Disaster At Dornoch

The grounds on which golf is played are called links being the barren, sandy soil from which the sea has retired in recent geological times. In their natural state links are covered with long, rank, bent grass and gorse…links are too barren for cultivation; but sheep rabbits, geese and professionals pick up a precarious livelihood on them. WALTER SIMPSON

Dateline: Pittenweem, Kingdom of Fife, United Kingdom 

Well, this trip is certainly not proceeding according to spec....

John, Ross, the bride and I teed off at Dornoch as planned, on a gloriously linksy day, the sun shining (OK, that's not the linksy part) and the wind blowing, and all was well with the world.  Oh, your humble blogger didn't have much of his game with him, but it's not like that hasn't happened before.  Somebody did bring her game, but tragedy first....  The only bit worth noting, because it might have been a factor, is that I had at least a couple of shots where the long, wispy whins grabbed my hosel and sent balls dead left.  In fact, Ross was good enough to retrieve one of said shots from the rocks....

That's off the ninth hole, a beach I've visited on prior occasions.... Good times.

We make our way to the twelfth hole, Dornoch's second and final three-shotter.  The hole has a right-to-left shape to it, but my second shot fails to draw and heads straight for an evil-looking fairway bunker some 70-75 yards short of the green.  Fortunately, or so it seems at the time, the ball clears the bunker and leaves me a simple pitch to the green.

The lie was a bit funky, surrounded by that wispy stuff but also sitting just a bit down between two tufts of grass.  All of which might explain instinctively tightening that grip pressure, right?  What happens next is quite a blur, but the club stops dead in the grass and pain ensues, and in the immediate aftermath I think I may have damaged my wrist, I was certainly shaking it out immediately after.  It took me a moment to notice the blood, as somehow my grip removed a solid inch of skin from the top of my index finger, just to the left (obviously on my right hand), leaving a nasty wound.  I have pictures, but I'll do you the courtesy of not sharing them.

Perhaps the oddest bit of all is that, despite the obviously sub-optimal club-turf interaction, the shot itself came off beautifully, leaving a 12-footer for birdie.  And, yes, I three-jacked it, though in my defense I had my finger/hand wrapped with a nappie.

The prognosis?  Murky, at best.  With Elsie and John's kit and assistance, we cleaned and dressed it as best we could Friday evening.  A visit to the Strathpeffer chemist Saturday morning provided some useful butterfly-like strips and dressings, but through the drive down from the Highlands the wound continued to seep red stuff.  As of Sunday morning there's only the slightest trace of blood on the dressing, so that's perhaps slight progress.

Our first game at Crail is Monday, though at this juncture I don't thin I'll dare play, in the interest of salvaging the back end golf.  We were also suppose to be entering the Daily Ballot for the Old Course, but all that's on hold for now.  I'll grab a club later and see what's possible, but I'm likely to be a mere caddie and cheerleader for Employee No. 2.  In a moment of pure spite, I even threatened to live blog her round on a stroke-by-stroke basis, though she's done nothing to deserve such scrutiny.

So, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the performance?

Dornoch, which we hadn't been back to for a good ten years, remains links heaven (sorry for the redundancy).  It's a spectacular site, built on at least three different landforms, though all are suitably linksy.  providing an infinite array of shot values and beautiful vistas of Dornoch Bay.  

From l-r, Ross, John and Theresa on the putting green.

Plans are afoot to replace the small clubhouse, which is to be moved the other side of the first tee.  Set aside wind and the pot bunkers, the biggest challenge presented by Dornoch at present might be finding a parking spot, which John accomplished only by virtue of driving a vehicle with higher clearance.

I don't have a full dissertation on Dornoch in me, but I will share some photos with you:

That's your humble blogger's tee shot on the second, one of the great Par-3's in linksdom (although all four one-shotters at Dornoch are quite strong).  Of course, the last thing I heard from Ross was "Don't go left", yet left I went.  Why the warning?

One of the few high points of my golf before disaster struck was successfully extricating myself from this position, a quite credible first bunker shot of the trip.  Perhaps the last, also....

The old joke is that the hardest shot at Dornoch is the second to the second, the humor being that it's allegedly a one-shotter.  So, I pulled off the hardest shot at Dornoch, and no others.

The bunkering is suitably intimidating:

This was a fun, linksy moment on the 5th hole:

That's Theresa's, Rosses and my balls, with mine being away.  I wasn't sure about putting it up that slope, so I hit the terrifying pitch and pulled it off, only to see Ross putt his up the slope, the better play given the tight lies.

The early round golf was pretty ragged for the men, but Theresa played quite the great front nine, including this on the Par-3 sixth:

You can make her ball out in the clouds, and the end result was her first birdie in Scotland since 2019.  But my bride played brilliantly on the outbound nine, racking up 22 Stableford points to my own eight (that won't communicate to Americans, but it's sandbagger territory).  

Ross is a strong player, but struggled heading out.  But, like water finding it's own level, made three birdies on the inbound nine, taking a run at but ultimately coming up one point short of Tessie.  A grand day and we're ever so grateful to John and Ross for arranging our outing, though obviously not the happiest of endings.

I'll just share some photos of this magical venue, beginning with this from the far end of the property looking back towards the clubhouse:

This would be a nice spot to park oneself with a cocktail and a book, though it's a bit of a hike:

Here's Ross playing to the 8th green:

And your humble blogger's best shot of the day, admittedly not an especially competitive category:

My only par of the day, and who knows when the next will come.  This is a uniquely linksy type of Par-3, a very short hole that looks easy on the scorecard, but with any wind one had better strike the shot purely, otherwise the wind will escort the ball to parts unknown.

That's Theresa on the 11th tee, and this below is a wonderful bunker shot:

You think golf at home is cruel?  As good as that shot looks (and as good a shot as it actually was), it ended up back at her feet.

The most famous hole at Dornoch is No. 14, Foxy, a stout (read: impossible) Par-4 with not a single bunker.  The hole features two dunes that kind of just out into the fairway from the right, but the green sits at an awkward angle to the line of play.  Theresa hit two wonderful shots, which rewarded her with this impossible third shot:

She'd have been better served putting or bumping something along the ground, but those contours (and they are more severe even than they appear in the 2-dimensional photo) would make holding the green quite the challenge.

Most folks are forced to choose between golf and walking their dogs.  This woman has managed to have it both ways:

One last piece of eye candy:

Quite the special place in our game, one that we will need to get back to in less than 10 years.

We are settled in our rental house in Pittenweem, and have been out and bout exploring a bit.  I'll blog those excursions as time permits, but I will be limited to walking with/caddying for Theresa for the next couple of days.  Not the Scotland trip we had planned, but we'll make the best of it.

FOOTNOTE:  As we pulled out of Dornoch headed back to Strathpeffer, my phone buzzed with an alert that Theresa's golf bag had been left behind (it was safely in the boot for sure).  Apparently, AirTag hell is ongoing.  You can't make this stuff up.