Playing Royal Troon
BY MURRAY BOTHWELL
PHOTOGRAPHY - HARVEY JAMISON/OLIVER LAWSON
5 MIN READ
Railways were the catalyst for the growth of golf in Ayrshire, with many of the local landowners playing their golf as members of the R&A at St Andrews. Courses began to spring up in close proximity to the railway stations and wherever the untamed linksland offered the opportunity to design a set of holes that would test them as much as it did at their home club. New courses grew new golf clubs and soon the county was a popular golfing destination.
The Kilmarnock and Troon Railway was the first to be constructed in Scotland, and the railway station lay a little to the north of where Troon Golf Club was built in 1878. The Club received its Royal charter on its 100th anniversary. Whilst you can still arrive by train in Troon to play golf (it’s a 10-minute walk with clubs to the course), the connectivity from both north and south by road is excellent. Passing fields, forests and ancient churches as you turn off the dual carriageway, you catch a glimpse of the links and the sparkling Firth of Clyde in the distance, the Isle of Arran looming large on the horizon to the west. You’re left in no doubt that you have reached golfing country. The town’s periphery is golf… you cannot avoid seeing fairways as you arrive from any direction. Approaching the Club you pass its sister course, the Portland, which was laid out in 1897 by Willie Fernie and enhanced in 1920 by Dr Alister MacKenzie. The Marine Hotel sits proudly on the horizon, to the left of the Clubhouse and overlooking the 1st and 18th fairways of the Championship course. You’re very close now.
The terrace overlooking the 18th green stretches the full width of the low clubhouse, the scene of many an interview with past Open champions whilst their friends and family looked on from inside the spacious lounge bay windows. The history of the Club and its course are legendary: golf on these coastal links is not target golf. A course like Royal Troon will test you from the moment you set foot on the first tee. The wind catches your breath, the salt air fills your lungs and the beach seems far too close. It’s just over the picket fence, a few feet away from you. The old, dark green wooden Starter’s Hut with its weathered pointy roof sits behind you and a typical straight out and back format awaits your driver off the first tee.
The opening four holes are a navigation between mounds of tall, waving fescues and marram, the right side of the predominantly flat fairways tightly hugging the coast and then the dunes. Twenty bunkers over the first two holes make you wonder what’s ahead, but the course is long and linear, using distance into the prevailing wind to challenge you. The ground rises through the long 6th and up to the 7th tee on a high dune. Below is the distant green of the par-4 7th reclining in a cauldron of dunes, a steep bank at its front and lateral coffin bunkers welcoming the slightest error. Your heart then pounds a little faster, climbing up to the open and exposed tee of The Postage Stamp. Yes, it’s a small green. Yes, the bunkers surrounding it are cavernous. And yes, it’s probably directly into wind. A par will be memorable, but take time to let the panoramic view from this high point sink in.
A blind shot over a huge dune from the 10th tips brings you closer to Railway, the infamous 11th at Royal Troon and the end of many a good professional’s score. From a gorse-walled tee the wind will push you towards the railway tight on the right and, off the tips, you have a 190-yard carry to clear the rough and the gorse. And your landing is unsighted. It’s just tough.
One more change of direction and then it’s a straight run back, parallel to the outward six. The fairways from the 13th to the 15th are by no means as flat, with some impressive undulations to overcome. The long 16th, with a landing area burn to avoid, rises gently to a heavily bunkered green. Rabbit, the par-3 17th brings you to the 18th and all those memories of Stenson and Mickelson trading shots to reach the green, except you’ve got no grandstand to help with the wind.
Royal Troon starts flat and a fair test of golf, but rises to bring you back full of respect for a magnificently designed course and the ability of those who have conquered its fairways and greens.