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Michael Moore

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Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« on: June 05, 2015, 12:51:45 AM »



HORIZONTAL GOLF

“The newspaper is read more in the vertical than the horizontal plane, while film and advertisement force the printed word entirely into the dictatorial perpendicular. And before a contemporary finds his way clear to opening a book, his eyes have been exposed to such a blizzard of changing, colorful, conflicting letters that the chances of penetrating the archaic stillness of the book are slight.” – Walter Benjamin

I was not crazy about Kilspindie, but it’s hard not to stand in awe of the striated horizon here of golf course, dry sand, wet sand, surf, ocean, and finally the hills across the way. It just goes on and on and makes what is already a flat course seem like it is being crushed under these layers.


I had heard the ground game so often described as aesthetically satisfying, as clever and proper and real. But in reality it’s just necessary—there were so many times when the ground and the wind combined to eliminate an approach through the air.

There is nothing perpendicular about these courses at all. There is nothing to draw your eye upwards, there is no shade coming down from the sky, there is nothing framing the green, there aren't a lot of birds flying around. Modernity has certainly drawn our attention to the windshield and the computer screen, and I found it refreshing to look downwards to investigate the “stillness” of the turf.


GOLF IN A 35 MPH WIND


Is it golf, even a modest form of the game? I can think of only one argument in favor, which is that my opponent in the morning, an affable professor of history at Berkeley, fired a smooth 83 while I was at times physically unable to route the club on plane. So it can be done, but for the most part, it ain’t golf. I thought that I was having a “real” Scottish links experience, but all of the locals to whom I later bragged quickly informed me that I was crazy for having played recreationally on a day like that.

I played in 25 MPH winds the first day—I thought it was delightful, and, perhaps in a fit of naiveté, I had my best round of the week. It occurred to me within a few holes that a critical challenge of links golf was the ability to hit a long iron as far as possible, off the barest of lies, directly into the wind, several times in a row on the same hole with increasing panic. I skill I was unlikely to master on holiday, though Gullane has thoughtfully for the tourists pointed their practice range into the prevailing storm.

But 35 MPH was not exponentially more difficult, but rather impossible. It is said that Fred Couples went fifteen years without missing the sweet spot, and if you can’t do that, you can’t play in these conditions. Misses with sidespin took on a comic trajectory, some of my slightly fat shots went just forty yards downrange, and even my best-struck irons went straight up into the air, resembling the kites I used to fly on the beach as a child, and crashing to earth with an equivalent suddenness.  Playing downwind was just plain bizarre, as the jet stream that I thought would be so helpful was actually strong enough to create downdrafts, which drove the ball into the turf with topspin, causing it to go all kinds of places.

Not to mention the insane incessant roaring in one’s ears, as well as the low-level nuisance of having the snot literally blown out of you for the entire day.


YODA (GOLF IN THE KINGDOM)

I played Muirfield with a sixty-nine-year-old member who walked and played much faster than anyone I have ever seen. He carried his bag and hit a burning draw well past me on most holes. When I parred the seventeenth to go one down, he came right up to my face and said “ ‘tis a good match that goes to the last.”  He finished me off, and at lunch, when I was annoying the other members by attempting to discuss the courses in Castine and Islesboro, he tugged on my sleeve and whispered “Michael, this is a dining club with a golf course attached.”

After lunch I said that I was going to play Gullane #2. “I’ll take you ‘round, I’m a member there as well,” he replied. He paid my guest fee and then gently attempted to snag the first tee time for Saturday because, for convoluted reasons pertaining to competition, he needed to play three rounds with his son that day.

On the back nine, as he was running me into the ground and clearly enjoying it, I asked him if we could sit down for two minutes, stretch our legs, and take some photos. After I gorged myself at the water fountain on this sunny and windy day, I asked him if was going to drink anything more than the glass of lemonade he had with lunch. He said he was fine.


This time the match was over on the sixteenth green. On the next tee, after he smashed one down the hill I said “You’ve got to help me. I need to find the sweet spot. I’m getting my ass kicked by an old man.” He said, “I’m self-taught, son, I can’t help ya.” I pressed on about the secret of golf, and, after confessing to a robust amateur career that included nineteen aces, he said, exactly like Harvey Penick drew it up, “You’ve got to drop that elbow straight down, son. It straightens the left leg.” I hit my tee shot, dropping my elbow and pegging up, and it was that nice butter fade, gently dropping down twenty-five yards behind his ball. I turned to him for an assessment.

