A fun but hectic couple of days on the East Neuk. Elsie and John arrived Monday afternoon, as did our nephew Ryan, who has spent a couple of months busking and offering his musical comedy stylings at a local club.
We dragged Ryan along on one of our walks, this him eastbound towards Anstruther, where we soon found ourselves on that Nine-hole course that has been mentioned in these pages.
Disappointingly, Theresa turned for home before I could find the Rockies, the award-winning (I kid) hole reputed to be the hardest Par-3 in Scotland. But great views back towards Pittenweem:
As I had hinted several times, the weather has turned back to more typically Scottish weather, though still warmer than typical. But in all the varied and sundry weather forecasts we scanned, Tuesday was always the worst of it, potential washout territory. One washout in a long trip like ours? You'd shake on that in a heartbeat, but I had already lost some golf and we did want to experience the Balcomie, in all its quirkiness, not least because of its similarities to their local Strathpeffer track.
We turned in Monday night expecting the worst, and awakening to a suspiciously bespoke Met Office forecast. It called for rain through the morning, but had the rain departing in the 11:00 a.m. hourly block, with a five-hour dry spell that overlapped perfectly with our 11:00 tee time. But, they lie, yanno!.
We committed to give it a go and, when asked about our prospects, David Snodgrass, Crail's head pro, confirmed we'd stay dry, since we could see all the way to Carnoustie. Dry we stayed, with only a couple of rain plops, as they're sometimes called.
A couple of bits that amused your humble blogger., On the second hole, "Ower the Knowe", there's a massive directional stake provided, which looks sufficiently substantial to survive the zombie apocalypse. I wouldn't have even thought it possible, but suddenly we look over and Elsie is rippling this ting out of the ground, as it was in her line of sight. I did manage a quick photo, though I fail to receive the necessary clearances to share it with you.
You'll sense what's coming, because a rope-hooked drive of my own on the eighth ran out just short of a similar post, and I did my own "Elsie", but not exactly sure what I might have done had I not seen her. That very second hole seemed especially curious to your humble blogger. I had played from the back tees (white) last Thursday, from which it's a 491-yeard Par-5. We played from the yellows, under which it's a 445-yard Par-4, a beast directly into the northerly wind we had yesterday.
I had always thought that the purpose moving up to shorter tees was to make one's life (at least one's golf) easier, but all that seems to have happened in this case was to convert a manageable three-shotter into a, well, a beast that I couldn't have reached with my two best shots. Admittedly, the direction of the wind was a factor, but still.
The second bit of amusement was that, on the eye-candy Par-3 14th, your humble blogger hit a cold shank that sent my ball onto the beach, from which John took of to retrieve it. The thought occurred to me that, remembering Ross recovering my ball from the rocks off Dornoch's ninth hole, that my dispersion rate has been such that two generations of Couplands have venture off the property to fetch them. I can only look forward to playing with Sebastian, though he'll need to be forewarned of my expectations....
One quasi-serious bit about the unjustness of our game, specifically the set-up of the course. The Balcomie's most famous hole is No. 5, Hell's Hole:
Here's the club's description of that name:
Hole 5 – Hell’s Hole – Although this could easily describe the difficulty of the hole the name comes from the rocky area of the beach on the right of the hole.
Brutally hard, it's a classic cape hole, where one has to choose carefully how much to bite off (the image above elides the fact that your carry is over an inlet of the North Sea). John hits a perfectly good drive, and we see it land, but simultaneously we notice that the stakes that bend around that inlet are all white, so it's all Out-of-bounds, stroke and distance penalties applying.
John indicates that they should perhaps be red, so that the player would be allowed to drop up there, though, as I think it through, I realize that's problematic because of where the ball crosses the hazard line. But the kicker here is that we find John's ball and it is perfectly playable, so he's, yanno, carried the hazard, so why exactly is he being penalized so severely?
A similar, yet substantively different, thing occurs to your humble blogger, and I do think that Mel Brooks said it best:
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”
Sounds about right....
On the Par-5 15th last Thursday, I drove it pin-high (the hole is 264 yards from the tips, so very doable), and downwind yesterday I dialed back to my 3-wood, and hit a good one that John characterizes as just a bit eft of the pin. Just enough left to run off the green and catch a slope heading towards the North Sea, but coming to rest in some longer grass, but completely playable. Except, that this hazard sitting lateral to the hole and green, is again marked with white stakes. My use of the word "lateral" above is obviously not random, this is the dictionary definition of a lateral hazard,...
I pass David Snodgrass in the clubhouse after our post-round pint, and ask him about these course markings, which he attributes to pace-of-play considerations. He does mention that, with the 2019 rules changes, perhaps these OB's are no longer needed, and I volunteer that our home course had red stakes everywhere for similar reasons.
But, like my hero George Costanza, it only occurs to me later (though politeness probably would have precluded the follow-up question), that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Our Fairview red stakes obviously allow a player to drop where his ball entered the hazard, and avoid the walk of shame back to the tee. But how does Ob help pace-of-play. I discover my ball OB on No. 15 and, to post a legitimate score I would need to backtrack those 264 yards to the tee....
In playing with Elsie and John we compete in a Stableford, which admittedly is superior to other competitive formats with widely varying handicaps and mixed groups playing to different handicaps. John played very well, notwithstanding the unfair situation on Hell's Hole, and ran the table. Theresa and I have adapted ourselves to Elsie and John's protocols, as explained in this long-ago post, but we had a wee problem in that regard, as none of us possessed any coinage (as an aside, about the only thing I hate about Scotland is its coinage, and I had planned a wee rant on that subject that never happened). Perhaps recognizing his collection issues, John has decided to let it ride, and we'll be playing for all the marbles today.
The camera stayed consistently in my golf bag, but I know you'll be wondering about that evening light:
It was grand....
We're on the Craighead today, on what promises to be a sunny but cool day.
It's the homestretch.....
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