The Royal and the Ancient

Monday, Jul 21^st – “The Royal (Chan and Paul) and the Ancient (Steve and Jack)”

Cliff Notes

Jack fails to pay the ₤20,000 initiation fee for the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, thus eliminating our chance of eating lunch in the ‘clubhouse.’

Despite paying $400 in greens fees, we still had to buy a bucket of balls AND pay to hit off grass instead of ‘astroturf’ mats.

Paul continued his incredible up-and-down maneuvers throughout the round to save pars and bogeys.

Jack went to the 3-hybrid after two grossly failed attempts to hit his driver on #1 and #2. He was quite successful for the rest of the day off the tee.

Chan was steadily mediocre, but did get down with a two-putt from 200 feet on #6 (yes, he was on the green!)

Steve parred 10 out of 18 holes, but still managed 6 double bogeys – although he did get out of the famous Bobby Jones bunker (8 feet deep) on the par 3 11^th, something Bobby Jones never did in 10 attempts before walking off the course and tearing up his scorecard. See bunker left of the green - don't ask how Steve got there in the first place !!

We all avoided Hell bunker on #14 where Jack Nicklaus on two consecutive days took 5 and 4 to get out at one Open Championship. Despite a 10 and a 9 on the hole, he still won that year!!

 

Final scores: Paul 83; Jack 83; Steve 87; Chan .

We then travelled to Troon (West Coast of Scotland), where we stayed at Piersland – the home of Johnny Walker’s grandson. The bartender/IT guy volunteered to tell us the history of this very cool place, but was unable to answer even one question that we asked – but he apologized noting that he had only worked there for 2½ years!! Obviously a quick study J.

 

The Rest of the Story

Our plan was to have lunch at the clubhouse at St. Andrews and relax before our 1:40 tee time. Interestingly, there is no clubhouse for St. Andrews. The large structure you see on TV when they have The Open there is the Royal & Ancient Golf Association and admittance is for members only. Steve made an 8AM appointment for Jack to meet with the Secretary of the R&A so that Jack could join and we could have lunch there. As you can imagine that plan failed for several reasons: (1) Jack didn’t get out of bed in time to make the 8AM appointment; (2) when he did arrive, the application process took too much time for Jack to complete it and still have time for lunch; (3) Jack didn’t have enough favorable references (i.e. Chan, Paul and Steve); and lastly (the least of our worries) was the ₤20,000 initiation fee. The three of us told Jack we would buy his lunch if he put up the initiation fee, but alas, we ran out of time to complete the whole process.

 

So, after a casual breakfast and some excessive souvenir shopping (mostly by Jack for every person on the planet that he knows), we went to the St. Andrews driving range, which interestingly, is down the road from the course. It requires a shuttle bus. When we got there we found that we actually had to pay for a bucket of balls (!!); imagine that – we just paid $400 green fee, and they stiff us for range balls. When we realized that we were to hit off mats (is this country stingy with grass or what?), we asked if we could hit off grass … and (you guessed it), we had to pay extra for that!! But in a magnanimous gesture of Scottish hospitality, the attendant only made one of us pay for hitting off the grass.

 

When we got to the grass hitting area, one of the keepers set up ropes that we were to use as our hitting area and asked us to hit from between the ropes (as is customary as all you golfers know). Is it a surprise to anyone that Paul failed that simple request and started hitting from behind the ropes. After a slight correction and explanation from the three of us, Paul finally understood the concept of ‘between,’ which also explains why he hits into so many traps instead of between them as instructed by his caddie.

 

When we got to the first tee, the weather was spectacular. It was very sunny and in the low 80’s. Who would have thunk that we would be worried about wearing shorts, sun glasses and sun screen in Scotland! The starter could not have been more friendly. He took pictures of us and kindly explained why we would not have caddies to start the round (something about a bunch of Japanese golfers who held up the whole course and held up all the caddies for the afternoon rounds). Jack and Chan nervously pulled drives left over into he 18^th fairway while Steve and Paul nailed long drives (Steve dead straight and Paul with his usual wicked fade) down the middle. It is a little nerve-wracking hitting off the first tee of the most famous golf course in the world with people from all over the world as well as other golfers watching from all around the tee box.

 

Caddies joined us on #2 and #3 and they finished their morning rounds. The course was really cool and surprisingly less difficult than we expected. For sure, there are pot bunkers in many places and undulating fairways and greens, but the rough was not as thick as other places we played. You can see how the course could be very difficult with additional wind and pin placements in certain areas of the undulating greens.

 

The one green at St. Andrews (it is actually the green for both #6 and #13 is the largest in the world and is 100 yards wide and 80 yards deep where Chan managed to two putt from about 200 feet!

Steve parred the 9 of the first 13 holes until the wheels fell off for 4 holes (one disaster hole came when Steve’s caddie was waving his arms in Steve’s backswing with the caddie’s shadow falling across the ball as Steve was hitting – at least that is the excuse Steve is using for hitting his drive out of bounds).

Paul parred the famous Road Hole (#17) with two great shots to get on the green and then lagging a 70 foot putt to within a foot. Jack parred the Road Hole with an incredible up-and-down, the up part being a 100 yard shot out of the rough and the down part being a 20 foot putt that was dead-center.

 

We all got to the 18^th green in two. Once again there is an international gallery watching around the green. While Jack and Chan failed to consummate their two-putt pars, Paul sank a tenuous 6-footer for par and Steve (with the last putt of the round) made a 5-footer for par. Thus ended our round a St. Andrews.

 

Some other interesting side note about St. Andrews:

Tee boxes for the next hole are usually only 10-15 yards off the green of the previous hole.

The #2 tee box is right next to a public putting green that serves as an 18 hole putt-putt mostly for kids. So, as we were teeing off on #2, there were kids playing putt-putt on that putting green who were no more than10-15 feet away from us.

There are some holes that have crossing fairways, so you have watch what you are doing (with the caddies helping).

Most holes share green – that is, there are double greens with white flogs designating the holes for going out and red flags designating the holes when playing back in.

Paul’s caddie (Graeme Stuart) plays at +4 and caddying is a job that he does to help finance his travel on the Asian Tour. He had just finished 8^th in a tournament in Thailand.

 

We packed up from St. Andrews and made the 2 hour trek across the country to the West Coast to Troon where we stayed at Piersland. After checking into our cottages, Jack and Paul (as usual) went to the bar for a drink. Steve wandered in looking for a WiFi connection. The bartender opened the bar specially for Jack and Paul. The bartender asked us if we wanted to know about the history of this place. We were all ears, so he told us it was the home of Johnny Walker’s grandson, which explained all the Johnny Walker memorabilia in the lobby and the bar. We then asked several simple questions like “When did he live?” and “When was it built?” and “When was it converted to a hotel?” to which the bartender did not know any answers … and he volunteered to give us the history of the place! He did note that he had only worked there for 2½ years so he wasn’t up on all that stuff. I guess he has had a really busy 2½ years and those answers are hard to come by. Of course, if Steve could have got a WiFi connection (which was also out at the hotel) we could have Googled the answers in about 3 minutes. Which reminds me … the bartender is also the IT guy for the hotel. He couldn’t fix the WiFi and said he was off the next day, but he would get to it when he came in at noon the following day. Now that’s one ambitious lad!!!