Played the original Old Tom St Michaels on a lovely sunny day (with an incredible temperature inversion 'haar' sliding up the Eden) yesterday.
Extended from the original 9 in 1992ish, the course plays over two distinctly different pieces of terrain.
The new nine are quite possibly among the poorest pieces of golf design it has ever been my misfortune to experience (and I've played Drumoig!). Quite dismally dull and boring parallelism at its worst on the flattest old ex-farmland fields with nary an attempt at shaping. Only barely excused by one or two decent greensites. What a shame.
Back 9 - OTM wondrousness. Terrific par threes - one (15th) is about as dramatic a use of the Fife landscape as its possible to do. 150ft drop over about 120yds to a WILD green with an almost punchbowl quality. 16 and 17 are two short par 4s which I felt had to have been a GREAT par 5 at one time. (I know nothing of the course development so can only guess).
Some truly terrible tree planting and ridiculous blobs of long fescue rough only added to my general misery. I was too depressed to even think of taking pictures.
Still, as a 2-for-1 it only cost us 15quid a head to experience. Which was nice.
When next in St Andrews, don't bother...
cheers,
FBD.