TRAVEL: A trip through Scotland's Best - St. Andrews New Course, Pg. 2 |
Page 2 of 9
Use and surprise, Surface and dream . . .
The Links Trust clubhouse is new. And it’s not just new in relative terms, like the “new” course, which is 115 years old. In 2004, the town of St. Andrews got into a bureaucratic battle. Because the people of the town purchased the links in 1894, the running of the one municipal property that financially supported just about the entire town was in jeopardy. So the St. Andrews Links Trust was concocted, an organization made to deal with all things concerning the links and their business. (The Royal & Ancient Golf Club, which was founded in 1754, does not own a golf course. They preside over the entire world of golf outside of the U.S. and Mexico, yet play their rounds on the fully-public courses of St. Andrews, of which their clubhouse overlooks.) The Links Trust now needed a clubhouse, so one was built directly next to the Himalayas putting course, to the right of the first green of the Old Course and adjacent to the first tee of the New.
“Coffee,” I said to the waitress in the clubhouse, rudely not looking at her but unable to avert my gaze from the huge bay windows that face out over the links. By the time the coffee settled – followed by an egg sandwich with Scottish bacon (more like fried ham) – I was rolling putts on the putting green next to the tee. A young Australian man with a caddie bib walked up to me and introduced himself. “Tome,” he said. “Hi Tom, I’m Brett.” “Alright then,” Tom said, “cheers.” “Okay. . . Will it be a problem if I play from the back tees? I’m about a 3-handicap.” “No, no. No problem at all. Cheers.” Succession swift, and spectral wrong, Temperament without a tongue . . .
As I teed my first ball up on St. Andrews New Course, I noticed in the tight-cut grass of the tee box a small flower. It looked like a dandelion, but 1/100th the size. Turns out they are all over the peninsula that reaches out into the Eden Estuary that is home to six of the seven courses at St. Andrews – the Old, New, Jubilee, Eden, Strathyrum and Balgove. The Castle Course, a David McLay Kidd design opened in 2008, is up in the hills a bit.
These little flowers are not overly noticeable, but if you look hard at the turf, you can spot them everywhere. That first one brought quite a smile to my face, and I had to stop for a quick second to realize where I was and what I was about to do. I thought of a passage from the famous golf writer Bernard Darwin’s Golf Courses of the British Isles, published in 1910, when he says that on the New Course the “daises were growing freely, and daises, though extremely charming things in themselves, are not pleasant to putt over.” I read that passage many times, including on the plane while I sipped my Dewars. I wondered if these little flowers were the same ones Darwin once referred to. Probably not, right? I wondered . . . And so I slid my tee securely into the ground, and I immediately felt something very different than American soil. It was sandy, and firm, and as you touched the grass you could almost feel how old and strong the roots were, how many years of golf they hosted and how many great men and women have come and gone over their ancestors. It felt sturdier than American grass, so dense as if it would take a lot of force to move it. Shaking the cobwebs loose, I hit a 4-wood, as per Tom’s instructions, and found the first fairway. My dad cut a driver right of the fairway, and we were off.
By the time we got to the third green, we got our first real taste of St. Andrews golf. This 511-yard dogleg left par-5 shares a putting surface with No. 15, a par-4 coming in the other direction. As I chipped my third shot on, a ball came bounding across the surface from the 15th fairway and finished about 30 feet short of our flag – almost 70 feet from theirs. My dad made his journey from up over the hill to the left, where he was playing his third shot from a far-off-line position somewhere on the opening holes of the adjacent Old Course, and he crested the mound to see three balls on what looked like one huge green. Then he saw the second flag in the distance, and just laughed. It was interesting, for sure, and something we would have to get used to.
After that third hole, the fourth was a short par-4 with a wonderful approach shot, over a trio of bunkers that are 20 yards short of the green and are atop a hard slope that runs to the putting surface. Then the New Course really hit its stride around the eighth hole, which has a great green complex. A par-5 of just 481 yards, the green is defended by two huge mounds, 20 feet high, on either side, both with deep, small bunkers at their base. On this day, the pin was tucked into the left side of the green, and was completely invisible to an approach shot that wasn’t from the right rough. I played from the left rough, and had to do a double take before trying to flip a wedge blindly up over the mound and bunker for my third. “This is one of the coolest shots I think I’ll ever hit,” I said to Tom, feeling like a 10-year-old getting autographs at Yankees Stadium.
“Yea, it’s something,” Tom said with a laugh. “Knock it close, huh. Cheers.”
I flailed it right and three-putted for a bogey six. Which was soon forgotten stepping to the ninth tee, one of the prettiest spots on the whole peninsula. It is a demanding hole, a long par-3 of 225 yards that plays uphill, with the estuary all down the left side and broken ground if you go too far right. The firm fairway swells just about 20 yards short of the green, and then falls into a punchbowl putting surface, making for a enjoyable walk – a subsequent ball sighting – if you’ve hit your tee shot over the hill on anywhere moderately on line. The tenth started taking us back home with a blind tee shot aimed a white stick set on the sandy dunes. When I teed my ball up, I thought the top of the stick was painted black. When I made contact and looked up, I saw a crow come flying off the stick with serious urgency. We all laughed hysterically. The back nine is filled with holes of moderate length and difficulty, and is highlighted by two par-3s: the 157-yard uphill 13th with a two-tiered, backstopped green, and the 229-yard 17th, with a bunker short to make the putting surface seem closer. The course from the back tees gets to reasonable 6,625 yards and plays to a par of 71, finding itself somewhere between difficult and easy. Fair is a word often associated with this track, and that’s apt enough. We can’t forget that the New Course sits in the shadow of the most important piece of land in the history of golf, and no matter how good a job Old Tom Morris did laying it out over a century ago, it could never be the Old Course. Back in Darwin’s book, he goes on to say: “No doubt the new course does suffer some considerable injustice, and always will do so. It has ‘relief course’ plainly written all over it.”
When I reread that on the plane, I couldn’t wait to get out and see the course and make my own judgment. “Relief course” is a pretty harsh term, and I had a feeling Old Tom wasn’t about to build a pitch-and-putt on this sacred land. Now, after playing it, I disagree wholeheartedly with what Darwin said. The New Course isn’t spectacular from first tee all the way through the 18th green, but there are some holes that are more than worth the price of admission. It certainly was no relief course. And I was surprised at how much I liked it, maybe because I couldn’t stop smiling thinking about where I was – and maybe Darwin had lit a small fire under my critics seat. No matter, I found out early on in this trip that sometimes here in Scotland, the best things are those you weren’t expecting.
|