Last year, 2019, both pre- and post-BUDA I played at Prestwick. They have a decent deal where if you play twice within a week, the average price of the two rounds is not too bad. I've played Prestwick 10+ times over the years partly because of it's proximity to Glasgow airport that I fly into and out of and partly because it is wonderfully quirky course that doesn't appear to have changed much over the years.
Ran has his own description of the course in the Courses by Country section from seven years ago. I wouldn't compete with that write-up. He did have some remarkably good lighting for his photos that show off the sometimes bumptious nature of the linksland there.
I did come across the Project Gutenberg's The Golf Courses of the British Isles, by Bernard Darwin from 1910 and thought that you might enjoy reading it.
"Gullane is usually cited as the headquarters from which it is possible to play the largest number of rounds in one day, each round being on a different course, but it is by no means certain that the distinction which is thus given to East Lothian does not really belong to Prestwick and Troon. As one approaches Prestwick, the train seems to be voyaging through one endless and continuous golf course—Gailes, Barassie, Bogside—I write them down pell-mell as they come into my head—Prestwick, St. Nicholas, St. Cuthbert, Troon, and several more beside. Moreover, Troon “surprises by himself,” a prodigious assemblage of courses. There is the course proper, and there is the ‘relief’ course; there is another course, which may be termed the ‘super-relief’ course; and there are various practice grounds consecrated to women and children. The turf is something softer—at least in my imagination—than that of the East Coast courses, and the greens are wonderfully green and velvety, and looking as if they get plenty of rain, as in fact they do.
Of all this galaxy of courses, Prestwick is first and foremost. It is the original home of the Open Championship, one of the championship courses of to-day, and admittedly one of the best of them. A man is probably less likely to be contradicted in lauding Prestwick than in singing the praises of any other course in Christendom. There are probably more people who would put St. Andrews absolutely at the top of the tree, but, whereas nearly everyone would rank Prestwick in the first three, the Fifeshire course has a certain number of bitter enemies who rank it very low indeed. One might almost say that Prestwick has no enemies; everyone admires it, though, naturally, with slightly different degrees of enthusiasm. To say of a human being that he has no enemies is almost to insinuate that he is just a little bit colourless and insipid; but those adjectives have certainly no application to Prestwick, which has a very decided character of its own.
Nowhere is to be found a more beautiful stretch of what is called “natural golfing country.” The ordinary golfer, whose head is not too full of modern architectural ideas, would jump with joy on first beholding Prestwick. There is nothing subtle or recondite about it; it has a beauty which explains itself. There are the great sandhills bristling with bents and the little nestling valleys beyond them, a rushing burn and a stone wall, and it is perfectly clear that man was meant to hit the ball over them. All the ground on the near side of the wall, which is the ground of the old twelve-hole course, is of this glorious ‘natural’ character. “Hullo,” says the player, “here’s a hill: let’s drive over it.” Yet, although it is a little blind and has a measure of what Mr. Hutchinson has euphemistically termed “pleasurable uncertainty,” it is for the most part incontestibly fine golf. “Like Sandwich, only much better,” I have heard it described; but I dislike this slandering and backbiting at poor, dear Sandwich. In one respect, however, it may be permissible to make a comparison very much in favour of Prestwick, that is in the size of the greens. On both courses we hit the ball over a high hill, but whereas at Prestwick we must hit it straight, unless we wish to be left with the trickiest and hardest of little pitches, at Sandwich a far more than reasonably crooked shot may yet land the ball on the edge of a vast green, where a bang with the wooden putter will make up for our deficiencies.
When once the wall is crossed, and what was once called the new ground is reached, the character of the ground changes considerably. There are, it is true, two blind and mountainous tee-shots over the famous ‘Himalayas,’ but they appear rather esoteric than otherwise. The holes on the far side of the wall are in their nature essentially flat, and in one or two instances a little artificial. As one plays the eighth hole alongside the railway by Monkton Station, one cannot repress the feeling that one might as well have stayed inland. Well bunkered and difficult enough is that particular hole, and yet so utterly lacking in the least breath of the sea, and the fairway is just a smooth avenue mowed out of a big field. Still some others of these flattish holes—I shall come to them in their proper places—are undoubtedly very fine holes, and if anyone likes to say that they are in reality better golf than those within the wall, we may still respect his judgment and regard him as a man and brother. Equally we may form a low estimate of his appreciation of the beautiful and romantic, and remain perfectly steadfast in our own allegiance to the ‘Alps,’ the ‘Cardinal,’ and the ’Sea-He’therick.’
