The Toughest Tests
BY MURRAY BOTHWELL
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK ALEXANDER
6 MINS READ
The desire to visit a new golf course may be triggered by many things. Stories exchanged with friends and family, comments by work colleagues or recommendations in a magazine. Views that take the breath away, or the chance to pit your wits against box-ticking courses where you’ve witnessed the best of the best do battle. Corridors of green along spray-lashed coastal fringes, rolling forested fairways of green carpet or escarpments of rock creating amphitheatres of par-3 fun… they all have their place. It’s the desire to experience the new, to accept the challenge, the contest of navigating your way around an unfamiliar course using the same old clubs that sometimes get you a decent score at home… off the shorter tees… with gimmies. Take these options out of the mix, and you begin to get a sense of what it takes to make a living from the game. And where better to get that sense of achievement, when it all works out, than on some of the toughest tests of golf in Scotland, where it all began.
Dundonald Links
Sometimes it’s a desire to play as the professionals do off the longest course possible… the elusive black tees, lurking in the shade or on a higher plane than the mere mortals swinging away below. Dundonald Links in South Ayrshire runs an annual competition, ‘Back to Black’, where you can play this modern links masterpiece over its full 7,100 championship yards just as the Men’s and Women’s Scottish Opens do. For a very reasonable rate you can take on the tips, and see exactly why your Club Professional was trying to persuade you to do your gap analysis. It’s long. For an outing with your friends, you’d never choose a course this length: you’d probably lose some of them by the back nine. But for those who are confident enough in their game to try, Dundonald’s challenge is as tough as it gets and great fun: everyone has a chance, and the winning score is usually way over par!
On a scale of toughness, the closing three holes of Carnoustie’s Championship course take some beating. Rarely breeze-free, these holes deliver three different wind directions and with the ever-present danger of the Barry Burn on each it’s anyone’s guess if you’ll make par at all… but it’s worth a go. The par-3 16th plays 245 yards, and often into the wind. Tom Watson failed in five attempts to get a par here during the 1975 Open Championship; in 1968 Jack Nicklaus was the only player to get past the pin during the final round. Move over to the 17th, playing the opposite direction, and see the Burn winding and twisting its way across your sightline. Big hitters are not rewarded here - a 235-yard drive off the yellow tees onto the narrow island may be two yards too long. What follows is a long, difficult approach to a green protected by gorse and a line of bunkers. And then, after all that, you turn back towards the Clubhouse and the infamous 18th hole: no more difficult finishing hole will be found anywhere. The Burn is in play for the drive to the right, and the left and if short. Fairway bunkers eat in to the right-hand side and it was here that Johnny Miller lost the 1975 Championship when he took two shots to get out of his now named bunker. The Barry Burn crosses right in front of the green and again poses a huge obstacle for the second shot. We all remember 1999.
Carnoustie Championship Course
Equally, the back nine of Royal Troon is a memorable play. Starting with a blind shot over a high dune from the 10th championship tee, the fairway for even the normal golfer drops dramatically away to leave a blind second shot before rising again to the green. The 11th is fearsome off the championship tee. You have to carry 230 yards to reach the fairway and miss the gorse: you have no sight of a fairway. Things improve marginally on 12 and 13, but these holes are characterised by the many hillocks and humps across their fairways. The 16th is a straightforward but long 542-yard par-5, sandwiched between two really tough par-3s and then you reach the 18th. Home to many magical memories of silver sparkling in the Sunday sunshine, you’ll find that Willie Fernie’s fairway is festooned with bunkers which the pros fly past with ease, yet may leave you digging a hole for yourself.
A card full of long-hitting holes does not always make a course tough though. Not all courses are championship length, and rarely at any Club will visitors play off the tees that gives the course its listed length. Sometimes it’s the quirkiness, or the challenge of a particular set of holes, that people enjoy. Take for instance Royal Dornoch’s set of par-3s. Often the most challenging and picturesque holes to play, this 1616 course has some of the best in the world. Two on the front, two on the back, these immensely scenic holes are protected by an army of bunkers, small sloping greens and tricky run-offs. Accuracy is what it’s all about, and with distances ranging between 160 and 184 yards, they’re no small feat to conquer. Throw in the wind, and it’s another game entirely.
Royal Troon
And it’s the wind that may initially strike fear into the player standing on the 18th tee at Prestwick St Nicholas in South Ayrshire. The 26th oldest Club in the world, counting Old Tom Morris as a founding member and two members as Open Champions, its par-3 final hole of the 1891 course demands all your best to make par or better. Off the back tee, its 227 yards long when playing into the prevailing southwest wind. There’s also the car park on the right, running the entire length of the hole…. where did you park again? The 17th fairway runs down the left, where a short draw might land you in the middle of the next group of golfers. And there’s an out-of-bounds running all the way up the right beyond the 1st tee, which sits opposite the final green, near which sits the Clubhouse that often assists with a friendly ricochet to bring your slice back in play. Once, on the evening of an AGM some years ago, I watched as one member sliced his tee shot over the low, chain-link boundary posts, bounced it up the car park and the Clubhouse steps, and in through the open door to the rather full reception hall. A neat trick, and a difficult second shot.
The toughest tests of golf can provide you with the greatest of memories. The courses of Scotland, whether long or short, hallowed or hidden, will deliver every time. Choosing to take on the renowned and reputedly best holes, and matching the abilities of the best, is a safe bet that you’ll want to reminisce about your experience for many years to come.