One of the many great features of Scottish golf is the relationship its courses have with the towns they have been an integral part of for centuries. Everyone has the “right to roam” on golf courses, making for easy access to bordering beaches, creating nice places to walk a dog and a feeling golf is not just for golfers, but for the whole community.
The best-known example is The Old Course at St Andrews, where play begins right on the edge of the town, heads out to a far point by the Eden Estuary, turns and comes back to the final green not 20 paces from the edge of the opening tee.
The famed 18th hole – named after Old Tom Morris – would have been altered long ago in Australia, a result of neighbours complaining of errant drives. The Scots, however, wisely deem their relationship with golf too important to tweak their courses in favour of residents and cars. North Berwick does almost the same as The Old Course and only when all other car parks are exhausted do you dare park your car alongside the 18th fairway.
Royal Troon’s 18th hole. (PHOTO: Getty Images)
Royal Troon, on the opposite side of the country, likewise begins in the town and plays all the way to the turn, one hole aside, almost in a straight line to the far point at the 9th green. Only the famed 125-yard Postage Stamp plays into the wind and it’s perhaps the perfect example of Nick Faldo’s dictum, “All the great holes in the world are the twitchy ones.”
It is one hole everyone should at least see – and preferably play – once in their lifetime.
It turns at the 10th tee and, the 12th hole aside, plays all the way back, most often into the wind, to the final green, with ancient stone steps up to the clubhouse almost against the back edge of the green.
The early holes are neither difficult nor as interesting as what’s to come on the more intriguing landforms at the middle of the course, but they are most often the base off which a good score is made. Greg Norman, seemingly far out of contention on the final day of the 1989 Open Championship, made a mad rush, beginning with six consecutive birdies, on his way to 64 and a play-off with Wayne Grady and Mark Calcavecchia. The American won the four-hole play-off and what seems now like a quaint 80,000-pound first prize.
On the front nine, only the famed 125-yard Postage Stamp hole plays into the prevailing wind. (PHOTO: Getty Images)
They give you almost as much these days for finishing last on Norman’s tour … So many of the Scottish links play out to the turn, but none shows off a formidably difficult run home as Troon. Almost as famous as the Postage Stamp is the 11th, better-known as The Railway, formerly a par-5 just under 450 meters but now a par-4. With the stroke of a pen, it went from being one of the easiest holes to par, to probably the most difficult and certainly the most dangerous.
Train lines too are an important part of the history of Scottish golf and here, the line runs both directly alongside Troon’s 11th and hard up against the stone boundary fence at neighbouring Prestwick’s opening hole. Prestwick hosted twenty 19th-Century Opens and reminds us of how the game was before heavy machines allowed architects to move earth in big amounts. If ever you get the chance to play Prestwick, do not miss it and embrace its eccentricity.
It was at The Railway hole in 1989 where Calcavecchia made the flukiest of fives and immediately followed it with the most outrageous of threes. He slashed a drive into the gorse on the right of the 11th, hacked out and his wild third was headed to more gorse, this time on the left, when it hit a spectator who kept it out of an unplayable lie. He pitched to 30 feet and holed for a five. Then, after missing the 12th green miles to the left, he pitched a lob wedge straight into the hole for a birdie.
Troon starts in town and plays almost in a straight line to the far point at the 9th green. (PHOTO: Getty Images)
Playing partner David Feherty said later, “I knew he was going to win after that and from there to the end he never missed a shot.”
Wayne Grady had led after both the second and third rounds and was really the unlucky man of the week. The remarkable thing though about championship golf is at some point there is a shot or a hole you must conquer to win and so often at the critical time the confrontation is with the shot you are most uncomfortable playing.
He was a relentlessly straight driver – to the point where I don’t remember him ever hitting a 3-wood off the tee. A beautiful middle and short iron player, he’d won six weeks earlier at the Westchester Classic in New York.
The tee shot on the 490-yard par-4 11th “Railway” hole. (PHOTO: Getty Images)
His least-favourite shot was the long iron and, sod’s law, the 17th at Troon is one of the great long iron par-3s and one contemptuous of anything but a well-struck shot. He missed the green, made a bogey and fell back into a tie. In fairness, in the 1982 Open, a young Nick Price, one of the great long iron players, came to the 17th tied with Tom Watson, missed the green short, made a bogey and finished one behind the American.
Aside from the great match in 2016 between Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson, where Stenson was 14 strokes ahead of the third-placed player and Mickelson a mere 11, the other historic Troon Open was in 1973.
The best two players in the world at the time were Johnny Miller – who a month earlier had hit all 18 greens and shot 63 to win the U.S Open by a shot – and Tom Weiskopf, who won five times from the middle of May until the end of July.
Greg Norman, seemingly far out of contention on the final day of the 1989 Open Championship, made a late rush. (PHOTO: Getty Images)
Every young player at the time wanted to swing like them – even more than Jack Nicklaus or Lee Trevino, who were the two other greats of the early 1970s – and here on Scotland’s west coast was their greatest match.
It was also the final Open played with the small – 1.62’– ball. It was a crazy time, when players switched balls depending on which continent they were playing, but it was an easier ball to use in the wind and arguably a much more appropriate ball to use on the British links, although the modern “big” ball flies both easier and better through the wind than the small ball of the early 1970s ever did.
The unifying of the ball also heralded the new generation of “foreign players” including Faldo, Price, Norman, Grady, Severiano Ballesteros, Sandy Lyle, Ian Woosnam and Jose-Maria Olazabal, who learned to play the more difficult to use 1.68’ ball.
Mark Calcavecchia’s mixed fortunes on the railway hole in 1989 are still talked about. (PHOTO: Getty Images)
There was also Colin Montgomerie, the son of Royal Troon’s Secretary, who turned out to be a pretty decent player.
The many times reprinted and revised World Atlas Of Golf (the latest one with the grey cover being the best of them) perhaps best summaries the golf at Troon. “Royal Troon is rarely acclaimed among the great Open Championship courses. It possesses none of the beauty of Turnberry, the dunes of Birkdale, the fairness of Muirfield or the reverence of St Andrews.”
Maybe – but Birkdale barely uses its dunes in any meaningful way and fairness is a wildly overrated virtue of golf course architecture. (Nor would I describe Muirfield as “fair”.)
Wayne Grady, the unlucky man at troon in 1989. (PHOTO: Getty Images)
There is nothing “fair” about either The Old Course or Royal Troon and dealing with the “unfairness” of both is their great mental challenge.
Troon, despite its few drawbacks, is one of the game’s great courses and the champion will need to play properly great golf to win the Claret Jug.
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