The first hole is so good that, as with the first at Hoylake, it is a pity that we have to play it while we are still, perhaps, a little stiff and nervous. The crime against which we have chiefly to be on our guard is that of slicing, for the railway runs along the entire length of the hole on the right-hand side, quite unpleasantly near us. We must not hook either, for rough country awaits the ball hit unduly far to the left, and, indeed, the shot is such a narrow one that there are some strong hitters who advocate the taking of a cleek from the tee. The second shot may be described on a calm day as a longish pitch, and there is a big bunker in front of the green, rough ground and a sandy road behind, the railway to the right, and tenacious undergrowth to the left. There is apt to be an engine snorting loudly on the other side of the wall just as we are playing a critical and curly putt, and the said putt is none the easier from the engine having liberally besprinkled the green with cinders. Altogether, we shall have done good work if we get a four, and what a hole to do in three, when it is the thirty-seventh, as did Mr. John Ball in his great final with Mr. Tait—as good a hole under the circumstances that I ever saw played in my life.
The second is quite one of the shortest of short holes on any first-class course, but it is not a bit easy, for a bunker behind the green has now been cut to reinforce the one in front, and the green is generally very keen.
The third is the ‘Cardinal,’ and has done a vast deal of mischief in its time. A topped brassey shot into the cavernous recesses of the bunker was generally thought to have cost Mr. Laidlay a championship when he played Mr. Peter Anderson; and, to come to more modern times, it was in this very same bunker that his supporters saw with horror the great Braid trying to throw away the championship in 1908 by playing a game of racquets against those ominous black boards. Yet, in the ordinary way, if we can but hit a reasonably straight tee-shot, we ought to send our second flying far over the Cardinal’s sandy nob and a good long way on towards the green. Then comes a delicate little pitch over some hummocky ground, or, if we are lucky, a running-up shot, and we find ourselves on a small green under the shadow of the wall, and should obtain a respectable five; a four is, as a rule, the score of heroes only.
At the fourth we cross the wall with a drive that varies in direction with our bravery and skill. If we are very brave, and very skilful, we shall hit a ball with a suspicion of a slice that shall keep close to the rushing waters of the burn, and shall be rewarded with an easy pitch, and haply a putt for three. If we do not trust ourselves, we shall give the burn a wide berth and pull far away to the left, where we should still get a four—but only by means of a longer and harder approach shot.
The fifth is the ‘Himalayas,’ a hole of great fame, but no transcendent merit. A good cleek shot should see us safely over this big hill and on to the green on the other side, which is now guarded by pot-bunkers. All these holes at Prestwick seem to have some tragedy connected with them, and the ‘Himalayas,’ in all human probability, lost Mr. Hilton his third Open Championship in 1898. Just one bad shot—he can hardly have played another during the four rounds: but he made this one fatal mistake with a club that was strange to him (he has told the sad story himself), and took eight to the hole. Yet he finished in the end but two strokes behind the winner, Harry Vardon, and at one time he had actually caught him in this terrible stern chase.
After the ‘Himalayas’ come several holes which do not, like the earlier and later holes, cry aloud for description. The sixth has a sufficiently difficult second on to a plateau green, and there is fierce punishment for the slicer among the bents. The seventh is a long short hole (this is such a convenient expression that it must pass), with rushes to catch a slice; and of the eighth, which runs alongside the railway, I have already said something.
The ninth and tenth are really fine two-shot holes; as far as length is concerned, there are none better on the course, and they are both thoroughly difficult into the bargain. The green at the ninth is especially attractive and difficult, consisting of a little hilly peninsula of turf that seems to jut out from a mainland of rough and bents. At the tenth we sidle along parallel with the range of ‘Himalayas,’ and at the eleventh we cross them with a drive—no cleek this time—for we have to carry as well the burn that runs beyond them. Then we turn our noses for home and make for the wall that we left behind us at the fourth hole. We shall need two full shots, and then a little chip on to a typical Prestwick green; long, narrow, and well guarded by lumps and bumps of various shapes and sizes. If, perchance, the wind is blowing very strongly behind us, we may try to carry the wall in two, and the ball will very likely light on the coping of the wall to bounce thence into unfathomable bents, while we are left lamenting our lack of contemptible prudence.
Now comes the ‘Sea He’therick’—a charming hole with a charming name, where the ball must be driven for the distance of two very full shots along a sort of gully or channel between the sand and bents on the right, and some rough and hillocky country to the left. There is a narrow little green, with odd corners and angles sticking out and well guarded by hummocks, so that if we do get a four we shall probably have to lay a singularly deft little pitch close to the hole. A drive over the ‘Goose-dubs’ brings us to a fairly ordinary fourteenth hole close to the club, and we turn back to play the last four, the famous loop.
