The Old Course
Most of the premier courses I’ve visited have had a dramatic build up… long driveways winding through pines or magnolia, increasing property areas and square footage of homes in the surrounding neighborhoods, and other things of the like. This wasn’t the case at St Andrews. Our bus from Dundee pushed through the countryside, and arrived at the stop for Grannie Clark’s Wynd from which we could see the course. Unlike the ultra-private clubs that host many of the US majors, there were no fences or armed guards blocking our entry to the course. We walked straight onto the fairway shared by the first and 18th hole.
Our bus stop was about 20 yards from this spot.
We chose to go to the Old Course on Sunday because the course isn’t open for golf, but it is open as a public park. Many people were out playing with their dogs and kids. There were even some weeds in the fairway. Can you imagine the panic attack from a Green Jacket if the first fairway at Augusta suddenly was overrun with weeds and dogs?
I read a few books in preparation for our trip (A Course Called Scotland by Tom Coyne is my favorite) and the most fascinating thing I learned is that the membership clubs are separated from the courses in Scotland, unlike in the US. So, for private courses here, we tend to equate the course with the club and it’s members. You join a club and the collection of members controls most of what goes on at the club. In Scotland, it’s more typical to have membership groups like the Royal and Ancient Golf Club or the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, and these groups associate with a course (St Andrews, Muirfield, respectively) but these associations are not the same as in the US. A single course might have multiple member clubs associated with it. For example, the St Andrews Links Trust is associated with several other clubs including, The St Andrews Golf Club, The New Golf Club, The St Andrews Thistle Club, The St Rule Club, The St Regulus Ladies Golf Club, and The St Andrews Ladies Putting Club. Additionally, a membership club can change the course they are affiliated with as the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers has a few times.
This separation of land and man has played a hand in keeping public golf so prominent in Scotland. We have some great public courses in the US, but many of the bucket list places people would love to see and play are reserved for the rich and powerful membership. In Scotland, the privateness of courses varies, but most courses are at least partially available to the public.
The situation reminds me of one of my favorite math quotes. There’s a tantalizingly difficult problem that’s very easy to state but ridiculously hard to solve in the field of Ramsey Theory. Suppose you are going to host a party. Everyone pair of people on your invite list are either friends or enemies. How many people do you have to invite to the party to guarantee that you have at least 3 mutual friends (any pair from the 3 are friends) or at least 3 mutual enemies? Let’s call this R(3,3). It turns out that the answer is 6, and you can figure this out by playing around with some examples on the back of a napkin. What about R(4,4)? How many do you have to invite to guarantee that you have at least 4 mutual friends or enemies? It turns out to be 18, and it’s substantially harder to prove. What about R(5,5)? It’s still unknown. We know that it’s between 43 and 48, but even using the fastest computers in the world, to brute force check all the possible parties of size 43 would take longer than the amount of time left in the universe.
The mathematician Paul Erdős is famously quoted as saying, “Suppose aliens invade the earth and threaten to obliterate it in a year's time unless human beings can find the Ramsey number R(5,5). We could marshal the world's best minds and fastest computers, and within a year we could probably calculate the value. If the aliens demanded the Ramsey number R(6,6), however, we would have no choice but to launch a preemptive attack.” (Note, I’ve edited the quote a bit to fit our notation.)
If my life’s goal is to play Muirfield, St Andrews, Carnoustie, Troon, and Prestwick, with some work and luck I can probably make that happen. If my life’s goal is to play Cyprus Point, Pine Valley, Augusta National, Winged Foot, and Merion, I’d be better off finding a new life goal.
I tried, but I couldn’t imagine what it looks like when a tournament is happening. The course is surrounded by the Eden and New Courses and the city. The fairways and greens are huge, but since they are typically shared between 2 holes, there isn’t a place for spectators to go between, say, 1 and 18. I’m assuming the other courses and maybe some of the roads near the course are used for spectator stands, concessions, and merchandise.
