CKNW Editorial
for July 20, 2000

St Andrews, where they’re playing the Open … not the British Open but the Open … is like no course you’ll ever see on this side of the ocean. In fact there are four courses at St Andrews, the Jubilee, the Eden, the New Course, and the Old Course but it is the Old Course we’re talking about.

For starters it’s a public course though since I last played it many years ago, I understand it’s become very expensive. I first played there back in the seventies and I remember it like it was yesterday. We’d stayed at Carnoustie the previous couple of days and a couple of nights before we were to go to St Andrews we met some Americans who were going over to play the Old Course. I asked them to make a tee time for us. When we arrived at our hotel, I asked the concierge to make a time for us, completely forgetting about the Americans. When we got to the first tee the next morning there was the starter in his little box house and he fixed me with a glare that would freeze a campfire. "Ye made two timings, sir … and that’s an offence, ye know!" He made such a big deal of it that I came very close to telling him where he could stick it when I remembered that I really did want to play the course. I apologized humbly if a bit hypocritically.

In Ernie Brown’s pro shop at the old Quilchena at Pine Crescent near 33rd – that takes us back a ways – there was a marvelous cartoon of the man who whiffed his drive on the first tee of St Andrews. Though I was carrying a 2 handicap at the time I damn neared whiffed my first, so in awe of the place I was, and cold topped a miserable dribbler down the first fairway.

St Andrews has a number of double greens used for one hole on the way out and another on the way back. I remember about the sixth or seventh hole I hit the wrong green and had a putt of at least hundred yards! I was very fortunate to only three putt. On a short par four on the back nine – I think the tenth - I put my ball just a yard or two in the rough on the left yet still had a clear shot of perhaps 100 yards to the green. I went for my pitching wedge but my caddie – whose name was David Mair by the way, and from Aberdeen where my family sprang – gave me my sand wedge. He was insistent so I took my stance and swung from the heels. The ball popped perhaps 5 yards to my right in a horrible little shank. I was amazed to hear David say "Good shot, Sir." I then learned that just getting back on the fairway out of the heather or gorse was quite an achievement.

It happened to be a very calm day and for all my meanderings I found myself even par at the 14^th, a short par 5. This, I assured myself, I could hit in two so that I stood an excellent chance of getting under par for the day.

I lined up down the fairway when David said "ach noo, sir … ye’ll be aiming at yonder toor in toon." There was no arguing with him so I did as I was told and hit a strong drive but about 20 degrees to the right of center. "Good shot, sir" was David’s response. As I walked to my drive I saw the reason for this deliberate avoidance of the middle of the fairway – it was dotted with little pot bunkers of sand … deep, nasty little buggers that you’d be lucky to just get out of. "Okay, David, you were right."

I sized up the next shot when David said "Och, sir, ye’ll not be aiming at the green, aim for yonder church spire". My target was about 20 degrees off line but this time to the left. Knowing better than to argue, I lined my shot up, hit my 3 wood right on the screws and it bisected that distant spire. It was a thing of beauty. David carefully followed the flight of the ball. "I think yer all right, sir … I think yer all right!"

"What the hell do you mean you think I’m all right … I just hit my career fairway wood and you just think I’m all right!!"

As we approached my ball I then saw what is rightly called Hell Bunker, a huge cavity … full of sand … which must be 15 feet deep … so deep that you use a ladder to get in and out. I had, with David’s careful guidance, just avoided Hell. To finish off, I hit a nine iron from there to about three feet from the hole – and missed the putt. It was quite an adventure.

The 17^th … the Road Hole is the one to watch this weekend. It is a long par four where, if you want to get home in two you must drive over a large plexi glass precise imitation of the old railway sheds were back in Bobby Jones time. Then for ordinary players there is a longish iron into a very narrow green on the right of which is a road which any ball that errs to the right will find … the road is bounded on the left by a wall and there have been several instances in Opens past where the player has turned away from the green and hit his ball from the road against the wall and thus reversed it back onto the green. In golf at St Andrews you play it where it lies – there are no exceptions.

This is a great golf course. There are almost no trees and without a good caddie you’d never even find the green let alone know what to hit to it. You rarely see the ocean but it’s there as you can tell from the usually constant wind and the smell of salt. Bobby Jones hated St Andrews when he first saw it … but he came to love it. And loving it, he played it well enough to win.

As if his presence there wasn’t bad enough news in itself for other players hoping to win the claret jug, Eldrick "Tiger" Woods loves the Old Course at St Andrews.