right of the rain shed and let the wind carry it back in.” After a few holes, both Joey and I quit thinking and just listened to the caddies. It was a hell of a lot easier to simply think of what they told you rather than confront your own fears like, “Over the rain shed?! Are you kidding? I’m so flustered I have no idea where this one is going. And if I pull it into that gorse, I’ll never find it. And I only have two balls left! What if I run out? How embarrassing is that? I paid a fortune to play this course and now I may not be able to finish!!!”
Prestwick Golf Club, ‘Home of the Open’ as it styles itself is the greatest natural golf course I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t host the Open any more because it’s too short, they say (6544). Ha, says I. The real reasons are: there are no big hotels nearby, no parking, not much room for spectator stands, and if the truth be known, it’s probably too ornery and difficult! My guess is that not many American visitors like this course because it’s so unlike anything we have here, but treat yourself if you can, go see where and how it all began.
After the round we went across the street and into the North Beach Hotel bar and had a couple of pints of Guiness. Ah, what a treat that was. They actually had a coal fire burning in the front room where we sat and looked out the front window at the Course and the gray blustery skies overhead. It was eight P.M. and there was still four hours of daylight left. After a few sips we both loosened up and started to blabber and jabber and go on about the Course and its wild, untamed and captivating beauty. I had never seen anything remotely like it. But I loved it. We both loved it! It was positively thrilling. It struck deep resonant chords in us. It was practically a religious experience. We can’t wait to try it again.
Royal Troon Golf Club
The next morning found us driving blissfully through the storybook countryside to the little town of Troon and then past it and out to the Firth of Clyde. Whereas Prestwick was all gray stone and set down smack dab in the city neighborhood fronting the water, Royal Troon was much more like an American Country Club a ways out of town with a large clubhouse complex surrounded by parking lot and greenery.
I had learned earlier that morning that Joey couldn’t play the Old or Championship Course: no women allowed. In fact, there were other “no women” rules, which suggested a little misogynistic bent on the part of the Troon men. Women were not allowed to enter the Club from the front doors, for example. They had to go around to the back with the deliveries. And a few years previous, when the men learned that the cost of a new slate roof was a million pounds and that it would be assessed to them with their dues, many of them wanted to sell the women’s clubhouse in order to pay for their roof.
Joey graciously consented to play the Portland Course, which is Troon’s second course, while I went out on the Old Course. She had a caddy named Alfie whom she really liked, and the two of them took it in about three hours with Joey shooting 101. After her round, she walked out to the Fifteenth on the Old Course and picked up my foursome, walking in with us.
Royal Troon is very reminiscent of St. Andrews, in that it is made up of nine
holes out more or less linked together in a line along the beach, just like sausage
links from whence the name “links” golf derives. Then came the nine holes in,
just like nine more sausages leading you back to the Clubhouse. Depending on
which way the wind is blowing, you either get the wind in your face all the way
out or all the way back. This day it was blowing around 20+ knots according
to the little weather station next to the Clubhouse doors.
I played well at Troon for the most part, and therefore forgave it its little quirks and oddities. The holes going out with the stiff wind behind were playing fairly easily that day, in spite of the fact that after learning of my low handicap, the caddy asked the starter for permission to play me from the White or back tees. All the other members of my foursome, all Americans I might add, played from the Yellow, or regular tees. Of course, it wasn’t a problem playing from the back tees until we turned for home. Then it was just insanity.
Here are two examples of how much the wind affects the ball. The Fifth Hole, Greenan, is a 207-yard par 3 with a yawning bunker in front of the green. Andy, my caddy, put a seven iron in my hand. I looked at him doubtfully and tried to put it back in the bag. He wouldn’t let me. “Over the right edge of the boonker,” he instructed me and then stepped back to watch. I hit it over the right edge of the “boonker” and it stopped seven feet from the hole; maybe the longest seven iron I’ve hit in forty years.
