Why Is St. Andrews so special?

Because it is. Doesn't that make sense?

Today begins The Open - it’s the 150th ever, and it’s at St. Andrews, the home of golf.

Ahem. Apologies. The Home Of Golf.

For golf fans like me, it’s pretty damn special and I am excited about it in an almost reckless way. Like most fans, St. Andrews is pretty special. And I’m also fortunate enough to have played it.

In August of 2015, I watched The Open at St. Andrews where, somehow, Zach Johnson won by holding off Marc Leishman and Louis Oosthuizen, not to mention Jason Day and Jordan Spieth who just missed out on the playoff.

It was a great tournament, as always. Nick Faldo made it his last and wore a very on-brand awful sweater.

Watching it, I thought - as I had watching prior opens at St Andrews - that I needed to get out there one day.

And then, I asked myself when might “one day” be? I am as firmly middle aged as one can be, and it just seemed like there was no reason to keep saying, “one day…” and just plan the damn thing. As it turned out, my buddy AC had the exact same experience that year and we started planning what would become a trip to Scotland in the summer of 2018.

It was, of course, awesome - we played Carnoustie a few weeks after The Open had been held there, and it was easily one of the best trips of my life. But the absolute deal-breaker was that we had to play St. Andrews.

We tried to book in advance, which is almost impossible and we failed. So we left for Scotland knowing we’d be entered into a nightly ballot, and if that failed we could always camp out and try to get on in the morning queue. The downside of that failsafe is we’d be unlikely to play together.

As it turned out, we were successful in the ballot process and went out late on our last day in the Fife/St. Andrews area. I think we teed off around 4:00 or so, which meant we all spent the day in anticipation of playing THE OLD COURSE.

Standing on the first tee is something I both will never forget and barely remember - I was so excited/nervous that when I tried to tee up my ball, my hand was literally shaking as I tried to put the peg in the ground. Fortunately, that was so stupid it made me laugh and that calmed me down a bit.

The entire experience of playing there, with three of my closest friends, was so fun and special - and not in a way that aside from a few specific holes, can I tell you what I or anyone else shot. Yes, I remember a few specific holes, especially what I did on 1, 17 and 18. I remember on 12 all of us drove the green except for AC who rolled into a bunker. (I also remember three-putting for par. That’s hard to forget.) One thing that makes it harder to remember specificities is that the course is so (relatively speaking) flat, so our photos from the day are largely hard to know where we are on the course. The fairways are bumpy and full of mounds, but it’s sort of hard to pinpoint all but the most recognizable holes. So, that blurs the memories as well.

Honestly, it was really just walking the course, talking with each other and our caddies, and feeling the wind, smelling the salt air and walking that ground. My memory of it truly treasured, but also super hazy. (It’s a great reason I have to go back, I might argue.)

What’s my favorite hole on the course? It’s so easy to cite 1, 17 or 18, and it’s honestly probably the 17th hole, one of the most famous holes in all of golf. But for me, I remember the 11th as much as any other hole. That’s because of the Shell Bunker. The bunker actually is on the 7th hole, but as most folks will tell you about, 14 of the holes at The Old Course share greens, and the 7th and 11th do that. While on the 7th, my friend Mark went in that bunker completely unnecessarily - and being the friend I am, I made a LOT of fun of him for it.

Flash forward to the 11th hole and I sliced my tee shot (it’s a par-3) so far right that .. well, this:

I really wanted to crop this but it would lessen how gigantic this bunker is. I also need to stress that I no longer own these burgundy pants. I have regrets.

But what I’ll never regret is doing what we could to play The Old Course.

And to quote Jack from Lost, “We need to go back.”