May 13th: Golf

Ok. I love golf. Everyone wants to know, "are you playing golf in Scotland?" Yes. I'll tell you about it, with a bit of my own perspective on the game thrown in.

I learned how to play when I was nine. We moved to Ohio and my dad got us hooked up to the Ohio State University Golf Course on a faculty membership. We got a lesson or two, and I played sporadically throughout my childhood. I was always more interested in other sports--basketball, soccer, tennis, baseball--and music. I went away to college and basically gave up the game. There wasn't time. I started a nonprofit and nothing about golf seemed to fit with the life of a social activist and community organizer. I went to seminary in New York and got my first job as a pastor in the city. It's not impossible to play golf in New York, but you have to be committed. One of my pastoral colleagues became a good friend and he played, so I tried again--I would go to the driving range at Chelsea Piers and pound balls into the net over the Hudson River, which is actually one of the sublime nowhere-but-here NYC sports experiences. I played once or twice on NYC's public courses--I remember one amazing round at Van Cortland Park in the Bronx--about the only course you can access via the subway.

Then, we moved to Georgia. And lo and behold, two miles from our house was Charlie Yates, a 9-hole public course with a driving range and practice facility. I was hooked.

I've become a decent golfer. I'm currently carrying a handicap of 6, which means that my best rounds are six over par for 18 holes. My worst rounds are much worse, but the handicap shows your best.

When I knew I was coming to Scotland for a month, I thought about whether I would play enough golf to justify bringing my clubs--they're not exactly easy to schlep around, especially with all the train travel I'm doing. But I decided I'd do it. I'm glad I did. I played 3 times at Stonehaven's golf course, which is one of the more magical courses I've ever played. It's a par 69 (there's only one par 5 instead of the usual four), several of the holes play over a ravine or at the edge of the seaside cliffs, and several of the holes cross over one another so your head stays on a swivel as shots fly perpendicular to each others. The whole plot of land slopes about 20 degrees down toward the ocean, so when the fairways run parallel to the ocean, you land the ball on the top and it will inevitably roll to the bottom; goofy, but super fun. Especially because, on literally every single hole you can turn and gaze out at the North Sea. Stonehaven's a brilliant little course if you're ever up near Aberdeen.

On Friday the 9th, I took the train from Stonehaven to Montrose to play the Montrose links. Depending upon whom you ask, it's either the 5th or the 2nd oldest golf course in the world. People have been playing golf on that patch of ground since 1562. There is a written record from 1562 from a 6 year-old who was taught how to play golf--by the local pastor. I couldn't NOT play this course. I got up at 5:30AM, took the 20 minute train to Montrose, and walked through town with my clubs on my back to the course. The course is decidedly humble--that's a complement. It's lovely and un-fancy. There are non-golfers walking everywhere, both down on the beach, but throughout the whole course. You'd occasionally wait for a dog and its walker to cross your fairway. I played by myself in 2 1/2 hours (I shot a very respectable 5-over par 75). I had a green apple and a granola bar, and decided to play the 2nd course at Montrose, which is their "short" course. It was pure delight. Carrying my bag for 36 holes (including to-and-from the train stations in Stonehaven and Montrose) was a little much for my aging lower back.

Links courses are very different than most every course in the United States. First thing is the wind. It almost always blows, anywhere from a gentle 8mph to 20+. The wind injects uncertainty into every shot--you really don't have any idea how far the wind will push your shot offline. Golfers manically try to reduce variables, so the presence of the wind gently effs with you the whole time. There are no trees on a links course; instead there's long grass and gorse--huge mounds of bushes that bloom with bright yellow flowers. Another big difference is the ground. It's hard. I'm not sure why, but it is. This means the ball bounces. It's not quite a parking lot (although I've heard in the middle of summer it can get close to that), but ball just bounces. This can mean that your shot can roll through fairways into the rough, but it especially makes playing to greens difficult--you just have no idea where to land the ball in order to let it roll out into a good place on the green. The greens themselves also tend to be raised up and have rounded edges--if you don't land it in the right place on the green, your ball keeps rolling... and rolling,.. and rolling all the way off the green down the slope; then you're chipping it back up some steep hill to the pin and if you don't hit it right it will roll right back down to where you just hit it from. Humiliating. The last big difference is the bunkers. They're made like thumb prints, or depressions, in the turf, so balls get sucked into them like black holes; bunkers often have steep faces (see below), making it impossible to hit out toward the hole--you have to play out sideways. I found my drive just short of this bunker at Montrose; you can see the flag sticking up behind the 5 foot bunker face. I was able to hit the next shot close and birdie this hole!

