Day four — Monifieth Golf Club
Gary Stephens hits a piercing approach to the 18th at Carnoustie.
We left the coastline and countryside behind and headed for the city of Dundee, about 90 minutes north of Edinburgh and 45 minutes north of St. Andrews.
“Gawff” was first played on these grounds in 1845, leading 13 years later to the founding of what is now Monifieth Golf Club in 1858. In addition to hosting numerous Scottish amateur championship events, Monifieth has served as an Open Championship qualifying course on four different occasions – most recently in 1999, when a young Frenchman named Jean Van De Velde began his trek to golf infamy with a win at Monifieth to qualify for the Open at Carnoustie.
We really enjoyed Monifieth. With a tight layout, lots of old growth trees (rare for these parts), five par-4s that exceeded 400 yards and a stiff Scottish wind adding two or three clubs to every shot, Monifieth was a test and broadened our sampling of Scottish golf, as the course was far different than our previous day’s links round at Crail.
Day FIVE — St. Andrews Links
This was a day for which we both could hardly wait, as we finally had the chance to stick a peg in the ground on the holy turf of St. Andrews.
With St. Andrews’ cathedrals, spires, the R&A building, the Old Course Hotel and Road Hole on two sides of us, and the same beach on which “Chariots of Fire” was shot on the other, I found my chest beating as hard as it did when my first child was born when our names were called to the tee.
“Well, Dad, we made it,” I said, fighting back emotions as I watched the 64-year-old patriarch of my family tee off with the glory of St. Andrews behind him. It was an indelible memory nobody can ever erase from my mind.
History follows you everywhere you go during your four hours there on the links. St. Andrews plays long, due to wind, and the Old Tom Morris design seems to feature a pot bunker in the precise places where an average golfer’s tee shot will finally settle. Moreover, many of these pot bunkers are deeper than your height — hitting backwards sometimes is the only shot you have.
The land on which St. Andrews was built is a public trust, meaning we shared our walk with an older couple on a morning stroll with their terrier, a large class of St. Andrews University students out on a biology field visit and — in a total shocker — a surfer crossing the fairways on his way back to his flat from an afternoon of hanging 10 on the North Sea. It’s historic, beautiful and emotional — and completely unpretentious.
DAY SIX — Carnoustie Golf Links, Championship Course
I highly doubt my Dad and I can ever recreate the feeling we had as we left one fantasy in St. Andrews for another at Carnoustie Golf Links, site of the 2007 Open Championship. Just as I was starting to relax and ease into my Scottish golf experience, I read seven words on the back cover of Carnoustie’s yardage book that pushed me off terra firma again: “The Most Challenging Course in the World.“
Many agree with that statement. The layout sneaks up on you — fairly flat and rolling, the Championship Course plays host to 104 bunkers, nearly six per hole. You must manage this course or it will manage you.
On 14, with a hard Carnoustie wind at my back, I hit a drive that went 355 yards – about 75 yards more than my norm. Into the wind on the very next hole, I took the same swing and crushed a low drive a whopping 160 yards. With 289 left to the pin, I hit driver off the deck to see if I could beat the wind. Result? I flushed it a third time and earned a whole 140 yards.
Welcome to Carnoustie.
We hit our final approach shots of the weekend into the home green, backdropped by Carnoustie’s famous hotel and infamous giant Rolex clock. As it rang its chimes, Dad and I felt as if we were putting out on Sunday at the Open. To see my old man putt for par on 18 in those conditions made the hair on my neck stand straight up.
I think my Dad and I have verbally revisited our trip about 100 times since coming home. I now have a sincere desire to return there someday with my three kids and experience some of the same things I did with my Dad. Truth is, I am now fully hooked on British golf and will return next issue with an account of Cascade Golfer’s trek to Ireland with my good friend and business partner Kirk Tourtillotte.
We leave in three weeks!
It’s hard to imagine that learning the game on a little Kansas par-3 course in 1977 could create enough wind to fill my Dad’s and my collective sail, propelling us 29 years later all the way to Scotland, but it did just that.
What an amazing game, wouldn’t you agree?