Patrick Hasburgh February 21, 2008

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From Carnoustie to St. Andrews, rounds to test the bravest heart

It was a daunting challenge--twelve rounds of golf, to be played in seven days, on the ancient and blood soaked links of Scotland: Turnberry, Troon, Muirfield, North Berwick, Gullane, Carnousite, Kingsbarns, Crail and St. Andrews. I would carry my own bag, caddyless, and perhaps take a shot at the middle-aged American record for cursing and tripping, chili dipping and missing.

I probably had no business playing these esteemed and historically significant golf courses with such a mediocre skill set, but if youth is wasted on the young, money is wasted on the middle aged. I did the whole trip for five grand, but I could have very easily spent ten had I not switched from the porterhouse steaks to the fish and chips.

See our slideshow of the great courses of Scotland.

My golf swing is like a snow flake--no two are alike. Still, I was hoping to play at least one of my Scottish rounds in the eighties. I'm a seventeen handicap who frequently plays like a twenty-two, with the occasional scratch hole after a dead solid perfect two-hundred and fifteen yard five-wood dinked off of a short tee. Thanks to my local PGA professional, I can now score in the eighties with a swing that doesn't deserve to break one hundred.

I had been told the courses in Scotland are short and relatively flat, and except for the wind, pretty easy: "Just stay out of the gorse and you'll be fine." Hah! In twelve rounds I played in the nineties four times; my other rounds were triple digit slug fests that, had they been actual prize fights, would have been stopped shortly after the opening bell.

On a cultural note, it must be observed that Scots strictly adhere to the magnificently arcane etiquette of the game. Taking a questionable drop, or kicking your ball out of a divot, immediately produces guilt ridden and remarkably un-American regret. If you pick up a ten inch putt, the local player will politely look away, ignoring the transgression as if you had just passed gas in front of the Queen.

It's also been said that the number of holes on a links match the eighteen shots in a bottle of Scotch. Here, whiskey and golf are as married as drugs and tedium, prematurely aging both lads and lassies into knockoffs of Peter O'Toole. Maybe it's the fluoride free water or the residual disaster of socialized medicine, but pub conversations often look like a contest of Stonehenge impersonations.

When I teed it up on the first hole of the Ailsa Course at Turnberry late one Sunday afternoon this past August, my goal, regardless of score, was to play the round with just one ball. On my first Scottish round I scored a leaky one hundred and six, and lost five brand new Turnberry logo Titleists, as well as two yellow range balls scrounged from the bowels of my bag. The weather was unusually sunny, but typically windy; I played each hole on the wind whipped backside of as if it was a par seven, and I thrust my fist in the air every time I made six.

Leaning into a sharp gale at the infamous Ailsa number nine hole, with a glimpse of my ancestral Ireland behind me and the ruins of King Robert the Bruce's castle my target line, I began to rediscover that golf is an astonishingly pleasurable, if not magnificent, obsession. There are less than one hundred people on earth capable of racing a Formula One car wheel to wheel with Michael Schumacher, but there are countless high handicappers who have hit at least one pro-level eight iron six inches from the stick. On rare occasions golf lends greatness to the chump, the working stiff and the also ran; for an instant we can be Young Tom or old Arnie, holing out for a birdie from the bunker.

See our slide show of the great courses of Scotland.

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