Here's a look down the 18th at Montrose, with a modest old hotel just behind the green. The clubhouse is also modest, off to the far left in the picture. When I was at Montrose, there were people of all kinds playing. Foreign tourists like me, but guys with big leg tattoos and teeth missing, teenagers, and plenty of older women. Local residents play at very affordable rates at almost every course in Scotland. The courses, because they are so old, are integrated into the towns. There's no gates, no security to keep out "the wrong type," no long driveway keeping the course hidden. You just walk up through town, and there's the golf course.

On Sunday afternoon, I took the train from Stonehaven to Leuchars and the bus to St. Andrews, about an hour south of Stonehaven on Scotland's east coast. St. Andrews, as you may know, is the "home of golf." The Old Course here is the oldest continually-used golfing ground in the world. I'm trying to get a tee time as a single player. You can enter a daily lottery and your name may--or may not--get picked. This system is new this year. In the past, you could a single tee time by showing up at the first tee in the middle of the night--if you arrived at 2 or 3AM, you were almost guaranteed to get to play, I think I would have done the overnight thing if they still had it, just for kicks. But I'm relegated to test the online system. No luck yet.

I did play yesterday on one of St. Andrews Links other courses--the Jubilee Course, It's just as magnificent as the others--it's said to be the hardest of all of the St. Andrews courses. It was hard enough--I shot an 82. It was completely delightful, despite (or because of?) the occasional humiliation. I got paired with a 60-something Aussie, Craig, who was a good player and an even better spirit. He peppered me with a few questions (as have many others here) about what the hell our country sees in Donald Trump, but mostly we talked about sports--the difference between cricket and baseball. I bragged about my sabbatical, and he said that in Australia, if you work for any company for 10 years you earn a sabbatical. It is so clear that only in America do we crush workers so systematically. 

Which leads me to the last thing about golf. It is so damn snobby in the United States. I'm often embarrassed to tell people I play--even though my "home course" is a crappy little public 9 hole. Golf has evolved as an elite sport in our country, something you do with fancy clubs in a pink shirt at the country club, while riding in a little car between holes. That's just not what golf is in Scotland. It's a sport that does seem to belong to all the people. At St. Andrews, townspeople didn't have to pay to play until the 1940s. On Sundays, the Old Course closes and becomes a public park, with dogs and people strolling across the grass. There are no golf carts ("buggies") in Scotland, in part because the courses were built before they were invented, but also because they still treat it as a walking sport. And walking, you surely know, is not only one of the best forms of exercise for human beings, it's also a spiritual discipline. For sure, golf appeals to my inner perfectionist--I want to be good at this game, and a certain amount of skill, I've found, brings a greater amount of pleasure. But at this point, I'm good enough. The deeper joy for me is the rhythm of the game: the interplay between the short bursts of concentrated energy that go into trying to hit a "great" shot, then accepting the results which are always (especially here) subject to kind or cruel forces beyond your control; then, you amble through some lovely patch of earth appreciating the wind and the green ground and the feeling of being alive in that moment. I don't know if golf itself is a spiritual game, but it's a true source of pleasure for me.

Here's a view from the 8th hole on the Jubilee Course at St. Andrews, with the Eden Estuary on the left. I was so overwhelmed with the beauty of this hole that I tugged my tee shot left out of bounds and had to re-tee.

Here's me, post-round, about to walk back through town to my Air BnB, carrying my clubs, stopping by the 1st/18th holes of the Old Course. Yes, I am playing golf in Scotland, and loving it.