The chief characteristic of the fifteenth is that no two persons are agreed on the best way of playing it. We may lash out for death or glory with a driver, or play short with the pusillanimous iron: we may go out to the right, or away to the left, but wherever we try to go we shall heave a sigh of relief if our ball finishes its agitating career upon a piece of turf. Neither is the second an easy shot, for the green is sloping and treacherous, and there are bunkers to right and left. At the sixteenth—the ‘Cardinal’s Back’—there is an insidious little pot-bunker in the middle of the course, and we must drive either to the right or left of it, or perhaps, wisest of all, aim straight at it in the sure and certain hope of a sufficient measure of inaccuracy.
Now we come to the ‘Alps,’ one of the finest holes anywhere, and the finest blind hole in all the world. The drive must be hit straight and true down a valley between two hills, and then comes the second, over a vast grassy hill, beyond which we know that there is a bunker both wide and deep. The ball may clear the hill and yet meet with a dreadful fate, but there is glorious compensation in the fact that if we do clear the chasm, we should be fairly near the hole, and may possibly be putting for a three. With no wind and a rubber-cored ball there is nothing very tremendous in the achievement, but nevertheless it is of the tremendous order of holes, and it takes a stout-hearted man to get a four there at all square and two to play. With a gutty ball it was really a fine long, slashing carry, and to play short was sometimes the better part of valour. Old Willy Park wrecked his chances of yet another championship here in 1861, owing, to quote the appropriately solemn words of the Ayrshire Express, to “a daring attempt to cross the Alps in two, which brought his ball into one of the worst hazards of the green, and cost him three strokes—by no means the first time he has been seriously punished for similar avarice and temerity.” It was in this bunker also that Mr. Tait played his ever-famous shot out of water, and Mr. Ball followed it with a superb niblick shot out of hard wet sand, which is not half as famous as it ought to be. Truly the ‘Alps’ is a hole with a great history.
After this the last hole is easy enough—a flat hole, just a little too long for the ordinary mortal to reach from the tee, save with a wind behind him. It can be reached, however, with a very fine shot, and I shall never forget the scene at the Open Championship in 1908, when Mr. Robert Andrew nearly holed it in one. It was in the qualifying competition, and Mr. Andrew, a strong local favourite and a truly magnificent player, had to do a two to equal Harry Vardon’s record for the course of 72. He struck a gorgeous blow, and the ball sailed away straight as a die, and finished absolutely stone dead. With one wild yell of joy the crowd broke away from the tee, and raced down the slope for the green, even as the British square dashed down the hill after the flying French guard at Waterloo. It was at once a most thrilling and amusing spectacle.
So ends Prestwick; and what a jolly course it is, to be sure! What a jolly place to play, too, for we shall probably have had it reasonably to ourselves. It shares with Muirfield, among the great Scottish courses, the merit of being the private property of the club, and that is a merit that grows greater every year. It is a beautiful spot, moreover, and we may look at views of Arran and Ailsa Craig and the Heads of Ayr if we can allow our attention to wander so far from the game.
Tradition and romance cluster thickly around Prestwick, for it was here that old Tom Morris came in 1851—a little while after he and Allan Robertson had had a difference of opinion about Tom having played with the gutty ball. Here he stayed fourteen years before returning once and for all to his beloved St. Andrews, and it was here that the immortal Young Tom was born and first swung a precocious club. Prestwick was the home of the championship belt, which was competed for there every year from 1860 to 1870, when it passed into the permanent possession of Young Tom, who had won it three times running. If by some potent magic one could summon up the past at will, there is no golfing picture that I should like to see so much as that of Tommy’s third win; 149 was his score for three rounds of the twelve-hole course, and he finished twelve strokes ahead of the two men who tied for second place. Whenever one is too much inclined to laud the golfers of the present to the detriment of those of the past, it is always a wholesome thing to remember that score of 149 round Prestwick. There must have been at least one very great golfer in those days."The course can stretch to 6908 yards to a par of 71 and I'd imagine that it is a beast for most of us from back there since the site is usually windy. The white tees were 6551 yards and the blue tees were 5973 and enough of a challenge for me.
From the patio in front of the clubhouse here is a panoramic view of the wall and train station on the right and swing around to the left toward the small putting green, the 18th green, the 15 tee heading away, and the 14th fairway coming in from the very left. The course is very compact around the clubhouse.