Then two holes later, on the Eight, Postage Stamp, which is the only hole on the front side that turns back into the wind, I was looking at this little tiny green (it’s not called Postage Stamp for nothing) smack up against a high dune on its left with a deep nasty trench boonker between the dune and the green, a fall off behind and to the right of the green and rough everywhere else, but only 123 yards away. The catch is, it is into the wind, like the Seventh at Pebble Beach. Some days you can hit a two iron, others a wedge. My down wind experience that day was giving me a two club advantage, so I thought that a solid punch eight would be about right. I went for it, but Andy smiled and tried to hand me the six. Are you kidding? We compromised on the seven.
I hit what I thought was a perfect shot, only to see it climb vertically in the wind like a misguided rocket and land thirty-five yards short. In the rough, thirty-five yards short, that is. That’s unbelievable! I didn’t even hit it 90 yards. I should have hit a screaming five. Andy laughed and said, “That’s the highest poonch shot I’ve ever seen!” I can’t wait to go back and play that one again. Postage Stamp is the signature hole for Royal Troon.
So, playing well, as I said, I made the turn determined to do my best against the wind. I mean, how bad could it be? Well, the next five holes: Sandhills, The Railway, The Fox, Burmah, and Alton just eviscerated my game, completely and utterly. This is the same treatment many of the pros just experienced in the Open Championship at Muirfield on that stormy Saturday when even the great Tiger shot 81. The wind causes, exacerbates and compounds a host of bad breaks and problems. Nothing goes right. Everything goes wrong. And the rest of the weather trebles the misery. It all combines to break your concentration, then your will, then your spirit. I remember standing on the Thirteenth tee and thinking “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here!” I’ve never seen such a stretch of tough holes. It was like taking Arran from the day before and quintupling it.
This is the seminal experience of Scottish golf: everything conspires against you and you come apart at the seams. As I trudged the holes along the paths and roughs, I enumerated the excuses: the wind is howling, it’s cold, I can’t swing with all these clothes on, the rough is thick, and wet, the gorse is everywhere, the boonkers are unfair, the sand is too heavy, the holes are all blind and impossibly long, the ball bounces funny. Finally I ran out of excuses and the will to dwell on them. It just occurred to me, this is what it is! You’re playing golf in Scotland. The elements are a part of the game. So your choice is: to play or not to play. That moment was something of an epiphany. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and just embraced it all.
Before I knew it, I had a little mist in my eyes. My golfing life was flashing before me: I was walking along with my Dad as a ten year old learning the game by watching him; I was walking along as a teenager playing junior tournaments with dreams of the professional life in my eyes; I was walking along as a father telling my sons about the wonders of playing the game in Scotland; I was walking along with all my golfing partners past, as if in a beautiful dream where everything was perfect – I was out on the links and I was playing golf. There is nothing better.
At Fifteen (Crosbie), I stepped up to the tee and still a little misty eyed, just cracked a beauty that split the narrow fairway; then a fantastic Spoon that bored directly into the gale, avoided the pot boonkers and left me a delicately rolling pitch and run over the mounds and through the swales to within ten feet. A lip-out two putt totaled a spectacularly good five. Nice par, I thought. Soon to discover that it wasn’t a par at all but a bogey. Really? That’s a par four? This is noteworthy only because Andy told me that on the first day of the last Open in ’97 (Justin Leonard’s win) there were only 4 pars out of 150 players on Crosbie.
Then with my wife as witness, I played the final three holes in par, par, par. Which is also noteworthy because in the clubhouse there is an autographed scorecard from Jack Nicklaus on which it shows that he played the last three holes in one over par (bogeying the par three Seventeenth, Rabbit) when he played there. When I close my eyes for the last time I may still be thinking of the classically perfect Spoon I hit 210 yards on Rabbit into the gale to within twenty feet. Jack would have been jealous.
