Back To Crail

What's a perfect day in Scotland?

No, the answer isn't all of them, as pretty much October-April can be immediately excluded...I decided yesterday that the rain commencing on the drive home from the links is about as good as it gets here, which is very good indeed.  Not that it amounted to anything, certainly not enough to clean our befouled car....

I had neglected to mention in my earlier post that the Met Office had hail in the forecast for 5:00 p.m., long after we would have finished play.  Still, hail does get one's attention, though we ended up with nothing more than a few sprinkles, what they call a spritz over here.

Those keeping a scorecard at home will remember that we were due back at Crail to play their Balcomie Links.  Crail, as we know, has some history....

In 1786, two years before George Washington was elected the first President of the USA and three years before the storming of the Bastille in Paris, a group of eleven gentlemen met at the Golf Inn in Crail and together formed the Crail Golfing Society. Since then, through the upheaval of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the Victorian Age, two World Wars and the Cold War, the gentlemen of Crail have continued to enjoy their golf while playing a full role in the events happening around them.

I'm surprised that "gentlemen" has survived to the present PC-dominated day, but the patriarchy is everywhere.  And even that 1786 is a bit vague:

There is evidence that golf was played in Crail long before 1786, on part of the farm at Sauchope under a dual rights of occupancy arrangement – golfing and grazing. 

According to the Gazetteer of Scotland published in 1832 there was a golf club at Crail in 1760 – there are no records.

There are, in fact, only six older golf clubs in the world:

The Royal Burgess Golfing Society of Edinburgh (1735), The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (1744), The Royal and Ancient Golf Club (1754), The Bruntsfield Links Golfing Society (1761), The Royal Musselburgh Golf Club (1774) and The Royal Aberdeen Golf Club (1780).

But while "separate, but Equal" policy seems to have been in place for some time, I think we can all agree that their diversity quals are beyond reproach:

The Ladies Golf Club of Crail was founded in 1901. Until 1996 the ladies shared the links with Crail Golfing Society when its members were incorporated into membership of the Society.

Via James Finnegan comes this bit:

Minutes dated August 7th the Society agreed that “iron cases be got for the eight holes on the links to prevent the holes from being destroyed”. There exists no earlier record at any course of the insertion of metal cups into the holes.

That conflicts with my understanding, which is that a pipefitter in Musselburgh used whatever he had lying around to secure the first artifical hole, though the material used is unclear.  Perhaps this is just the first written record? 

In 1895, the Society decided to up its game, bringing Old Tom Morris down from St. Andrews to design nine holes, and a year later he added another nine.  There have been some changes, but the routing we play is largely as Tom laid it out....Finnigan captures the initial reaction perfectly:

On the first tee we get a feel for the entire course because so much of it is spread out below us. What we observe is a vast, treeless meadow sweeping down, in vaguely terraced formation, to the sea. There appears to be little separation between holes and little definition to the holes. Flagsticks help to guide our puzzled gaze, but the holes are sometimes so tightly clustered that the first-time visitor is understandably confused. It is all too much of a pice. Weer it not for the bunker, infrequent and artificial, it would look like the worlds biggest practice range.

Not just the first time....

The day is beautiful and the company is great and, perhaps most importantly, Madam's back is feeling better and she's talking smack....If views of the water are to your liking, you've come to the right place, as we never lose sight of it:

Hell's Hole, a severe cape-style hole canting from right-to-left is their No. 1 stroke index hole, an obvious scorecard wrecker.  My photos don't do justice to the difficulty of the tee shot, so I'll only share one of the green site on the far edge of the property:

A pushed drive manages to barely cover on what caddie Duncan calls the 240-yard line, and a great second leave me positioned to par their toughest.  However, the 3-jack bogey becomes a bit of a template for the day, strong play followed by squandered opportunities...

The bride and I had a good match going, though my 2-up lead vaporizes in her blitz (par-bogey-par) finish of the outgoing nine.  It won't be the last lead I squander....

Hell's Hole aside, the back-to-back Par-3's at 13 and 14 are the best remembered holes of the day for most.  Thirteen is a beast, especially for the ladies, an uphill shot of 214 yards from the medal tees.  

Alas, only the cameraman is properly aligned on this shot.

It's that hill with long rough that bedevils the ladies, and Jewelle played short of it.  The birde and her caddie Paul, for reasons that remain elusive, decided to play out to the right, where white stakes beckon.  Her second ball carried the hill, rendering their decision even more curious....

The downhill 14th is the money shot at Crail, and we took full advantage thereof:

Here's the hole and its intimidating front bunker:

Madam's ball will land dangerously close to that right-hand bunker and take a member's bounce to the back fringe.  From there she would drain the putt for a deuce....  Jewelle had done similarly on a Par-3 on the outward nine, leaving only one member of our troika without a birdie in Scotland....

We then take a walk of some 200 yards or more on the Fife Coastal Path to their back four holes, another crazy patchwork quilt that proceeds 4-3-4-3 in terms of par.  

My par on No. 15 creates a temporary one-up advantage, but the astute reader will quickly guess that the key word was that temporary.  Especially as the three finishing holes contain dots for Theresa...

No. 16 is another uphill Par-3, and when my well-struck 5-iron takes an unfavorable hop to the left, I sense the inevitable.... 

The scene from the seventeenth tee.  Their clubhouse on the left, and the new hotel in Carnoustie allegedly visible on the horizon.

I put my tee ball pin high on the 18th, but when I failed to two-putt I gifted the match to the bride.  I shot 78 for the day off par of 69, but it should have been (and needed to be) a 75-76 for my purposes.  No time for a beer after play today, but the bitterness of my loss was assuaged by the arrival of the Couplands, and what an entrance they made.

They had promised to show up with BBQ in hand for dinner, and were not in slightest deterred when I informed them there was no grill provided at our St. Monans lair.  Of course they show up with a BBQ in hand, plus charcoal and lighter fluid...  I know, though even I have to admit that for under 10 quid at Tesco's, it really was quite the score.

Tessie will seize the con in the kitchen today, with a Fife version of her Cuban pork roast on offer.  But let's linger on our homage to last night's sausage and grilled chicken, not to mention the banoffee pie that I had so shamelessly blackmailed from Elsie.   It didn't travel well in a visual sense, but that in no way impaired your humble correspondent's enjoyment thereof.

We've not seen Elsie and John for 3-4 years, they have convinced me that our trek out to Askernich was in 2015, not 2016.  But the resemblance to The Who's Pete Townsend seems only to grow more profound:

Though as the adult beverages were consumed, John tried to pass off a familial linkage a man of great importance a mere few years ago though one for whom things didn't end especially well:

John de Coupland (died 1363), also known as John Copeland, was the squire from Northumberland who captured David II of Scotland after the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346. He was knighted for his actions, becoming a powerful figure in the north of England. However, his ruthless pursuit of power produced many enemies. He was ambushed and killed in 1363.

Coincidence?  I think not....

Four of us are off to Leven Links today, with the bride requiring a day off.  Whether that repsite is from the physical toil or the company hasn't been made clear, but the four of us will toil on in her absence.  Or perhaps it was the volume of brown liquor consumed....