St. Andrews doesn’t always make good first impression
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland (AP) – Sam Snead made his first pilgrimage to the home of golf nearly 60 years ago, and his first impression was typical of most great golfers, particularly Americans. Inspired? Awe-struck?
Hardly.
Snead was on a train that pulled into the old gray town of St. Andrews in 1946. Gazing out the window, he got his first glimpse of the Old Course.
“Say! That looks like an old abandoned golf course,” Snead said. “What did they call it?”
Despite a four-shot victory at St. Andrews for his only British Open win, Snead later described the Old Course as “some acreage that was so raggedy and beat up that I was surprised to see what looked like a fairway amongst the weeds. Down home, we wouldn’t plant cow beets on land like that.”
“Until you play it, St. Andrews looks like the sort of real estate you couldn’t give away.”
Clearly, the Old Course at St. Andrews is unlike any other in championship golf. Perhaps no other golf course gets such a wide range of reviews.
“One of my top favorite three courses. I can’t wait to get back there,” Fred Couples said.
“The worst piece of mess I’ve ever played,” Scott Hoch said.
“Every time you play it, you learn something new about it,” Phil Mickelson offered. “I love it, but if you built that course today, it wouldn’t be appreciated. Some of the holes you just wouldn’t make today.”
Lee Westwood of England never has been a big fan of the Old Course, but it is starting to grow on him. He compared it to a song that he despises, “and you end up humming it all day.”
Love it or loathe it – and there is rarely any room in between – the British Open returns to St. Andrews for the 27th time since golf’s oldest championship first was played there in 1873. The links course seems to change every time, some of that by design (tee boxes lengthened), some of that by nature (wind).
“When it blows here, even the seagulls walk,” Nick Faldo once said.
In blustery conditions typical for the Old Course, John Daly won a playoff in 1995 after finishing at 6 under par. Five years later in benign weather, Tiger Woods won by eight shots at 19-under 269, the lowest score in relation to par at any major championship.
Neither famous photos nor live television can do the Old Course justice. It must be seen to be appreciated, and first impressions are unlike any other a golfer experiences.
“It looked like the cow pasture everyone told me it was,” Daly said. “But it’s awesome. I fell in love with the place.”
There are tales of Bobby Jones ripping up his scorecard and stomping off the Old Course the first time he played it. Tom Watson says he never has been more puzzled after a practice round.
Woods was asked whether his favorite course was Pebble Beach or St. Andrews. He thought long and hard before saying, “It’s kind of hard to beat a British Open at St. Andrews. I love that course. I love it.”
Perhaps the best expectations are none at all.
Jack Nicklaus never played the Old Course until 1964, although when he first went to Scotland in 1959 for the Walker Cup at Muirfield, his father went over to St. Andrews and brought back a harrowing scouting report.
“They came back and said, ‘You won’t believe it. That’s the worst golf course I’ve ever seen,”‘ Nicklaus said. “What I was prepared for in 1964 was not very much.”
Only later did he discover that his father three-putted most of the greens. And when he first saw St. Andrews, he realized his father wasn’t looking at the Old Course the way Nicklaus would.
“We had talked about it after we were there, and he says, ‘It was so different that I guess we didn’t like it. But I think you’re going to like it … because of what it is.’ And that’s right. I did,” Nicklaus said. “So when I got there in ’64, I just fell in love with it right from the first day.”
Jim Furyk says every links course on the British Open rotation presents challenges, although St. Andrews stands out for a different reason.
“I’ve played there a dozen times, and I still feel like I have no idea how to play it,” Furyk said. “Everyone says that about the golf course. It changes from day to day.”
Landing areas can look as wide as airport runways, but they are tighter once you figure out the proper way to attack the hole. Some of the bunkers are hidden, seen only after a player reaches the green and looks back toward the tee.
As for those greens?
Fourteen of them serve two holes – going out and coming back, double greens that can leave players with putts the length of a basketball court.
Golf has been played at St. Andrews for 500 years, although not like it is today. Golfers once played 11 holes out to the nearby estuary, then played them again on their return to the clubhouse. It wasn’t until 1764, after Earl St. Clair shot a 121 on the 22-hole course, that the good men of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club decided the first four holes were too short. They were promptly converted into two longer holes, thereby creating the modern 18-hole course.
Still, it wasn’t until the R&A appointed Old Tom Morris as custodian of the links in 1865 that the Old Course was updated. With help from assistant David Honeyman, he widened the fairways and greens, and added sand to help the grass grow. Morris also built the first and 18th greens as they are today.
Time has taken care of the rest, making the Old Course alternately gentle and cruel, with a few quirks that cannot be explained, only accepted. Among those who understood that was George Duncan, who was in position to win the Open at St. Andrews in 1910 until he closed with an 83.
“You can play a damned good shot and find the ball in a damned bad place,” Duncan said.
Nicklaus will be playing the Open at St. Andrews for the eighth and last time. He is one of only four players to have won two claret jugs on the Old Course, and the only American among that elite group.
He summed up the challenges of St. Andrews in his autobiography, “My Story,” in which he discussed the two conditions a player must meet if he wants to conquer the Old Course.
“First, he must become acclimatized to and comfortable with playing the game on what much of the time … doesn’t look or feel like a golf course at all,” Nicklaus wrote. “Second, he must learn what those ever-changing winds will do to his ball. … To me, those factors in combination make a British Open at the home of golf the most intriguing and maybe the most demanding challenge in the entire game.”