What a shot. What an adventure. What a glorious day. What an awakening. Our rounds were followed by a long and leisurely lunch in the Club, a few pints of Guiness, lots of excitement, talking and laughing and, on my part, a definite feeling of accomplishment. I felt like I had at least risen to the challenge of the game that day, if not met it. And that moment of awakening while coming up the Fourteenth will always be with me, and will always remind me of the essence of the game.
After an hour or so, we drove back over to Prestwick and walked out to Seventeen again to take some pictures. It was just as awesome as the day before.
Turnberry, The Ailsa Course
Our next stop was the Turnberry Golf and Resort Hotel, less than an hour’s drive south of Ayr. This was really Five Star in every way. We had a beautiful room with a balcony overlooking the courses and the Firth of Clyde, the islands of Ailsa, Kintyre, and Arran in the distance. We went out on the balcony and took the afternoon sun our first day there after playing the Kintyre Course (not the Championship Course) that was mostly forgettable in every way.
The Championship Ailsa Course at Turnberry, however, is another story: it’s hauntingly beautiful. Built on a promontory around an old lighthouse and the ruins of Robert the Bruce’s childhood castle it effortlessly follows the natural topography of the beaches, rocks and dunes to produce long green rivers of holes. There’s much more grass and fairway here than at the previous two courses. And the rough is not quite so unforgiving. Again, unlike the other courses, here you can see trouble before you hit your shot, so you don’t feel like you’re being surprised all the time by the hazards.
The holes look like they’ve been meticulously sculpted out of the soft terrain, so smooth and esthetically pleasing are they. The course just looks inviting. The holes flow down gentle rills and up and over pleasingly shaped dunes, along the rocky coastline where at one point you can see a silhouette of “Robert The Bruce” in the rocks looking back at his castle. The whole course generates a warm and cozy feeling. It’s almost protective. Which is not to say that it can’t be horrendously difficult: when the wind blows, all bets are off. It’s just that the looks of this course are so warm and friendly that it begs for your best golf.
The Hotel sits high up on a hill overlooking the courses, the lighthouse and the castle ruins. It’s a beautiful and elegant facility. During the war it was a British convalescent hospital and there was a large airfield out on the promontory. The main runway is still there and more or less intact, running from the shore inland right towards the Hotel/Hospital. It’s eerily evocative, this broken down runway from long ago set out between the golf courses. You can almost hear the drone of the planes as they ferry in the wounded. The locals say the Germans never bombed it out of respect for the injured combatants recovering there.
We had two premium caddies on the Ailsa, Frank and Tommy, and they made our day there remarkably memorable. Frank, a natural comedian, was instructing Joey on her boonker play and the finer points of possession golf as well as translating the Scotch phrases such as Dinna Fouter (Don’t mess around) and Tappie Toorie (Hit to the top) into English for us, and Tommy gave me a lesson in reading greens that will serve me well hereafter.
There was no wind (only 10 knots) this day and the course opened up like a cracked egg. The stretch of holes along the shore, Four to Eleven, was simply spectacular. I’ll always remember teeing off on the Ninth (Bruce’s Castle) from the Championship tee way out on the rocks. It seemed like I was in another county (the fairway is two hundred yards away and up the hill) and had to air mail it back to the course. Then there was the little par three Eleventh (Maidens), the last hole along the beach, where Joey hit her four iron tee shot to within 15 feet and sank the putt authoritatively for a birdie. That was great cause for making a spectacle of ourselves, which, of course, we did.
I learned the greatest lesson about my putting game at Turnberry. And that was that I am not a good, or even an adequate reader of greens. I always see and play too much break. This is something of a revelation after almost 50 years of playing golf at a fairly high level. My stroke, on the other hand, is sound, and if I have the right line I can sink putts.
Tommy, my caddy, was absolutely perfect at reading the greens. I doubted him on the first hole when he called a twelve footer “one ball to the right.” It looked like a foot to me. But he was so sure of himself when I told him it was more than a ball that I just figured I’d show him the error of his ways. I played it one ball out and it dropped right into the center of the cup. Whoa. I looked at it again and continued to see a foot of break. Maybe this is why I don’t score well, I thought. From then on I just rolled it where he indicated and sank basically everything I looked at: a fistful of five to ten footers for pars, plus 5 or 6 real ropes.
