A Personalized History Of Scottish Golf Or You'll Not Do That Here, Laddie

"What a hole," I said to the caddie as I stood there considering the three-wood.

"Have a good go with the spoon," he said. "But a word of caution, Sir A ball played into Archerfield Wood is irrecoverable."

The mystique of Muirfield lingers on. So does the memory of Carnoustie's foreboding. So does the scenic wonder of Turnberry and the haunting incredibility of Prestwick and the pleasant deception of Troon. But put them all together and St. Andrews can play their low ball for atmosphere.

To begin with, St. Andrews is an old university town. Spires rise up over narrow streets littered with shops and cozy pubs. Students wearing red cloaks are bicycling around. Statues confront the stroller. An inn is here and there, and the North Sea just beyond.

There are four golf courses at St. Andrews: Old, New, Eden and Jubilee, and they are all available to the public. The New Course is over 70 years old. Try that on for nostalgia. But no one, of course, is ever concerned about anything but the Old. The Old Course is St. Andrews, the R&A, all of those famed hazards. It is Jones, Vardon, Hagen and Old and Young Tom Morris, and Keith Mackenzie standing on the balcony of his office in the R&A building just above the first tee surveying the layout through a pair of mounted German submarine binoculars.

I was fortunate enough to secure lodging in The Old Course Hotel. Thus I could walk out on my terrace and it was all there directly below me. To my left, the course stretching out to the 11th green, and to my right, a matchless view of the 18th fairway leading up through the Valley of Sin, with Rusacks Hotel standing there as it is supposed to be, and with the great gray edifice of the Royal and Ancient clubhouse forming a backdrop.

The Old Course has been called a lot of things because, at first glance, it looks like nothing more than a flat, green city park. Some Americans have labeled it a "third-rate municipal course," and a "football field," but Bob Jones knew its subtleties better. It was, he said, the one course he would play forever if he could choose just one.

Two things strike the first-timer at St. Andrews immediately. First, the double greens. No less than 14 holes share the same enormous putting surfaces, the 2nd also being the 16th and that sort of thing. There are two flags, naturally, and often they will be as far as 80 yards apart, with many a dip and turn between them. The erring shot-maker is apt to find the longest putts in golf at St. Andrews. Secondly, the Old Course has some heavenly aspects for one with a chronic hook. The first nine goes straight out, you see, with all of the heather and the sea on your right. And the back nine returns, parallel, giving the hooker all of those outgoing fairways to land on.

The mystery of why no golfer has ever been able to tear apart the Old Course—278 is the lowest a winner has shot in the British Open there—lies in the wind and the putting, and in the fantastically perfect location of such hazards as Hell Bunker, a deep and somewhat inescapable pit at the 14th; the Swilken Burn, a small brook that rushes right up against the green of the 1st hole and catches many a soft nine-iron; and the Valley of Sin, the cavernous lower level of the 18th green from which three-putts, and even four-putts, are commonplace.

I attacked the Old Course in the company of Ginger Johnson, who had been caddying there for merely 45 years. For a few holes he thought he had Henry Cotton again. The wind was behind, and my shank, my top, my slice and my putting jerk seemed to have disappeared. Through the 10th I was only one over par, and I said to Ginger: