With clubs on shoulder, I headed down to the New Course Saturday morning.
There are five courses at St Andrews, in addition to the Old Course. The New Course and the Jubilee Course are links courses, similar to the Old Course. The Eden, Strathtyrum and Balgrove (9 hole) Courses are more parkland-type courses, more inland than the others and more similar to American courses. The Links Clubhouse, for the New and Jubilee courses, is located near the first tees for those courses, while the Eden Clubhouse, for the other three courses, was located farther away across the Old Course. The Old Course doesn’t have a club house, just the starter’s shack and the caddy shack. The R&A is not a clubhouse for the Old Course, it is just a clubhouse for a private golf club located by the first tee of the Old Course (and not open to the public).
I signed up for a three day pass to play as much golf as I wanted on the five courses. I started with the New Course, joined some locals in a round and soon began losing balls in the heather. After a frustrating round, I then went around the Jubilee with some other locals and continued to lose balls. I found it very handy to go out with locals on these tracks since there are a lot of blind shots on these links courses and the locals can give you some good advice on where to aim. They were also able to point out a major flaw in my game and I put away the woods. Once I did that, I found that I wasn’t losing balls in the heather any more. I just wasn’t able to hit the woods straight consistently and I was able to keep the irons in or near the fairway. Also, these courses fairly short (< 7000 yards) and you don’t really need a driver to tee off on most holes. It hadn’t rained in 6 weeks, which is why the fairways were turning brown and everything was very hard and dried-out. The balls really rolled when they landed.
After the Jubilee round, I was invited to have a drink at the New Club (as opposed to the Royal and Ancient). I gladly accepted, left my clubs at the clubhouse, and was driven over the New Club, opposite the 18th fairway of the Old Course.
As was explained to me, the golf clubs, like the New and R&A, are member organizations and not tied to a specific course. The clubs organize competitions and maintain handicaps, but don’t manage any courses.
The golf courses at St Andrews are owned by the St Andrews Links Trust. The trust runs the clubhouses, provides the food services and maintains the grounds.
I played the New Course on Sunday and continued the iron strategy and enjoyed much success. I only lost 2 balls and those were on some serious mis-hits that went Out-of-Bounds.
On Sunday, I also discovered the Old Course is closed. (It’s tradition.) And that the public is welcome to walk through the track; so I did, taking a short break from the golfing grind. I went through taking pictures, seeing some legendary holes, and wondering if, and when, I would feel ready to tackle it. I also found the other three courses, over by the 12th-16th holes.
Monday, I came back and played more rounds on the New and Jubilee Courses. I scored in the low 100’s. I thought I was ready for the Old Course.
I intentionally came to St. Andrews a week after the British Open, figuring the crowds would be gone and things wouldn’t be so congested. And I was right. But, the detritus of the Open was all around the course and not going away quickly. The stands, the score boards, the TV towers, the Hospitality tents. Unfortunately, the driving range was under a very large hospitality tent and there was no other place to practice your shots. For the Open, they had the pros using the Jubilee’s 1st and 18th fairways as a driving range. Oh well. It would have been nice to practice some more shots.
I had been trying to find out how to get a game on the Old course since I arrived. There was no club house for the OC, just the starter shack. The two clubhouses on the property are by the New/Jubilee and the Eden courses. Everyone kept mentioning the ballot, where they drew the starting times from a hat for the next day. So I went to find out how to get on the ballot and discovered that the ballot is for groups; singles aren’t allowed on the ballot. (I never did find out where you go to get on the ballot.)
Singles have to show up eeeaaaarrrly in the morning and register with the starter and then get placed in any groups that would have them. There is no guarantee that you would get a opening but there was a chance.
Wednesday morning, (I took Tuesday off to sight-see) I awoke at 5 AM, showered, dressed, grabbed my clubs and trundled off to the Old Course, 300 yards away. I got there before the starter, but there were 14 other hopefuls in front of me. More were arriving after me. The morning was gray, but the clouds were high, so it looked like another cloudy day with lots of UV to give me a sunburn. (Come to Scotland and get burned?) My glasses turn dark in the presence of UV and I found that on the previous rounds they got so dark I couldn’t follow the flight of the ball; no sun, no rain, just clouds.
I was registered with the starter as #15 and he noted my handicap as 24. I guess so a group could decide if they wanted to play with someone my of my skill. Golf is a competition between the player and the course and I figured if I shot less than a 96 on the old course I would win, 96-100 is a tie, and above 100 the course wins. I had some hopes.
The first group went out at 6:30, taking with them the single who showed up at 3:30AM. I was reasonably sure that #15 wouldn’t be going out for a while, so I went down to the Links Clubhouse for some breakfast, meeting up with #14, Errol. After breakfast we went back and stood around, out the wind, watching the groups take off and listening to the Americans complaining about the local two-somes going out that didn’t take anyone else in their group. I think they had played with Americans before and didn’t want to repeat the same mistake. If I had known it was going to take so long to get to #15 on the standby list, I would have gone back to the B&B for a full breakfast and to get warmed up. But I didn’t and if a 4some hadn’t shown up the line might have lurched forward pretty quickly.
By 10:30 I was only 2-3 spots away. I went to the caddy master to hire a caddy. They were all out and he couldn’t make any promises but he would send one over if any of the returning caddies wanted to make another loop. At 10:30, the first group, which went out at 6:30, was coming in.