By the end of the round I had made three birdies and a really pretty eagle on the par five Seventeenth (Lang Whang or “Good Whack” as Frank described it -- Drive, seven iron, and three foot putt). This all put me in a very celebratory mood. I quickly and conveniently forgot the fact that I had to drop a 15 footer on Eighteen (Ailsa Hame) for my quadruple bogey 8 (lost first tee ball in gorse right, third stroke into the rough left, shank out of the rough into an unplayable lie in the gorse right, drop laying six, pitch and putt) to end the day. We had cocktails in the bar, where Joey sat with me while I smoked a pretty fair Cuban cigar, then drove to town for a fantastic seafood dinner at a place called Wildings. The warm and wonderful conversation we had with the Scots around our dinner table gave a golden glow to what already was a golden day at Turnberry. Turnberry was premium in every way.
In fact, it may be the premium one has to pay to stay and play here that engenders, for me, the only drawback. And that is the raft of American Corporate folks that swarm all over the place. Most of these visitors are smart, hard working, personable young men. But they’re on the corporate dole. If they were paying for it themselves they might appreciate the surroundings in a different way. But, they’re at Turnberry for a sales conference or work related reward. And the fact is, they don’t really have the life experience or polish to know how to behave in a cultural setting that is not their own. The elegance, sophistication and Old World charm that is so manifestly present in all aspects of the resort is eroded by the sloppy, slouched, warm-up clothed, locker room mentality of the “guys.”
But that’s really nit picking. Over all it was a great experience. There’s a little road sign that we saw on the way out of Turnberry the next morning that read, “Haste ye back.” Thinking back on the dinner conversation at Wildings and the great golf on the Ailsa, I thought, “I can’t wait.” Whenever I think of these three courses in Western Scotland I’ll always think, “Haste ye back, indeed! It’ll be well worth it.”
Stirling Castle
The next day was cold and rainy and so we didn’t feel like we missed anything as we drove across country to Carnoustie on the East Coast. A stop off at Stirling Castle midway promised a nice break from the rain and oddly on-coming traffic, and the arcane highway identification system (A9 to B974 to B17 to A9 to B977 to A14 to A9) that left the navigator and pilot at each other’s throats. So the early afternoon found us on a walking tour of the Castle. The town of Stirling sits basically in the middle of Scotland dividing East from West and the Highlands from the high plains of the South. It’s a strategic stronghold. Or was, rather.
As we viewed the surrounding plains from high on the Castle walls, our attention was directed eastward first to Stirling Bridge where in 1297 William Wallace (Braveheart) soundly defeated the English of Edward I (Longshanks) in the great Battle of Stirling Bridge; and subsequently to Campsie Fells, a set of small hills about a mile to the immediate south of the Castle. Bannock Burn runs around Campsie Fells and it was this stream that gave its name to the great victory by Robert The Bruce over the English of Edward II in 1313.
Now the Battle of Bannockburn is interesting for a few reasons: one, we had just seen Robert the Bruce the day before in the rocks at Turnberry and felt a certain kinship with him; two, Marlowe’s great history play about Edward II entitled “Edward II” that set the format and style for all Elizabethan history plays to come just happens to be my favorite Marlowe play; and, three, during a respite between the two contending armies at the Battle of Bannockburn, an Englishman named Henry de Bohun rode forward into the space between the two armies and challenged a Scot from the other side to meet him in single warrior combat. This was one of the ways the armies passed the “rest time” between segments of the battle. He was met by none other than Robert the Bruce himself, who warded off de Bohun’s first charge, wheeled around and “cleft his skull with a small battle-axe, the handle of which went to pieces.” And we thought William Wallace was cool!
