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Scots On The Rocks

Patrick Hasburgh September 18, 2006

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Royal Troon and the Portland course at Troon were the most environmentally difficult courses I encountered. The roughs were intentionally unkempt in true Scottish tradition: the fairways dimpled and brown, the greens fast and hard. A Wizard of Oz wind raged throughout both rounds. But who has time to complain when you're shredding your knickers in a gorse patch hunting down nine dollar ProV1s emblazoned with the Royal Troon logo? Muirfield was exquisite, the most turned out and exclusive course of the trip--playing the course is an invitation only affair, and the hardest course to get on in Scotland. Just down the road were North Berwick West Links and Gullane Number One, two of the best walk on public courses I have ever played; fantastic and fair links golf, reasonably priced and welcoming.

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Playing Carnuoustie, however, I was simply content not to break down and cry. On a day that looked as if it had been shipped in from Hawaii, our foursome, of which I was the weakest corner, voted to play from the championship tees; a rarely available option and arguably golf's most challenging test. I made my only par four on the ninth hole, two five woods and two putts, and then played out of my shoes to bogey sixteen, seventeen and eighteen; among the most demanding closing holes in the game. Some golfers kneel at the altar of Old Tom Morris or maybe Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Nicklaus or Tiger. My golf god would be Sisyphus.

Kingsbarns is a magnificent links course, big, bold and a little over the top--everything is outsized, from the bunkers to the blue cheese burgers served in the bar; think Ancient Golf World at a Scottish Disneyland. Just south is Crail Balcomie, a humble yet quite delightful course, the seventh oldest in the world, established in 1786; a hodgepodge of clever par threes, yawing-into-the-wind par fives and gorse protected par fours, it is and up and down and around and about--the holes wonderfully out of order, lopsided and amiss.

The morning of my last day I played the New Course at St. Andrews, an over-rated working class track that looks more like a divot farm than a one hundred year old world class links. At three-thirty that afternoon I teed off in front of an omnipresent SRO crowd on the Burn hole of the Old Course at St. Andrews. I hit my best drive of the week. From one hundred and thirty-five yards out I smoothed an eight iron intentionally left of the first green to take the water out of play. I chipped on and two putted to make five. I had three pars on the front side of the Old Course and shot forty four; two strokes under my handicap.

The Old Course at St. Andrews contains only two bunkers designed by humans. The rest were crafted by sheep; hoofed out by mangy ruminants hunkering down against a wet and relentless onshore wind while nibbling away at the fairway grass. It has been unremittingly windy since before brave hearts were drawn and quartered on these par fours, so the sheep herd dug out protective hovels, which are now the sand traps that routinely swallow your shots. Dolly's primordial gene pool is to blame.

I made five on ten and then doubled bunkered for a double bogey on the eleventh hole, maybe the toughest par three in the world. I made the turn at Heathery and headed in, battered by a two club wind, scrambling out of bunkers with an occasional stroke of brilliance, but falling prey to the Old Course's subtle greens. I carded a marginally respectable ninety-five from the back tees on the Old Course at St. Andrews -- astoundingly, I played the entire round with only one ball. This, even to a lapsing atheist like me, was something of a miracle.

As I looked back from the eighteenth green and regarded the magnificence of the Old Course, and the precious village of St. Andrews and all its spectacular ancientness, I couldn't help but ponder how a game as civilized and sophisticated as golf could have been born and then flourished in a land and at a time when witches were drowned by the thousands, and heretics beheaded for the public good. King James II banned golf in 1457 because it was distracting his archers from target practice while an invasion from England loomed, and anyone who has ever played the game with even a modicum of dedication can attest to its distractions and fixations.

But how does one squeeze in a quick eighteen on the Old Course and then go and cheer as a dozen young women are burned at the stake for being disciples of the devil? And how is it possible to attempt a ten foot putt for birdie with the howls of the damned and the raw slap of the lash ringing in one's ears? During golf's first two centuries Scotland was an intellectual wasteland of raging religious lunacy. While a Christian Taliban executed countless infidels and satanically possessed witches, the Reformation roiled and priests were hanged for advocating a married clergy.

Yet despite this holy fanaticism, or maybe because of it, the royal game of golf somehow endured--eventually outlasting such bloody duffers for good. If music can calm the savage breast, maybe golf can cure the zealot. Scots no longer burn witches or behead heretics. In fact the country feels politely and delightfully secular; its religion, if it has one, appears to be golf.

See our slide show of the great courses of Scotland.