NORTH BERWICK, Scotland — A short bald man with a large round head stuffed his hands in his pockets, nodded toward the course and said, “They’ve played golf on this land for 400 years.” It was 11 a.m. along the Scottish coast. I’d landed in Edinburgh a few hours earlier. From Detroit, via Boston, overnight. Unable to sleep, I’d spent most of the flight wondering what this day might bring. A round at North Berwick Golf Club, one of the game’s founding fathers. My first time pressing a tee into Scottish soil. Now here was this man, offering a greeting straight from Scot central casting. Everything felt perfect.
A few hours later, what was left of me walked off the par-5 ninth, broken. A duffed drive. A 7-iron out of wispy tall stuff. A 5-wood sliced off the planet. A drop. A 9-iron into a greenside bunker the size of a studio apartment. An out. A two-putt. A triple-bogey.
North Berwick starts along the coast, then cuts inland, continuing westward. At No. 9, she turns back, a move set off by a hill leading to higher ground, the sea coming back into view with a horizon line that grows into a full panorama. This is where I stood in a head-to-toe rain suit rippling in a 40-mile-per-hour wind, realizing the next nine holes would play straight into the gale. My back was sore. My swing was gone. My score was shot to hell. I was broken.
Exactly what I said wouldn’t happen.
I told myself not to care about my score. I told myself to stay in the moment, be one with the course. I told myself to appreciate playing ancient links that inspired others around the world. I told myself. Leading up to this trip abroad — covering the Scottish Open, the Open Championship at Royal Troon, and the Olympics — I pulled up a variety of homages to linksland golf. I studied up on North Berwick (pronounced “Berr-ick here, lest ye sound like a simple American), jotting down notes to take an extra long look at the third green, the seventh green, and the approach into nine.
But the inevitable proved to be so. After opening with three pars, my score mattered and all perspective dissolved into the self-obsession that wraps itself in this game.
Maybe you can relate. The greatest struggle in golf, I find, is not playing the game. It is, instead, not caring about how you play. I’ve long been immensely jealous of those who seem to see the game in some mystic way. Their internal conversation is seemingly with the course, not themselves. They lack exactism. They hit the ball not at a target, but where it’s supposed to go. They don’t feel the heat when things go bad. They only play.
I think often about how to conjure such a disposition, how to press a kaleidoscope to my mind’s eye.
Problem is, as it is in life, golf’s greatest Catch-22 is that it take discipline not to care.
The hope was that a trip to the game’s homeland might inspire a change in the makeup.
Even from the opening tee shot at North Berwick the sea is in view. (Brendan Quinn / The Athletic)
Golf, or versions of the game, was first played along this stretch of North Sea shoreline in the 1700s. North Berwick formed as a club in 1832, beginning with seven holes, then expanding west. The clubhouse is decorated with black and white pictures of forgotten men, color paintings of imagined scenes, and old clubs that resemble rusted fireplace pokers. It’s the type of place you feel absurd using modern clubs, let alone something as soulless as a range finder.
The course is crisscrossed with a vein of gray among the green. A three-foot stonewall meanders through the property, coming to life as you imagine it being erected by hand, one stone at a time, a world or two ago. I planned to follow that around the course, snapping photos from its perspective.
Then I forgot all that. As it goes, a round that I hoped to dedicate to all five senses befell a fate of silent self-talk, heedless play and twinges of frustration. (Just to be clear, this doesn’t mean cursing or club-throwing or complaining. There’s a fine line between going awry between the ears and being an a–hole. I’m not an a–hole. I don’t think.)
Standing on No. 10, North Berwick took the restrictor plates off entirely. As the wind got stronger, my stance got wider, attempting to hold things in place. My swing devolved into a slash. Turns out, back problems, red-eye flights and rain-soaked 50-degree temperatures make for some poor form. I hosel-ed the tee shot on 10.
A double bogey. Then another. Then another. Off the rails.
But then came the 13th. And that wall. Its stacked stones carve out the left side of the fairway, then cut through the layout. The smallest green on the course sits left of the wall, requiring a blind-ish approach. A short par 4, the hole measures just more than 360 yards. If there is a more endearing hole in the world, I haven’t seen it. The 13th is equal parts absurd and simple; daring and clever.
The 13th at North Berwick is a little of Narnia. It was a reminder of what I was here for.
I didn’t change — the swing remained a slash — but the view did. I’m here to play in Scotland and, boy, this was a round in Scotland. I lost my match on the 16th. Ten quid. Money well spent to pay for another lesson in how I want to play.
I’ll try again soon.
St. Andrews on Wednesday.
(Top photo of No. 13 at North Berwick Golf Club: David Cannon / Getty Images)