Part Two - A Very Roundabout Trip To Carnoustie

Click here to read Part One.

Next on our sortie was Royal Montrose Golf Club. When I conjure an image of links golf in my mind, I see a particular image. It’s not one course in particular, but a sort of ephemeral collage of a collection courses I have played. It’s an idealised version of a golf course, a place where the land meets the sea, where the golf itself is not entirely distinct from the ocean next to which it is played. 

As I played the Montrose 1562 Medal Course, at times I felt I was playing the course I have in my head. There is something magical about Montrose. No wonder, when you consider that it has the fingerprints of Willie Park Jnr., Old Tom Morris and Harry Colt draped all over it. As you stand on the second, with the sea to your right and the hole precipitously stretching out before you, it is impossible to not be moved by the beauty of the thing. So heavily entwined with the sea is Montrose that parts have been swallowed by it. I urge you to experience it, a least once.

I, of course, played it like a drunk. 

Not entirely as badly as the previous day, but the juxtaposition of the beauty of the place and the woeful ineptitude of yours truly was tangible. My only saving grace was my short game. And maybe the double edged sword that is when you struggle to get the ball airborne in high winds, you avoid them entirely.

Swinging easy when it’s breezy was, by this point, a very distant memory.

But none of that mattered. Not one bit. When the course is this magnificent, it really doesn’t matter how you play it. It was so good I walked it again with my camera. Although, by this point, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that I had in fact smashed that with my hosel too…

When your dreams are stuffed with poorly struck shots, you know that you are in trouble. After a restless night riddled with unpleasant flashbacks, I arrived at Panmure Golf Club resolute that today things would change. Ben Hogan famously practiced here for the 1953 Open at Carnoustie. Hogan. Maybe Hogan, I pondered wishfully, unfamiliar with the unforgiving links grasses, which prevented him taking his customary long divot, had to work through a little bout of the S’s too?

Highly unlikely, granted, but bolstered by this commiseratory thought I settled myself at the excellent Panmure range, and proceeded to pure shot after shot.

There are two worrying things about this scenario. First, if I was puring shots on the range, the fault appeared not to lie in my swing but within my own mind. The second is that “commiseratory” is apparently not a real word. 

Needless to say, the solid ball striking was reserved exclusively for the range, and the turmoil continued around this breathtaking track. Panmure is inland links at its finest. The routing is peerless, and the undulating fairways, particularly the stretch from holes four through fifteen, are, quite simply, a joy.

The 6th in particular, with a challenging drive across heather, through a gentle dogleg left with a raised green ominously protected with a pot bunker proposed by Ben Hogan himself, would challenge and delight any standard of golfer. And that’s from a man who loved it whilst in the middle of what can only be described as an existential crisis.

And so to the final leg of the trip. To the home of the 147th Open. To Carnoustie itself.

There is something poetic about ending a trip defined by disastrous golf at a place perhaps most famous for a sporting and psychological meltdown. If this trip should reach its climax anywhere, it should be on the same hole that Jean Van Der Velde imploded. The place where one man’s shot at Major triumph descending into 20 minutes of golfing mayhem. Which climaxed with a broken man standing with no shoes, no socks and no idea in the Barry Burn.

So I stood at the 18th tee. On the very spot where Van Der Velde’s descent into both golfing hell and history began. With the kind words of a playing partner who, obviously moved to pity by the depths of my despair, had advised me to hum a “Edelweiss” to both ease the anxiety and slow down my now utterly ravaged swing, I addressed my ball. I took a deep breath.

And I utterly striped it. 

The ball soared. Rocketed. Fizzed. As pure a shot as I’ve hit in the last year, let alone this week.

I floated down the fairway. Finally, the nightmare is over. Normal broadcast has resumed. 444 yards from the tips and I’m left with 116 yards to the centre. Birdie this hole, and everything is forgiven. The sun was out, and everything was good in the world.

And I Captain Von Trapped it into the Burn. 

And that was that. 

Sometimes, it all comes together. You are simply in the zone. You see every shot before you’ve hit it. You are the ball. You hit beautiful shots and you get the scores you know you deserve.

And sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you trudge from shot to shot, desperately searching for the answer. 

And when that happens, you just have to look up.

Because sometimes it just doesn’t matter. When you’re somewhere like Carnoustie Country, it doesn’t matter how you play. It matters where you are, and who you are with. Of course I’d like to have played better. But that’s not the point.

You see, I’d do it all again. Every shank, every forlorn walk from copse to wood to thicket, every plugged lie and every lost ball. Because that’s golf. It’s the best game going.