 “Agh. Ya cut the ball. All day. It goes nowhere.”


THE OLD COURSE AT ST. ANDREWS


Total chaos. The mindless opening tee shot has a deadpan hilarity to it, because once you hit the burn and its razor-sharp edges, all hell breaks loose. For some reason, I thought that this was going to be a subtle golf course, but it is quite the opposite. The number of bunkers, their invisibility and depth, the amount of ground contour, its steepness and diversity, the tee shots to a blank horizon of gorse, the places where the fairway simply goes missing, the insane crossover, the hundred-yard greens—I would say this course is defined mostly by the sheer amount and variety of stuff on it.
 
Add to this the threat of getting beaned, the threat of getting lost (my host Rich Goodale, who wrote a book on this place, got us lost), the baggage that comes with playing at the Home of Golf™, the extreme height of the numerous high notes right next to a few ugly and awkward corners, and you’ve got the most unusual and atonal walk in the park that I have ever seen.

It’s just a golf course, so The Old Course is not alive and it is not sacred. What then makes it so good and causes to emotions run so high, as mine certainly did?

In Rabbit at Rest, Updike writes about any round on any course that “When you stand up on the first tee it is there, it comes back from wherever it lives during the rest of your life, endless possibility, the possibility of a perfect round . . . ” The Old Course is the only one I have ever seen that reciprocates, whose permutations of features, wind, and hole locations indeed seem to be endless and therefore a match for the human imagination.
Metaphor is social and shares the table with the objects it intertwines and the attitudes it reconciles. Opinion, like the Michelin inspector, dines alone. - Adam Gopnik, The Table Comes First

Tony_Muldoon

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2015, 02:21:45 AM »
I do hope there's more to come.  

Thank you Michael for this fresh perspective on something many of us are familiar with.  Marvellous.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2015, 02:46:01 AM by Tony_Muldoon »
Let's make GCA grate again!

David_Tepper

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2015, 02:31:41 AM »
Michael -

Wonderful post. You have captured the links experience very, very well. The only thing missing is being caught in a cloud burst so violent it forces you to huddle under your umbrella while, at the same time, the sun is shining so brightly you can see your shadow. ;)

DT

Dave McCollum

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #3 on: June 05, 2015, 03:24:19 AM »
Umbrellas are useless on the links.  I recall just huddling behind a stone wall at Crail while my mates struggled into their rain gear as the squall passed through.  Just as they got dressed, it was gone.  Umbrellas, had we had them, would be a twisted mess.

Bill_McBride

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #4 on: June 05, 2015, 07:38:52 AM »
I'm just back from a week of lousy golf over some terrific courses in St Andrews and North Berwick.  It never ceases to amaze me how utterly and completely different the links experience is from the golf we play here.   In a very good way.  Michael really got it, some very good stories there. 

The highlight of my trip was an hour with Archie Baird in his amazing wee museum of golf history at Gullane.  Archie is ninety now and hasn't missed a step, tells some great tales of his own. 

David Davis

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #5 on: June 05, 2015, 07:50:29 AM »
Michael,

A funny post to read for someone that loves links golf as I do. If I tell you our average wind year on year is about 25 mph you may laugh. Now imagine playing 3 day long stroke play events in 35 mph winds. Now add a bit of windchill and 40 degrees F to the mix with intermittent hard rain showers. Yes, that's how we manage to play golf year round over here. At least the ground is hard and firm. :-)

Glad you enjoyed it. You won't soon forget and if you are like most will burn to get back and get blown away and rained on in the process again seeing as how it sounds like you missed out every so slightly on the complete experience. (the wet part).
Sharing the greatest experiences in golf.

IG: @top100golftraveler
www.lockharttravelclub.com

Paul OConnor

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #6 on: June 05, 2015, 08:22:36 AM »
Michael,

That is beautiful.  Thanks.

