Yesterday morning I woke up at 4:45 a.m. and was on the road from Dunbar shortly after 5:00. My plan was to drive to St. Andrews, get on the list of singles at the Old Course, do a bit of reading and relaxing (and have breakfast) while I waited for my tee time, then have a nice stroll around town and head home early in the afternoon.
I got to the starter's hut at TOC at 6:45 - the rest of the town (and indeed Scotland, as far as I could tell) was asleep, except for the 20 or so people lurking around the first tee. When I spoke with the starter, he told me to come back around NOON, and I could see there were about 15 names on the list already, which is pretty amazing. I'm not sure I'll try this trick again...
So, that led me to plan B - the Castle Course, which I was keen to see anyway. I was there before 7:00, and with the first tee time at 7:30 (an hour later than at the Old Course, for some reason), I was off as part of a three-ball at 7:42. Through sheer serendipity, I managed to complete my round on the Castle by 11:45, make it back to TOC to check in with the starter by noon, discover my name was pretty much at the top of the list, and tee off at 12:20. I was finished by 4:45 and back in Dunbar by 6:45 to have dinner and help put my kids to sleep. Pretty good, huh? A very tiring day - and quite an expensive one (costing £250 in green fees) - but a very, very rewarding one as well.
Anyway, to the Castle Course: I haven't been hanging out around here much recently, so I'm not sure to what extent its merits have been debated, but for my money it's every bit as good as Bandon Dunes. In fact, my one chief fault with it is that it basically *is* Bandon Dunes with a more severe set of greens, more "natural" bunker edging, less gorse, and the somewhat quirky mounds with longer grass in the middle of a number of fairways (which I've seen referred to as "Don Kings" in other reviews, although I understand the grass on them has already been trimmed since it opened last month). It has a very similar clifftop setting with a few dramatic holes along its edge, a few elevation changes, lots and lots of teeing grounds, and a similar overall feel to BD, at least relative to my one and only trip there in 2001. The architect is the same, of course. Plus, the Castle Course obviously caters to the same class of golfer as Bandon, based upon the amenities and facilities there. Does uniqueness matter? Is one golf course worse than another simply because it mirrors the merits of another? (Rhetorical questions for you to ponder, perhaps...)
The greens *are* pretty wild, but mostly in a good way. Kidd is a member at Machrihanish (and has been working on the new Machrihanish Bay course as well), and there are several greens at the Castle which clearly remind me of one or two of those at Machrihanish (particularly the latter's 2nd, 5th, 10th and 12th). I had a long putt at to a hole location at the back-left of the par-5 5th yesterday that reminded me of a putt I've hit several times at the 12th at Machrhanish, where the percentage play seemed to be to roll the ball up a bank past the pin and have it funnel back to the hole. (That proved not to be the case yesterday, but it was fun to have tried!) The key is that the greens at the Castle are huge, so the wild slopes dictate what you do once you get on the greens without being too penal for the high handicapper; the better player will need to target the correct section of the greens, not merely the greens themselves. The only green I didn't like was the 10th, which has the effect of a cake that is missing one slice; many others will be over the top for some, particularly the cloverleaf 4th (with a rear-right section that is almost a mini-punchbowl of its own), but I think the average GCAer will really like them.
The Castle is currently rather less penal than BD, but when it matures and the grass gets thicker, the rough and the wind should make that comparison more even. I could be wrong, but I believe the fairways at the Castle are wider. Because of this fairway width, the "Don Kings" are acceptable to me - people probably wouldn't complain as much if they were centerline bunkers, and yet for the average golfer they are much easier to escape than a bunker. They *are* a bit unnatural in execution - their edges seem a bit jagged to me - but many features of Kingsbarns felt that way to me when I played it not long after its opening, and I'm sure they'll have softened a bit since then.
The Castle is quite a tough walk, with its elevation changes (the panoramic view from the 12th green back across the course and down to the clubhouse really emphasizes this) and long green-to-tee gaps, especially from the 9th to the 10th - my playing partners, both St. Andrews residents, rode around in a buggy, and at times I wished I were in one as well. But it's a very pretty walk; the clifftop view from the 17th tee really was stunning, and for my money the view up to the skyline 12th green itself was really inspiring. (Playing into the countervailing wind, the uphill 454-yard 12th was virtually unreachable, but it was still one of my two or three favorite holes on the course.)
Interestingly, one of my playing partners had played the course three times already - he was a local and a 15-handicapper or thereabouts, but that didn't stop him from coming back and really enjoying himself. As for me...at this instant I'm actually more keen to play the Castle again than I am the Old Course. Granted, this is largely because I've played TOC 30+ times, and while I love it every much as I ever have, it's a hassle to get a game as a single (I was really lucky yesterday worked out like it did), it takes a long time to play it, and it feels very claustrophobic (a drive on the 17th came within a few feet of my head while I was playing the 2nd, with no cry of "Fore!" to be heard). But I'd love to see how the back-right hole location plays at the Castle's 4th, to try and use the left bank of the 5th green to my advantage on the approach, to see if it's even remotely possible for me to birdie the 7th again into the wind (smile), to attack the 14th green from the open spaces on the left side of the fairway instead of approaching blindly from the right, to hit a more intelligent layup on the par-5 15th, to see if the 17th always plays as long as it felt yesterday, and to figure out the right line off of the 18th tee to set up possibly going for the green in two. I'm sure much of the reaction against the Castle Course has come because it's in St. Andrews, and professional critics who might tolerate or even embrace Kingsbarns or Bandon Dunes are much less inclined to be generous to the new kid on the block in the home of golf. But the Castle isn't another St. Andrews Bay - it has real merit as a golf course, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you let a negative review scare you away.
Cheers,
Darren