New, A Relative Concept

Tuesday morning here in the East Neuk, as our trip winds down.  I'll confess to a bit of blogging burnout, and hope you'll bear with me.  I enjoy greatly the process of putting my thoughts and reactions into words, but it can at times feel a bit like a job.... 

Yesterday I left the bride in bed and ventured back to the Auld Grey Toon to play... well, to play this:

The Open Championship began in 1860, though it wasn't until 1873 that the event is played on the Old Course in St. Andrews.  The period through the end of the century is a battle for primacy in the game among St. Andrews, Prestwick and Musselburgh, but the rehiring of Old Tom in 1865 starts a gradual trend in St. Andrews' direction.  The unintended consequence of this is that the increasing popularity and tourist play (mostly a result of the rail lines), renders the links too crowded.

Land is readily available, but the scarce resource is money.  Thus, the R&A agrees to pay for the building of the New Course, in return for a permanent allocation of tee times on both courses.  These arrangements are codified in an 1894 Act of Parliament, and remain in place today.  Thus, when you show up in September and the Old Course is unavailable due to the R&A's Fall Meeting, remember that cash changed hands for those tee times back in the day...

The New Course is directly adjacent to the Old, on one's right on the outbound nine of the latter.  Amusingly, as I'm talking to the starter I see a player and caddie suddenly playing a shot from the tee box of New No. 1, back to the Old.  Apparently it's not OB, which is good to know, though the gorse bushes separating the two seem sufficient deterrence.

The new feels a bit like a less eccentric version of its sister, and I mean that favorably.  The land is similarly undulating, but without the crazy landforms that we find nest door.  There are shared fairways and even a single double green (the third and fifteenth, maintaining the practice of adding up to eighteen) , and only one severely blind shot (the tee shot on No. 10).  It feels very much like a course one would be happy to play every day, and it has the reputation of being the locals course in St. Andrews.  That said, I see nothing but Yanks while there...

The starter and I have an amusing conversation:

Starter: I remember you from the last few days. Welcome back.

SS: Yes, my wife and I played the Old on Saturday... were you there?

Starter: Yes, I was in the starter's hut that day.

SS: I'm a bit surprised that you'd have taken note of me, as everyone else seemed more focused on our playing partner.

Starter: The young lady? She did have quite the lovely swing....

SS: Yeah, I tried to convince my wife that it was her swing I was admiring, but that sale didn't go down any better.

The legend of Jenna lives.  I tried to explain that she might not have broken 90, but he was off in his rich fantasy land....

We have just about given up on finding playing partners, when two singles, both Yanks, show up and off we go.

The bunker is very reminiscent of that found on the Old:

This is my moment of greatest distress, as my ball miraculously stops short of a nasty greenside bunker:

The shot's a bit tougher than it looks, on a more severe downslope than it appears, but your humble correspondent gags on the chip, dumping it into the bunker.  These things happen in the best of families, but in that moment I'm angrier than a Dane in the haar....

This photo comes of well, I think, picking up the devilish contouring around the greens:

My ball is just at the bottom of the frame, and the instinct is to pull the putter, but the ground route is a challenging read.

I believe the photo below is the Par-5 eighth, where the challenge is to find a safe place to land one's golf ball:

I'll remind that we're seeing everything in soft conditions, where the runout is somewhat controllable.  The challenge is she's running fast is obvious, as you'd have to lay the second way back to ensure it doesn't run forever into one the bunkers.

The green is quite good as well, laced between two dunes with intimidating bunkers to draw one's eye:

Old Tom has a reputation of designing straight golf holes, but he knows how to provide interesting angles as well.  My second is pulled to the left, and I'm quite lucky to avoid that singleton bunker on the left of the photo above.  But this is the resulting view I have of my target:

The ninth is a lovely one-shotter that runs along the Eden Estuary:

This is a good view of the nature of the ground, with gorse bushes seemingly everywhere:

And this view back to the famous 11th hole on the Old:

It feels vast out here....this is the ninth green:

Another sepia mishap at a lovely spot on the inbound nine:

Not to bore you too much wit my own travails, but it was a day where I hit it well enough, though not as solidly as previously.  We've played the Old in a virtual dead calm, but wind is up on this day.  Not at the strength we've seen earlier in the trip, but it's a strong presence.  We play homeward in a right-to-left wind, and my attempts to keep the ball down are adding quite a bit of draw spin, but this why wind is the ultimate test.

I know better than to submit to the tyranny of the scorecard, and yet when we play the Old in calm conditions, I'm annoyed when my 6-5 finish leaves me with an 80.  The better approach is to focus on the shotmaking, enjoying pulling off those specifically linksy plays.  Today offers many such opportunities around the greens, and I'm dialed in on those runners struck with an eight or nine-iron, using my putting stroke.  After I finish with three tasty such up-and-ins on our final three holes, playing partner Ralph comments that I've been using that shot with dead weight all day....  The only thing missing would be the hear it in a Scottish brogue....

The home green:

A fine test of golf, it makes a fellow wonder how it would be received if not in the shadow of its older brother.  Think of it as Bethpage Red, perhaps, though this seems unnecessarily hedged:

This makes it one of the oldest "new" courses in the world!

One of?  Is it remotely possible there a new that's older?