Mark Pearce

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #7 on: June 05, 2015, 08:44:05 AM »
No-one is willing to grasp the real story here.  Rihc got lost going round the Old Course?
In June I will be riding the first three stages of this year's Tour de France route for charity.  630km (394 miles) in three days, with 7800m (25,600 feet) of climbing for the William Wates Memorial Trust (https://rideleloop.org/the-charity/) which supports underprivileged young people.

David_Tepper

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #8 on: June 05, 2015, 08:45:31 AM »
"Umbrellas are useless on the links."

Dave M. -

I beg to differ. A good umbrella can keep you from getting soaked. The incident you cite is a prime example of why. Instead of struggling trying to get into your rainsuit in a downpour, simply hide under your umbrella till the storm clouds blow thru.

DT

Brad Tufts

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #9 on: June 05, 2015, 09:01:06 AM »
Great stuff Michael...really great.

Links golf is great because it really forces you to embrace the ethos of what you are there to experience.  It only takes 2 or 3 holes into the trip to realize that you physically can't play your game like US parkland, that you have to somehow conjure the 45-yard running shot, and that sometimes a short game shot to 10 or 15 feet was a great one.  I remember playing Muirfield my last trip and having a very low-marker caddie...I hit a bad tee shot and had to pitch out, leaving 60 yards or so to one of the long fours...no trouble in front, downwind, green falling away...I played the shot ok, but maybe 50-60 feet from the pin...it looked so innocuous, but the caddie said "pretty good...it might take you 10 years or 1000 balls to hit that one close."

My big shift between my first visits to Scotland/Ireland in 99 and 03, then the latter two in 07 and 11 was that when I was younger, I jonesed for the downwind holes, and just held steady and bogeyed most upwind holes.  A few years later, I realized that downwind was near impossible to predict what club to hit, the landing spot, when an upwind (provided enough club was taken) shot would stop pretty close to where it landed.  So many downwind shots hit a strange spot 20 yards short of a green and caromed who knows where...  
So I jump ship in Hong Kong....

Brent Hutto

Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #10 on: June 05, 2015, 10:00:31 AM »
Michael,

Love your perspective and your essay. Great stuff!

Brad,

By the same token, for the weaker player it only takes a few holes of ones first round to realize you CAN play a 45 yard running shot. You know, the same shot you'd love to play back home (in lieu of a tricky mid-length wedge shot from a tight and unlevel lie) if not for the fact that the ball will go "squish" and stop right where it initially hits the ground.

For me there was one thing about links golf (or golf on certain other types of courses in the UK) that took some getting used to and one thing that's just challenging no matter how often I play over there.

The one that took a while but now seems manageable is learning to hit confident shots in what I call a "target poor environment". Low profile courses with often empty views to the horizon means I have to choose my mental image of the shot relative to a path through the air rather than in relation to a tree line or a spot on a distant hillside. In the long run, I think it's probably a better way to visualize but on my first couple trips over it was a skilled to be learned.

The one that's always a challenge is the wind. Never gets easier to play a 25mph and up wind, not for me anyway. I did learn eventually that upwind is easier than downwind in two ways. A strong wind from behind topples me forward during the swing and accentuates my tendency to laterally slide forward out of my posture during the downswing. An equally strong wind from the front is actually sort of like hitting off an uphill lie. And then as Brad mentions you can predict what an upwind shot will do (you may not like knowing that a 6-iron will only go 100 yards but you get pretty good at estimating). A downwind shot, like Trevino's proverbial hook, just won't listen.

Honestly, for *my* type of double-digit handicapper links golf giveth as much as it taketh away. Not saying that shooting four shots under my handicap is easier at Royal Cinque Ports than at my club back home but if you give me decent temps and a 10mph breeze on both courses it just might be...

Thomas Dai

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #11 on: June 05, 2015, 11:01:48 AM »
Nicely written piece. Thanks for sharing.

Anyone put different equipment in their bag when heading off to play links golf?

Atb

Brent Hutto

Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #12 on: June 05, 2015, 11:13:04 AM »
I leave my favorite putter at home ever since an airline bent my Zebra in 2008. Since then I travel with a backup.

But no I never change equipment because of the golf course. My entire bag of clubs is chosen based on what I think I can hit solidly and straight most often. That becomes doubly important on links courses.

