Golf - St. Andrews Old Course

A memorable day out with my dad at the links. 

I will never forget this round and am thankful for the great opportunity to play The Old Course with my dad. 

St. Andrews has 3 standard ways to play the Old Course: book a year in advance, enter the 48 hour lottery or show up the day of as a single and try and walk on. We called on the train ride up to Scotland to enter the lottery. When we arrived in St. Andrews we looked on-line to see the results and we had won, a 2 Ball for 4:50 pm.

The Old Course has been host to golf since around 1400 AD and is known as the Home of Golf. In 1764 the Old Course consisted of 22 holes, 11 out and 11 back, with golfers playing the same hole going out and in, except for the 11th and 22nd holes. It was later determined the first four holes were too short and were made into 2 holes, reducing the total from 22 to 18. As golf became more popular in the middle 19th century and the course became more crowded, golfers playing out began meeting golfers playing in, at the same hole. This caused problems and led to a decision to cut two holes on each green, with white flags for the outward holes and red flags for the inward holes. There have been 28 Open Tournaments held on the Old Course with the last held in 2010. 

A bit anxious, we arrived at 3pm and decided to hit some range balls. We were told the range was a 5 minute walk. After walking halfway there, coming back for new directions and trying again, we made it out to the range where we had to hit off mats. It was then twice as far to walk back to the first tee, so by the time we arrived it felt like we had just made the turn.


As expected, the course played hard and quick. The greens were slow, but the undulation was great. Although we had seen the course a number of times on television, it was surprising how many blind shots we had and how many bunkers there are in the middle of the fairways. Bunkers so deep you can only pray to get out. Luck was again on our side as we both avoided bunkers the entire round. 


Another unusual aspect to the course is the crossing fairways and how close the tee boxes are to the greens. This makes for some intimidating shots with in many cases 16 people with in range of your shots.

Dad birdied number one, which was of course not good as he had his first lost ball in Scotland on number two. On the other hand, I topped my tee shot on one, which was okay because it still went 200 yards. My approach however just missed the green to the right and landed in the burn just shot of the number 2 tee.  While our starts were different, our finish was the same. We tee’d it up in the dark on 18 did not see our balls and found them just left of the road next to each other in the fairway. A couple 70 yard puts later and we were finished. Finishing at a quarter past 10, we got back to the hotel, ordered two double whiskies to celebrate. 

Brody and Dad on Swilcan bridge