Playing The Old Course
BY MURRAY BOTHWELL
PHOTOGRAPHY - OLLIE ALLISON
5 MIN READ
The ancient peninsula of sheep-nibbled hillocks and sandy ground which Daw Anderson and Tom Morris shaped and moulded into the famous Open Championship course is renowned for inspiring imaginative golf. If you’ve not played the Old Course then your perception of its layout may have been formed from television broadcasts over the years. Catchy commentaries from the commanding Peter Allis and Ken Brown gave an insight into the strategies and subtleties of the target lines and greens, some surfaces measuring up to 100 yards wide. Cameras accentuate strange directional choices for long putts but flatten out the borrows, valleys, swales and slopes that lie in wait to snag your score on each and every green. There is no protection from the wind, nor the collection of 122 individually-named bunkers and if you follow the caddie’s advice and “keep it left” you’ll avoid landing on another golf course.
What’s special about the Old Course? Is it the sense of history as you stand on the first tee? The proximity to the warm, toffee-coloured sandstone of the imposing R&A Clubhouse just behind you or, glancing left, the huge estate of the 18th green and the Valley of Sin, now much deeper than it looks on television? It’s all of these, and more. Heading down the first fairway you’re leaving the comfort of the town that is synonymous with the game worldwide, and full of expectation for the challenges ahead that will bring you back, across the 700-year-old Swilcan Bridge, to the bosom of its bars and welcoming eateries some four or five hours later.
What’s not immediately obvious as you gaze ahead, over the meandering Swilcan Burn to the flat 1st green, is that although the distant course looks relatively level, its wide parallel fairways and huge double greens guard deceptive slopes on both the approaches and putting surfaces. Playing the course is all about missing the bunkers; find one or more, and your score takes a tumble. Sections of the links make their way around, or over, old dune ridges covered with gorse or thick pockets of marram grass. Walkways and bunkers cut into them to give you the target lines for your approaches.
Seven double greens and four singles make up the unique layout of the Old Course. Uniquely, if you add together the numbers of the holes on each of the double greens, they come to 18. Getting close to the pin on these massive greens is essential, or you can be left with putts of over 40 or 50 yards. With the wind always likely to affect any shots played in the air, golfers who are new to the links experience soon adopt the age-old strategy of bump-and-run as they realise that this is not target golf… use the ground to get to the hole. Even in the Open, professionals can be seen putting from 70 yards off the fringe.
The loop at the course’s extremity exposes you to switching wind directions, long carries to tight fairways and a collection of cavernous and small pot bunkers which have to be avoided. Beginning the journey back to town, you eventually arrive at the 17th and its tantalising tee shot over the old, black railway sheds of The Old Course Hotel, the site where hickory billets were matured before being fashioned into shafts. Its Road hole bunker lies waiting to snag the draw, the road itself the fade. And of course, the road offers no relief… remember Jimenez’ Spanish magic in bouncing his shot off the wall to land on the green?
You’re back. The welcoming silhouette of the grand old hotels, townhouses and apartments which adorn the historical Golf Place and The Links surround you as you stride onto the 18th green. Before you putt out you stop for a moment, looking back to the west with a sense of satisfaction at what you’ve achieved. Tourists and locals chat knowledgeably at the fence behind you, oblivious to your score but promising a rapturous welcome if you sink it.
Aside from the opening and closing set of well-publicised holes, the Old Course is more than a collection of 18 experiences. Over time you may look back and forget the detail of the pre- and post-loop holes; you may forget your slice over the Himalayas Putting Green off the first tee; and you may forget the detail of your night at The Jigger Inn after your round. What you will remember, though, is how much you’d looked forward to being there and how glad you were that you travelled to where golf began and became part of the collective experience.