Brad Tufts

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #13 on: June 05, 2015, 12:17:48 PM »
Hi Brent,

I can't tell you how small the margin for error is on many holes with downwind on a links.  There are some holes where the ground is flattish in front and the shot will come off, but add some humps and bumps, and its really a rub of the green situation.

I remember coming into #18 at Dornoch last visit with a howling 30mph tailwind and having something like 160-165 in.  I knew the swale in front was going to be dicey...but I still hit my 145 club.  It happened to land on the upslope short of the green and stopped dead.  Had I landed another 10 feet further, it probably would have ended through the green.

My first reaction was an Americanized "what am I supposed to do, how is that fair?," but after a pint or two to set me straight, I figured I should have hit a 3/4 shot with a longer club and tried to land short of the swale and bounce over or through with the spin taken out by the first hop.  Best laid plans sure, but the links is not forgiving to those who don't consider all the options!
So I jump ship in Hong Kong....

Brent Hutto

Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #14 on: June 05, 2015, 12:35:29 PM »
I thought I knew what a "flyer" was but one of my rounds at Ganton I hit my tee shot over into some dried out, rather harmless looking ankle deep grass a few yards right of the fairway. Wind was only about 15mph behind me so figured I'd play it absolutely safe and just hit an 8-iron (my 130-yard club) up in front of the green somewhere. I had like 180 to the flag and 160 to the front of the green.

Took a nice, full swing and the ball came out like I'd hit my driver. Flew well past hole-high and disappeared into the gunch over the green.

Couldn't believe it so I placed a ball right in the same spot, choked down and took a 3/4 punch swing. This one landed about five yards short of the green and two shoulder-high bounces later was over the green as well.

Still curious, I dropped a third ball in the fairway and took a normal shot. Landed well short of the green, took a couple big bounces and rolled up onto the front edge. Piece of cake. Note to self, that rough at Ganton ain't Bermuda grass.

Thomas Dai

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #15 on: June 05, 2015, 03:12:20 PM »
Take a complete first time links novice to a course like this and make him/her play it with only about 5 clubs and a putter -http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,53841.0.html - it should provide a pretty rapid learning curve experience and hopefully a links fan for life will arise.
atb
« Last Edit: June 05, 2015, 03:17:38 PM by Thomas Dai »

Colin Shellard

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #16 on: June 05, 2015, 04:50:03 PM »
Nicely written piece. Thanks for sharing.

Anyone put different equipment in their bag when heading off to play links golf?

Atb
Thomas

Being a member at an inland course and a very traditional links that I play in almost equal amounts, I do change equipment for each course. I drop my hybrid when I play the links and put a 2i in. I find it invaluable in the wind and on a running course, from the tee and even from the fairway it's great for controlling the trajectory and flight of the ball.

I've considered changing the loft on my driver for playing on the links too - but once you've got it set up right for you I find messing with it is asking for trouble.
Col

Thomas Dai

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #17 on: June 05, 2015, 06:06:50 PM »
Colin - that's interesting. I do pretty much the same if heading for a links game. Indeed I still have the Ping Eye 1-iron sold to me decades ago by a certain Mr MacAskill. Once-upon-a-time a pretty much standard item in many a links players bag what with that lovely into the wind head high ball flight and the ball rolling out forever. An occasionally still possible shot but becoming increasingly rare as the aging process continues!
atb

Ally Mcintosh

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #18 on: June 05, 2015, 06:49:12 PM »
1-iron usually comes out the bag when heading away from the links... Which is less and less often

Paul Gray

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #19 on: June 05, 2015, 07:37:16 PM »
Michael,

As a links golfer myself, born and raised, I find these fresh perspectives both entertaining and enlightening. You, and some of your fellow Americans that have also commented, have undertood in one visit just what links golf is and isn't about. I actually love your rejection of excessive winds. It always amazes me to hear tourists describing the joy of hitting half a dozen shots to reach a green. Maybe it's fun if you experience it once a year but when the wind hasn't abated for a month, it's a fun the tourists are welcome to!  ;D
In the places where golf cuts through pretension and elitism, it thrives and will continue to thrive because the simple virtues of the game and its attendant culture are allowed to be most apparent. - Tim Gavrich

BCowan

Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #20 on: June 05, 2015, 10:41:56 PM »
Michael,

   Thanks for taking the time to write this thread on your experience, well done.

