Greetings from the Kingdom of Fife, where I've had sufficient coffee to open a new post, scanned the Yankees box score (two hits, so they covered the over/under) and taken a quick gander at the Met Office's weather forecast for Fife... So, where were we?
As I shared last year, the Crail Golfing Society dates to 1786, making it the seventh oldest golf club in the world:
Isn't good gentlemen redundant? Never mind, but did you ever wonder where Clifford Roberts came up with this?
That Old Tom quote is great, at least until you notice that he said virtually identical words about each course he laid out.....
We are told that the course we play is very much as Old Tom laid out, and that I suspect is very true. I call it a mini-Old Course, for it shares obvious DNA with the old girl. There's only the one double green, though in this case the hole numbers add to nineteen (you're likely aware that the seven double greens on the Old all add to eighteen), but also those tight playing corridors and short Par-4's that afford even players with my limited skills to reach.
I remember an article about the Old Course (can't remember the source) in which the author called it the the narrowest golf course on the planet and a mere few pages later spoke of the great width available. I poked some fun at that, but also conceded that he was correct in both cases. In some spots on the Balcomie there's four fairways of width, but at other times you're sharing fairways with a gaggle of folks. The downside, though, is that pave of play will always be an issue, for the same reason that Open rounds at St. Andrews take six hours.
When last we spoke, we were headed to the fifth tee, one of its more famous holes with a notable 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.
It's a scorecard-wrecker for sure, and your humble blogger's cards was so wrecked...Here's a look at her:
The hole plays from 427 - 447 yards, though at that shorter distance it's considered a Par-5.
The drive is a classic cape hole, the fairway angling away to the right. The Course Guide contains all sorts of useful information on carry distances, which would have been quite useful....that is, had I not left it at the house. Amusingly, the first thing see as we arrive on the tee box is this gentleman doing the walk of shame:
Been there, done that, although not on this specific beach.... A couple of things jump out at the players, as we see the bride on the tee:
First, the tee box points us directly at the sixth green, a Par-3 that plays in the opposite direction. Did I mention pace of play issues? The Course Guide indicates that line is a 188-yard carry, so most players won't want to bite off too much more than that, especially into the wind as we were. But there's two greenside pot bunkers protecting that Par-3, and there's likely no worse place for your drive to find.
The second issue is that there's isn't really much of anywhere for Theresa to land her ball. It worked fine that day and is manageable in these softer conditions, but when it's really linksy it's easy for those balls to kick right into the North Sea. From the 7th tee box we get a view of the second shot, which takes the players to the far end of the property:
It seems they are OB crazy in Scotland. I've previously noted that John Coupland's tee shot last year covered the actual water, but was frustratingly within the area designated Out of Bounds by white stakes (as indicated in the Course Guide). Why is it OB? No clue, except to guess that they don't want folks playing from the beach, but John's ball was in grass on Crail real estate, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
But I did notice in walking through the Anstruther nine-hole golf course yesterday that on their famous Rockies hole, they have similarly designated the rocky beach and Firth of Forth as OB. Seems pretty clearly a lateral hazard to this observer, and I'd think you'd want to allow folks to drop and keep moving (in the U.S. we've gone the other way, we're red stake crazy). On the Rockies it would be easy to Tin Cup it, well, all but the last part where the ball goes in....
The green site on hell's Hole is decidedly non-hellish, a beautiful spot with livestock as part of the experience:
Theresa got this one that she titled, Still Life with Cows and Scott:
As I hinted, I hit a great drive that looked perfect. Oh, it started on a clearly aggressive line, but drew back nicely towards apparent safety, with my principal worry being that it might have run through the fairway. Since it wasn't found, we can safely say that I got too greedy, though that's a post hoc conclusion. The problem, indeed the strategic logic of a cape hole, is that the safety comes with a price, a longer shot into the green. I've been over the green in two, but I await my first par on Hell's Hole still.
I did make my first par on an equally difficult Balcomie hole, but the day has dawned and we'll have to defer our discussion of the 13th hole until another time.
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