The game’s greatest practitioners will walk almost exactly the same seaside links layout that has plagued players for more than 500 years in the hallowed home of golf on a narrow strip of land that runs north along the shore of the North Sea toward the Eden estuary. There is a sparkling new $5 million clubhouse on the premises, but as one course marshal sniffed describing it this morning, a terrrrrrr-ible waste of money.

Some players still prefer to change their shoes in the headquarters of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, which overlooks both the 18th green and the first tee, both holes essentially sharing the same double-wide fairway. From there, it’s off on one of the game’s greatest adventures.

Ahead lie 18 of the most intriguing holes in the world on a humpy course pocked with 117 bunkers, some with such appropriate names as hell, coffins, and lion’s mouth. There are seven double greenseach so wide and deep they can accommodate shots from two different holesmade possible by the out and back counter-clockwise classic links layout.

Advertisement

Aye, it’s a very unusual golf course, said marshal G.S. Harbour, a regular player on the Old Course, as opposed to the parallel New Courseonly 102 years old. We don’t get a great deal of rain, but oh yes, we do get the wind. That wind, it can be anywhere. When the tide begins to ebb and flow, that makes a difference, too.

see OPEN, page 11