As was the case at Stirling Bridge, the Scots inflicted another disastrous defeat upon the English, forcing them to abandon Stirling Castle to King Robert. He then dismantled the Castle so that the English couldn’t subsequently use it against him again. Of course, since then, it had been rebuilt, knocked down and rebuilt any number of times. A good thing, too, because on the ninth of September in 1543, Mary Queen of Scots was crowned in the Castle’s Royal Chapel. Joey and I sat there in the Chapel suitably in awe and impressed, right next to the spot Mary would have occupied. I mention this because my wife’s favorite historical character is Mary Queen of Scots, and her birthday happens to be the ninth of September.
Carnoustie
I had very high expectations for Carnoustie. Ben Hogan, my boyhood idol, had won the Open there in 1953 and I think I vaguely remember it: the Scots called him “the wee Iceman.” But the course hadn’t hosted any recent Opens because they didn’t have a world class Hotel facility to put up all the media people who had to be near the course for such an event. However, such a Hotel was completed in the late ‘90’s and they hosted the tournament in 1999. It is now back in the rota, as they say.
Naturally, I wanted to stay in the new Hotel: world class and all that. I spoke with the Reservations clerk a couple of times when making the arrangements and was assured that the room was “very large, with two queen sized beds and had a beautiful view of the course.” When I suggested that I would rather have one king sized bed, the reply was that they only had rooms with the two queens. That caused a little blip on the radar screen as being reminiscent of something... but was soon forgotten. Dreaming of the “beautiful view of the course,” I booked the room.
When we checked in to the Carnoustie Golf Hotel (like Fairfield House a supposed Four Star) we were really disappointed to find a little motel type room with the two queen beds jammed next to the tiny bath and barely enough room to get a suitcase in through the front door. I couldn’t believe it. And now they hold the Open here because somebody built this? It’s hard to understand. I felt like going down to the desk and saying, “Look here, I’ve been deceived! This isn’t a four star hotel, it’s a Motel Six!” In fact, I tried to. But when I got to the desk, the desk clerk was just so nice all the wind went out of my bluster and I couldn’t muster any sort of complaint. I think I inquired meekly about the restaurant’s hours or some such thing. Besides, they wouldn’t have understood the reference.
The room was off-putting, and the sense of betrayal was palpable, but the three sets of spring loaded double doors in the hallways for the sake of fire protection that had to be pried open and held in order to be passed through when coming and going drove me “roon the ben” as they said locally. We spent the night because it was too late to do anything else, then checked out the next day before our round and went down to Balbirnie House in Fife where we had stayed on our last trip.
In spite of the consternation over the accommodations at the Golf Hotel, our day on the Carnoustie Golf Links was lots of fun. We had a late tee time of 1 PM and couldn’t get it moved earlier, so we spent a good deal of time talking with the local people who couldn’t have been nicer: in the shops, in the restaurants, on the links, in the clubhouse and on the course.
It rained a persistent light rain most of the day, and suited up in the rain gear, vest and sweater, I find it very difficult to get comfortable and to swing. So from my perspective the golf was slightly compromised. Then again, I hope it wasn’t the fact that I loathed the Hotel that was twenty yards from the first tee and looming over everything, and the feeling that I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
The wind was very light and because of that the course was somewhat benign. I kept my head down and my thoughts to myself and actually found the first few holes to be fairly easy. Now that may just have been because I was getting accustomed to look of the links courses. However, by the Fifth (Brae) the ball started bouncing the wrong way for me and I started finding the pot bunkers that were strategically placed to gather in tee shots. Not errant tee shots, but good tee shots.
The interesting design aspect of this course seemed to me to be the fact that over the years, the holes had been carefully observed and discussed, and in an effort to make each of them as good a test as possible, the course had been meticulously reworked so that there was now only one way to play any particular hole. The tee shot has to be played a certain way, ditto with the second and the combination has to be perfectly executed in order for one to make the standard par. Simply put, there is no margin for error on any hole.