It has little in common with Augusta National, but two similarities stand out.
You absolutely can’t understand the slopes until you see and walk it. My old virtual rounds on Tiger Woods EA Sports 2008 make a lot more sense now.
The course is set up for the ball to roll into trouble instead of getting there on the fly. So many bunkers sit at the bottom of swails, and there are little knobs in the fairway which would lead to odd stances.
The course you see and the course you play are two very different things. Few tee shots are completely blind, but almost all of them have some visual trickery. You might only see a tiny bit of fairway from the tee and 90% of what you see is long grass or massive bunkers, but there are huge landing areas on every hole. It’s the same for approach shots. The ridiculously big green complexes look tiny or completely hidden from certain angles. There were many of the fake out bunkers that look closer to the green than they are from a distance, but then you get up to them and actually have 50 yards to the green.
The bunkers were a show in themselves. The Hell Bunker would be just that, but most holes had some that were almost as tall as me. (6’4, not to brag) They were often in places you really shouldn’t hit it, so errors are compounded more than forced. A few holes have them in the middle of the fairway, but they always allow you other options.
The 14th hole is a short par 5 by comparison to today’s standard. (515ish yards) but it seemed to go on forever due to the way it has to be navigated. It’s like walking through a desert, followed by a rain forest, followed by a zoo. Each part of the hole has a new look and a new challenge. There’s out of bounds right, fairway bunkers, a diagonal fairway cut off by rough and the Hell bunker, large mounds 50ish yards out from the green in what would otherwise be a friendly layup area, greenside bunkers, and a massively sloped green. It’s suitably named “Long”. Even my wife noticed and before we left said “how long have we been on this one hole”.
It brings back thoughts of a round with my dad from my high school days. He was an extremely long hitter in his younger years with wooden headed woods and balatas. He lived on a farm for most of his life and would chop wood over the winter. Coming out of the summer, he could barely rotate the club over his shoulder, but he hit the ball with power that was legendary at the course I grew up on. Unfortunately, knee and back issues took that power from him by the time I started taking golf seriously. Memorably one time playing a par 5 over 600 yards into the wind at a nearby course, he hit Driver, 3 wood, 5 wood, 5 iron, 7 iron. Each one of these shots he hit solid, but the wind just kept knocking them down.
When I walked 14 at the Old Course, I could imagine having to hit all of these clubs, but you’d be forced to hit those shots out of order and for different reasons. Even though I haven’t played it, it might be my favorite hole I’ve ever seen. If there was a way to bottle up that design there would be no need for a club and ball rollback.
As much of the Hell Bunker as would fit in one image
Walking the course, you can feel how important local knowledge would be. Due to the ridiculous number of possibilities, it’s a statistical fact that if you shuffle a deck of cards 7 or 8 times it’s more likely than not that the current arrangement of cards has never been seen in the history of, well, cards. Similarly with all of the slopes around the greens and in the fairways, I doubt there have ever been 2 identical rounds played at St Andrew’s, but there are definitely holes where you have to know in advance to aim 20 yards right and take a slope to have a chance at ending up near the hole.
I understand how the tour guys can shoot -22 in calm weather and near par with bad conditions. It’s not defenseless with no wind, but you can play away from the trouble on many holes. In the wind, all of the avoidable trouble I’ve mentioned becomes much less avoidable.
I’m sure books have been written about the green complexes. Most of them are double greens shared between holes on the front and back 9. The average size of the greens is over half an acre! However, the slopes of the greens and pin placements on any given day can make the target area smaller than a queen sized bed. A google search tells me that the greens at the Open Championship tend to run around 10 on the Stimpmeter, whereas at the US majors the greens sometimes approach 14. If the greens were running at 14 at St Andrews, the greens wouldn’t hold a ball. It would be fun to watch, but Zach Johnson would be giving another red faced interview about “losing the course”.
