Gib,
I enjoy reading your writng but if you use the 'big vagina small penis' line again I'm out...
Padraig and Matthew,
I actually believe what you say about the course. I could see it being an interesting parkland course with one or two "just accept it and move on" holes. My experience there was a bit surreal.
I flew into Dublin and drove straight up to Newcastle with a stop at Kilkeel for a practice round. So I worked my way around the course and didn't hate it...just thought those couple of holes were odd.
The surreal nature of this is after playing great at Royal COunty Down in the first round of medal play I was scheduled for a 2:40 tee time at Kilkeel the next day so it's a long wait. Well then there is a 20 hour fog delay over there in the morning so now my tee time is 4:30 or something crazy like that.
As you know there is no driving range and possibly no putting green (you tell me) and I had all day to sit around Newcastle and be nervous.
Add to this the fact that my parents had flown into Ireland the day before and my father was going to caddy for me at Kilkeel, but they went off sightseeing first thing in the morning and I hadn't seen them all day.
The rest of you should know that Kilkeel is 30 or 40 minutes from RCD, down around the other side of the mountain.
So I hit balls at RCD about 3 hours before my tee time and gradually make my way down to Kilkeel and sit on the wall behind the tee for about an hour just chomping at the bit to get out and play...but no sign of the caddy...
Finally time to go and I naturally can't decide which club to hit...in the practice round it was quite easy to hit a driver over the corner leaving a 7 iron the the par 5, but not so easy when you're this nervous. So I hit a 2 iron and hit a fat pull into the corner of the crap and the spotter down there signals back that I need to hit another ball.
Remember the Mike Tyson quote? "Everybody has a game plan...until they get hit..." Well that's how I felt...totally rattled and went through the first 7 holes 8 over par without a single good shot in the bunch.
When my half skulled, nearly shanked 7 iron got onto the 8th green and I two putted for par I thought I had made it through the woods and had a chance (thanks to a really good first round) to still make match play with a good back nine.
Then I pull my drive on #9 and, after hitting a tree (one of a hundred in there) it ends up in th emiddle of the 10th fairway. Dead to rights.
From there on I played the best golf of my life when you consider the circumstances...which were added to when, on the 16th tee the R&A official told us that it didn't matter that we couldn't see the landing area due to darkness, play was continuing.
The fog had returned and it was close to 9 at night as we played the last 3 holes...the most memorable round of my life probably, but not because of the course.