I saw TOC for the first time attending the Open in 1995. A friend had provided me with a VIP pass for the week. That was a great time - clubhouse access, being served with all the food and drink I could wish for, rubbing shoulders with celebrities.
The course was awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral of golf - God's own golf course. That's how it should be listed in the books:
"Architect: God Almighty". I have never experienced that sort of reverence for any other course I've set foot on, great as they may be. Nothing can compare to TOC.
But the highlight was my first contact with BIGGA, the British greenkeepers association. As I wandered about one afternoon, just outside the course I spied an unimposing building with a sign out front, "BIGGA Headquarters". Being an American superintendent, I went in to introduce myself. Inside was essentially a bustling pub, the air was blue with cigarrette smoke, which wasn't enough to suppress the smell of stale beer. I could see people in there lurching and staggering about. I felt right at home.
There was a folding table just inside the front door, tended by a reasonable gentleman who inquired as to my business. I explained who I was and declared my interest in the Association. He listened politely and said, "Right! Have you got fifty quid?"
"As a matter of fact I do." I replied as I handed him the note.
"Right! You're in!" And turning around behind him to shout at the barman, "Henry, give this man a pint, he's our new member!"
I spent the rest of the afternoon in the delightful company of my new found colleagues and have been a memeber of BIGGA ever since.
I went back to play the course in September of that year. I arranged to meet my late father there, a life-long avid golfer but first-timer in Scotland. We weren't able to book tee times, and we had no luck in the lottery, so we went on stand-by, arriving something like 05:30 to be at the front of the queue. Fortunately for us, the weather that morning was nightmarish, wind and rain coming down sideways, so we only had to wait two or three hours for two places to open up in the same group.
This was my first time golfing on a links course, and it was a shock to find that I couldn't put a wedge shot into the air and expect that the ball would finish in the general direction that it started. The wind was so fierce going out that the balls would not sit still on exposed parts of the greens, they would be pushed into hollows or off the putting surfaces, so I didn't keep score.
Around the turn, it calmed down, and then turned sunny and pleasant for the last six holes or so. I was proud to have finished the last two holes 5-3.