One of the guys in front of me, # 13, was talking about a links style course he plays all the time in Colorado. He was talking about King’s Deer, a course I play regularly; like a links course, just 7400 feet higher in elevation. Turns out he was from Monument, which adjoins my backyard.
#13 went out about 11:00 and #14 and I got the call to the starter. A twosome would let us join them at 11:20. The twosome was Seve from Sweden and Ivan from Chile (but living in Sweden) Errol was from Northern Ireland and I was from Colorado. Ivan got the only caddy available, Erik, a trainee; he was from California. (Graduated from college and in St Andrews to put his BA to work?)
Unfortunately for me, there was no caddy and trolleys (hand carts) aren’t allowed on the Old Course before noon (tradition). I would have to carry my own clubs.
As we stepped up to the first tee, I felt a spatter on the back of my hand. I shanked my first shot into the viewing stands down the right side of the fairway. Free drop from there. The rains came. The first rains in 6 weeks. I laid the second shot up in front of the Swilcan Burn, third shot on the green and then 3-putt. Not an auspicious beginning.
I am not going to recount my round shot-by-shot, just mention a few memorable ones. I was staying with my iron strategy and progressing from 2-5 in fair order. I would have been doing very good indeed if I hadn’t been 3-putting so many greens. And the rain continued. It wasn’t a hard rain that needed rain-gear, more of a nuisance rain and the umbrella came out. I ran over to the Links clubhouse from the second tee to see if I could rent a trolley but it wasn’t noon yet and I couldn’t get one. On with the game.
There was one advantage to taking my walk on Sunday; I knew that ‘Heathery out’, the 6th hole, was going to be a problem with my iron strategy. I asked the caddy how long the carry was over the solid expanse of heather in front of us and he reported 200 yards. I couldn’t do that with an iron, so out come the driver. I put the first shot straight into the gorse, lost ball, and hit another. It went right over the marker post and I found it sitting nicely in the fairway with a good shot to the green. After that shot I wasn’t worried about taking out the driver, if needed.
The rain lasted until we got to the 9th tee. Then it sputtered to a stop. The ninth is a short par 4, 307 yards, and I pulled out the driver since it was pretty wide open. I ended up three-putting for par. My drive ended up on the right edge of the green in front of the 10th tee. It was a long way to the hole and I used the putter, even though, technically, I wasn’t on the green but a few feet off. The fringe is cut as fine as the green and the only way to tell where the green starts is the direction of the cut. But I was way off-line and way off-speed so I three-putted.
We then got refreshments from the little truck at the wayside and began the return trip. The way the links courses are set up, you go out for nine hole and then you come back for the last nine. Typically, in America, the front nine loops out from and back into the clubhouse and the back nine does the same. So, you are returning to the clubhouse, and refreshment, every nine holes. Not on a links course. And on the New and Jubilee courses they didn’t have that little naafi truck sitting at the tenth tee; it's just on the Old Course.
Now, all along the track the fairways are running parallel to each other and many greens are shared so the outbound hole gets the right side of the green and the inbound hole gets the left side (from the outbound perspective). Inbound and outbound have different color flags so you know the general direction you are trying to get to. 8, 9, 10 and 11 sort of twist around each other so fairways are shared as well and this can get a bit cumbersome. But we got through it safely. The golfers closest to 18 get the right-of-way.
We proceeded on our inward treck. On number 16 I hit a screaming low drive right at some bunker in the middle of the fairway (called the Principle’s Nose, they name the pot bunkers here). It landed right in front of the bunker and bounced over. Everyone was amazed at the skill of the shot. Then the caddy mentioned the two bunkers right behind it that you couldn’t see from the tee. My ball had safely bounded past all the bunkers and sat in the middle of the fairway.
On seventeen, the ‘Road Hole’, the tee is set up right in front of the hotel. The hole is on the other side of the hotel. You have to aim over the not-so-low wall by the hotel to get the shot in position to reach the green. Talk about blind shots. Everyone tried the shot and all of us were slicing or hooking right into what we thought was the hotel’s yard. So, we all took our second shots aiming a bit more to the left and went to see what damage had been done. All those balls we thought were in the yard were safely in the rough near the edge of the fairway. My second shot was perfectly located in the fairway and I was sorry to not use it. Even sorrier when my next shot flew out of the rough, over the green bounced on the road and ended up in the viewing stands out-of-bounds. I put the next shot six inches into the rough then into the bunker in front of the hole. I had learned my lesson about these bunkers and popped the ball backwards out the bunker after trying once to get it over the lip towards the hole. Then a chip on and a putt in for a simple eleven (of which I can only count 8 strokes towards my total. The handicap people don’t want you overloading your scorecard with a particularly bad hole. )
On the eighteenth tee we looked up towards the R&A, saw the Swilcan Bridge and the traffic driving across the fairway. We have the right-of-way. I drove over the crossing road, dead center; second shot just short of the green; chipped on and one-putt for a par.
I ended the round with a 101. The course won, but just barely. Four pars for the round. A couple of missed birdie opportunities. Only three holes where I blew up over a double bogey. If I had just had a more solid putting game on the front nine, I coulda been a contender.