Take the Sixth (Long), a straightaway 500 yard 5 par with an O.B. fence all the way down the left hand side, for example. In order to prevent one from hitting a big tee shot and subsequently trying to reach the green in two, three pot bunkers were installed on the right starting at about 235 and extending down to 280 to crib, confine and limit the first shot. So, regardless of which way the wind happens to be blowing, the player is forced – on a par five -- to play a short possession shot off the tee, short of the pot bunkers, thereby extending the second shot out to 250 or more. Then that shot also has to contend with more pot bunkers short of the green basically making it impossible to reach it in two.
Not only that, but this first set of three bunkers on the right all have extensive collection areas associated with them so that even a tee shot like my perfect three iron that split the center winds up dead in a bunker. It’s that Prestwick-like, hopscotch, target golf idea all over again. Only this time you can’t distinguish the target areas because they’re part of the regular fairways and not isolated islands of grass amid the heather.
That’s nasty. And it’s prevalent at Carnoustie. On some holes there’s a definite feeling of mean spiritedness about the way the hole has been set up. It’s as if every possible good break, short cut or easy way has been seen and then denied by the addition of bunkers, roughs, dunes or contouring. Every shot has to be completely understood before hand, perfectly calculated and then executed with absolute precision, or it’s trouble. Lots and lots of trouble. With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pot Bunkers; or that rhymes with B and that stands for Burns; or that rhymes with G and that stands for Gorse.
I hit the pot bunkers off the tee three holes in a row before finally believing the caddy when he said, “stay left.” But it’s hard to play that short possession shot short of the bunkers and then leave yourself 250 or more to the green. The fact is Carnoustie just demands great golf shots from you, and if you don’t deliver, then it’s curtains. It demands incredible exactitude. It just makes such perfect sense that Ben Hogan really wowed them here. He had the kind of exactitude that I’m talking about, being able to absolutely and completely control the flight of his ball. Both our caddies watched Hogan win the Open there in 1953 when they were boys.
The one different thing that Carnoustie threw at us was a tree. It’s so startling to see a tree on links land, but there it was right next to the Ninth green. I guess the local folks have had the same impression of how different it looks because the tree is the symbol of the course, the main iconic figure in their logo, printed on all their scorecards, stationary, balls, etc.
Carnoustie is a long course: 6692 yards off the Men’s tees, and 6941 off the back. The Championship tees are even further back on some holes. There’s just more acreage here than at the other courses and they have the ability to really stretch the course out. The back nine is long and very difficult. If there’s a wind blowing ... well, it’s no wonder they call it “the most challenging golf course in the world.” If it isn’t, it’s close.
By the time we made the turn the rain had stopped and I put away the three extra top layers and began to swing again. I played a really wonderful string of holes beginning at Twelve (Southward Ho) with an untraditional par (playing down the ninth fairway and then over to the green with a monstrous blind second), following with another on Thirteen (Whins) and then the par of the day on Fourteen (Spectacles) the number one handicap hole.
Spectacles is a 4 par 468 yards into the wind. A perfect drive left me just next to the pot bunkers and rough on the right and about a hundred and twenty yards short of the two eye shaped bunkers sticking up like a Kilroy face in the middle of the fairway. It looks like they’re right in front of the green. But they’re a hundred plus yards from the green. It’s basically a blind artillery lob for your second. Impossible.
Malcom, my caddy, gave me the two iron and said, “you have to hit a perfect shot between the spectacles. Anything else is big trouble.” I looked up at him after a waggle or two thinking “how perfect?” and he said sternly, “between the spectacles.” I hit what felt like a good shot, though it was leaking right a little as it disappeared over the right side eyeball. I looked at Malcom for a sign. And he pursed his lips and cringed. He didn’t want to even think about what lay ahead. Okay, big trouble it is, I thought as we marched on.
