With The (British) Open Championship starting Thursday in St. Andrews, Scotland I thought I would go back again to the well of memories from my recent trip.
St. Andrews, at the time just over a month out from playing host to the last of golf’s four major championships, was one of the places I most looked forward to on our visit to Ireland and Scotland.
We headed up to St. Andrews from the castle we stayed at outside Edinburgh on the morning of June 3. As we drove down the backroads and saw the signs for St. Andrews, it gave me chills the way it does driving into other small towns steeped in sports history like Green Bay, Wisconsin or Lawrence, Kansas (sorry Mizzou fans, I don’t like the Jayhawks either, but their arena is awesome).
We initially went just southeast of downtown St. Andrews, where my wife booked lunch overlooking the Castle Course. While it doesn’t have the history of the famed Old Course, the more modern Castle Course, built in 2008, was visually stunning. We sat overlooking the course, which combined traditional links golf with deep pot bunkers and scenery, being located on cliffs above the North Sea. It was a great but more mellow experience than being in the packed town.
We headed into town, where the first thing we noticed were the towering temporary grandstands already being built for The Open. Some of the stands had part of the seating area colored white, to spell out a giant “150th” on a blue background, with this, the 150th playing of the tournament.
The 2022 Open is the 30th time the tournament will be held at St. Andrews, with the most recent in 2015.
Like many places on our trip, we had trouble finding a place to park, so my brother dropped my wife and I off at the R&A World Golf Museum, operated by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, the iconic clubhouse of which is located on the opposite side of the street. The museum had some great items dating back to the early days of the game, including clubs that looked like hockey sticks and golf balls that looked like they would be used for croquet.
It also had items from The Open and other tournaments around the world, including a red Nike shirt Tiger Woods wore during one of his victories and pants with one black leg and one white leg worn by South Africa’s Gary Player to protest apartheid in 1960 and again in 2000 (though Gary’s views on the subject were not always so cut and dry).
They also had the famed Claret Jug, which is awarded to the winner of The Open, on display. Unfortunately, I learned that it is a replica, with the original trophy on display at the clubhouse. I mean, would it kill the members if they put the original on display at the museum and walked all the way across the street to see it?
The museum also had some cool interactive items, including a putting green where we played using ancient-style clubs. They also had a video game where you guess which club a player should use in tough situations. I did terribly at the game, showing how little I know about playing golf. The “host” of the game was Catriona Matthew, winner of the 2009 Women’s Open Championship. After seeing the video Matthew, my wife swore she saw the real one earlier at the Castle Course.
After staying in the museum for about an hour, we headed over to the Old Course, which was established in 1552.
While the clubhouse is private for R&A members, the course itself is very public, especially compared to American courses that host major championships, like Augusta National, home of The Masters. I used to go by Augusta National all the time as a child, and unless you were a member, playing with a member or had a ticket to the tournament, all you could see was a green fence from the outside.
But at St. Andrews, we, and any other member of the public, walked right under the grandstands. Then, after waiting for some players to cross, we walked right across the iconic shared fairway of the first and 18th holes. A woman asked the security guard who was guiding foot traffic if she could walk farther out onto the course to take photos. He told her that she could when there are no golfers around, which was a challenge because it was packed with players, who I’m sure came from around the world for the experience.
It was really cool seeing all the buildings around the green that I’ve watched for decades. We then walked along a road parallel to the fairway until we got to the Swilcan Burn, where we got a good view of the super-mega-iconic 700-year-old Swilcan Bridge.
Legends like Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson have symbolically waved goodbye to the game near the end of their careers from the stone bridge. There is speculation as to whether the beaten-up Woods will do the same this week, which is tough to think about.
Of course, the weekend golfers who were playing the day we were there ate up the chance to cross the bridge. My wife and I had to settle for getting our photos with the bridge in the background. I wasn’t going to risk walking onto the course.
I wish we’d walked a little farther down the road, to where it goes between a grandstand and a green. For some reason it didn’t occur to me, but we were right by the 17th hole, known as the Road Hole, with its infamous bunker with a six-foot-high wall next to the green.
Unfortunately, the giant merchandise tent for The Open wasn’t ready, but they had two smaller shops in buildings open along the 18th green. Fortunately, we were able to get an Open refrigerator magnet.
It will definitely be a new perspective watching The Open this week, having actually seen some of the course and the beautiful town where it is played.
As we headed back toward Ireland, we stopped at two more courses in the Open rota, though neither offered the aura of St. Andrews. I bought my dad a set of coasters for Father’s Day at Royal Troon, east of Glasgow. I also picked up a “152nd Open” stocking cap for myself, with Troon scheduled to next play host to the tournament in 2024 (assuming the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour hasn’t totally destroyed the sport by then).
We also went by Royal Portrush, which hosted The Open in 2019 and will again in 2025, as we drove back through Northern Ireland. Since we had not been able to get a refrigerator magnet in Northern Ireland, and we were about to head back to the Republic of Ireland, I was desperate. Just as we are trying to get a magnet from every U.S. state, we decided we had to get them in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Fortunately, Portrush had some ball markers that were magnetic. It was not cheap, at $15, but it was something, and it looked really cool.
When I got home, I realized that the magnetism on the heavy Portrush ball marker was not designed to hold it to a refrigerator. But we placed it directly above another magnet, and it hasn’t fallen off, so far.
This news is republished from another source. You can check the original article here