Golf in the Kingdom (St. Andrews, The Old Course) August 8, 2000
If you're a golfer living in Scotland for the summer, you really must play the Old Course at St. Andrews. It would be a travesty not to.
There are several options for getting a tee time at this hallowed ground. You can book a year in advance (and if you're also keen to play Muirfield, that's really the best option.) You can go with a tour group that has pre-arranged times, such as Perry Golf in the US, but beware -- it'll cost you. You can show up at about 5:30 in the morning on any day but Sunday (when the course is closed) and put your name in for that day's cancellations -- amazingly there are openings for about 30 players each day. Or, you can leave your fate to the daily lottery. The odds are 1 in 4 that you'll get a time, but that presumably includes times during the slower non-summer seasons. Maybe it's 1 in 6 during the Scottish summertime.
Living in Edinburgh, we figured the lottery would eventually be a sure thing. As luck would have it, we got in on the first try. We phoned in our names on Thursday morning, and when we called back that afternoon, we had a 7:20 tee time the next morning. (FYI, to play you must have a handicap below 24, if you're male, and below 36 if you're female This is likely to change next year to 18 or less for men and 24 or less for women. Reason: it's a tough course, and afternoon rounds can take 5 hours or more, which is really quite unacceptable by Scottish standards.)
In '92 when last we were in Scotland, I believe the earliest tee time at the Old Course was 8:00 a.m.; now it's 7:00. Our 7:20 time was just a wee bit early, given that we've recently taken to sleeping till 8:00! And especially since we had to drive more than 90 minutes, figure out where to park the car, pay our green fees, organize getting a caddy, find the restrooms, and get our swings loose. It is St. Andrews after all, and I definitely wanted to be as loose as I could be on the first tee. So we got up at 4:15, just to make sure.
By 7:00 we were at the starter "shack" paying $120 pp -- for which one gets a colorful souvenir scorecard and one, count 'em one, eraserless pencil thrown in for free. There were already lots of people around hoping we wouldn't show up. Neal, my caddie arrived at 7:10, and then we met Eric and Bill from Milwaukee, our fellow players. It was plenty light, though there were some dark clouds watching overhead. The wind was up a bit, but only a club's worth. So it began: we teed off right on time.
There's a lot of tradition at St.
Andrews, the home of the R&A (Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews), the
spiritual home of golf, and one of the rotating 7 or 8 (British) Open venues.
The Open has been played here 26 times since the first Championship was played
in 1873. In
recent years Jack Nicklaus had won here twice, John Daly won in '95 and the
grandstands were still up from this year's Championship, where Tiger Woods
gobsmacked (cool word used frequently hereabouts) the field by 8 shots. 
We'd taken the train up for one of the practice rounds and wandered around,
watching many of the players testing the impossible bunkers. This photo
shows John Daly and Jack Nicklaus in a practice round. Watching Tiger
working on the range for half an hour
was amazing. He can pretty much do whatever he wants with a golf
ball. Butch Harmon was there giving him pointers, as he did every day of
the tournament. You know, maybe that's my problem -- I just need a personal golf
coach!
Anyway, I did have Neal to give me advice, and that proved to be a big plus. Three hours and 45 minutes later, I had shot par on the first hole, made it over the sheds on the Road Hole, like Tiger, never saw a bunker, and ended up with an 88 on the 6050 yard, par 76 monster. That was exactly the same score Dick shot on his 500 yd. longer course, having met the challenge of three bunkers. Not bad!
I've got the pictures to prove
that we've BTDT (I think) on my digital camera. Unfortunately the new
laptop doesn't have the same input sockets as did the old one, and I haven't yet
bought the hardware to upload photos. So, you'll just have to image it:
Dick and I holding our drivers, standing on the lovely old stone bridge that
crosses the Swilken Burn, the 18th hole with the old R&A clubhouse and the
famous clock in the background. Happiness evident from our smiles.
(Finally added this photo in October.)
Ain't life grand?