Just past the spectacles, you begin to see the green, which is actually part of a huge double green that runs away from you so if you do manage to carry it, chances are that you’ll then roll so far down towards the other hole as to make two putting problematic. In front of the green there’s a large collection area for a nasty bunker, recently put in, that guards the front like a deep moat. There’s an embankment on the left with the long frog hair rough and a hidden trench bunker on the right. This is that design factor I referred to earlier. You can’t run it in anymore the way Malcom said they used to do because of the new front bunker, you can’t play short, you can’t even plan on playing into the bunkers because you may not get out. You have to hit the green from two hundred plus yards out. And stick or else it going to cost you strokes.
My ball was sitting about thirty feet from the cup. Deliverance! I wish I could have seen how that happened. A workman like two putt netted me the par. But as we walked off toward the next, Lucky Slap, I looked back at the spectacles and realized that if the wind had been blowing, the two best shots I could muster would only get me into that front bunker, if that! I wondered how windy it was when Hogan played it. Just the thought sent shivers through me.
Curiously, during the Open Championship, the pros move back 15 yards to the back tees and the hole becomes a par five. Malcom said the day that Gary Player won the Open there in ’67 I think it was, the wind was howling, and Player played a Baffy (a four wood) to within two feet of the hole for his second, sinking it for an eagle. That’s pretty great golf. Which is why, I guess, they still talk about it.
My string of pars continued on the next two holes, Lucky Slap and Barry Burn, but disappeared forever on Seventeen, called Island. A burn snakes back and forth across the fairway at Island, creating... well, an island landing area. You can only hit a “possession” two iron off the tee, which I did, and that left me about three miles from the green. My first Spoon went left just a little, caught the gale that suddenly arose, and shot into lunar orbit somewhere around the Fifteenth tee, gone forever in the ether, I think. My second, a bullet, hit something and bounced into the right greenside rough. A beautiful flop shot onto the green just kept rolling past the hole and the two putts it took to find bottom made seven. I hit three shots I was really proud of, two reasonable putts and one marginally bad shot, but had to write seven on the card. It’s painful, but that’s golf in Scotland.
Eighteen, Home, is the Jean Van der Velde hole. You’re standing on the tee looking down the fairway at that dumb Hotel and you tell yourself, “all I need is six to win the Open!” Let me tell you, it’s not so easy. The green is as slick as a marble slate. Of course as you approach the hole, one has to stop in the right hand rough about 50 yards short, make a deliberately bad lie and then hit a wedge over the burn and onto the green, just like poor Jean couldn’t. Now satisfied that it wasn’t really that difficult, I proceeded to make my last double bogey of the day. And win my fictive Open.
It was loads of fun, all of it: every shot, every wind blown double bogey, and every cursed moment in the boonkers. We were tired, but grinning the whole way to Balbirnie House that night. The next day we’d take the train to London and theme of our trip would change from Golf to Literature. But before that happened we intended to extend the fun as much as possible.
Balbirnie House
Balbirnie House is like a grand fairy tale: it’s a stone manor house on a large old estate; our room had a beautiful four-poster, antique furniture and ten-foot high windows overlooking the gardens. It more than made up for the mistake of The Carnoustie Golf Hotel.
That evening, in the sitting room before dinner, the young bartender took our drinks order. I asked for a Tanqueray Martini, up and with a twist, and he asked me how to make it. It’s always surprising to find that the Martini is not a well-known drink in Europe. So, I described it to him in detail and like the reporter that he intended to be, he duly wrote down everything I said. When he was ready to go, he read over his notes, then looked up and asked, “Do you want the lemonade on the side?” I couldn’t help but laugh and said, “No. Forget the lemonade.”
The drink that he produced a few minutes later in a tall highball glass was more like a weak Gin and Tonic than a Martini. But he was so earnest in his desire to do it right that I offered to show him how to make one. Being receptive to that idea, we went behind the bar and with Joey looking on went to basic Martini school: use this shaker, a lot of ice, two ounces of gin, etc., etc. He later brought me another at the dinner table that was very good. I told him he should make a few and taste them, “You know, kind of get the hang of it.” He agreed that that was a good idea. I didn’t see him again that night, and hoped that he had taken my advice.
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