Michael Moore

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #21 on: June 08, 2015, 12:12:00 PM »
sounds like you missed out every so slightly on the complete experience. (the wet part).

Well, there is so much golf over there that the stereotypical experiences are almost unavoidable. My first hour fully lived up to the hype.

Day one was North Berwick on an absolutely beautiful sunny and windy day. The group two in front of me was four Americans and four caddies. Each pair posed for a photo, then all eight of them did. How can I put this? Two of the golfers were approaching morbid obesity and were dressed for the gym. The wind was blowing left to right at fifteen MPH - two members of this group lobbed weak push-fades that were driven very far out onto the beach. The last guy's drive was was miraculously bad, as it hit the pro shop, which is a fortress sticking two feet up out of the ground, fifteen yards away at a forty-five degree angle to the left(!) of the tee box.

And, just as promised in all of the literature, the caddies did not move a muscle other than to reach for the offending clubs, did not look away, did not shift their weight, just stood there staring all the way to the opposite shore.

So yes, I confess in front of all of you that I looked down at my wide-wale trousers and matching thermal layer, and looked over at my vintage blades and thought to myself  “Michael, not only have you picked the perfect week to come to East Lothian, but surely you are the kind of guy who would never foozle his first-ever links shot.” Need I even say that I hit the mother of all wormburners? It rolled approximately 160 yards all the way onto the path, leading to the following exchange with my partner –

“Do I get a drop?”
“Of course.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s a manmade road. Of course you get a drop!”
“Are you really sure? That’s not what I read on golf club atlas.”
“What?”

The golf gods swiftly completed their punishment while we were walking to the fourth tee, as the sky turned black, the temperature dropped twelve degrees, the wind increased by ten MPH, and it started pouring. Thinking that we were supposed to power through, I hit my best shot of the week, a nuclear two-iron that went 125 yards, just short of the green, but my group was already huddled beside the outhouse, where we would spend the next thirty minutes seeing if Scotland and the United States had any filthy jokes in common. When play resumed, I could not help but wonder what had become of that foursome. As we made the turn it seemed that they had simply vanished. I hope the caddies got paid.
Metaphor is social and shares the table with the objects it intertwines and the attitudes it reconciles. Opinion, like the Michelin inspector, dines alone. - Adam Gopnik, The Table Comes First

Brad Tufts

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #22 on: June 08, 2015, 12:24:49 PM »
160 on that hole is just perfect!

After much consternation and discussion about doing something crazy with a driver, I hit 7-iron off the first tee at North Berwick on my only play.

What a course though...dripping with history, playable maybe to a fault...and a wildly entertaining and outside-the-box 18th to boot.

My one quizzical moment at NB was finally reaching the fun 13th, ready to take on the wall...I hit a great 3w right up the right edge of the fairway like I planned...then watched it land and bounce for 60 yards before ending in the fairway bunker next to the wall.  Was not expecting that.  I don't think that fairway could hold a ball that day.  I guess I needed a long-iron tee ball of some sort.
So I jump ship in Hong Kong....

Michael Moore

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #23 on: June 08, 2015, 12:40:10 PM »
I actually “carried” my tee shot fifty yards and it rolled out of sight.

In addition to compressing six weeks worth of normal workaday golf into eight days, playing in Scotland is simply conducive to great storytelling. The eighteenth hole is a great example. I had researched all of the stories on this board, and while we were waiting I told my group that Bryan Izatt had aced it and that Noel Freeman had driven the green by bouncing one over the cars, off a building, and back over the cars. Sure enough, my partner smoked one that was tracking all the way, ending up four feet away. He made the putt, and when we got to the bar, of course everyone had been watching and gave him a very warm reception.
Metaphor is social and shares the table with the objects it intertwines and the attitudes it reconciles. Opinion, like the Michelin inspector, dines alone. - Adam Gopnik, The Table Comes First

Adam Clayman

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Re: Reflections of a first-time links golfer
« Reply #24 on: June 08, 2015, 12:43:14 PM »
Michael, Bravo, especially for a virgin. You'll be an old curmudgeon, when you bitch about no wind.

One question... Blades, or, perimeter weighted irons?
"It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing your whole life." - Mickey Mantle

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