A Course Called Scotland

by Tom Coyne

  • • •

  I was in need of a game, and I found one at Peterhead. Solo 74s were hardly worth the cardstock on which they were scribbled; I required a test replete with signed cards and entry fees and first-tee reflux. Lucky for me, the Scots were an intensely competitive golfing lot, and on most Saturdays, I could find a taste of tournament golf, as I did the following morning at Peterhead.

  I had attempted to book separate Saturday rounds at the Peterhead Golf Club and the Craigewan Links, only to find that they were both busy hosting tournaments, but that I could enter if interested. I was, especially when I learned that Peterhead and Craigewan were the same course, thereby trimming my day’s agenda in half. Still, I was nervous as I crossed the bridge separating the Peterhead parking lot from the clubhouse—and I told myself that was good. A golf club felt differently when wrapped in that thin film of nerves, and I had better get accustomed to it again. I paid my modest entry fee and was shown into the breakfast room to meet my playing partners. The Americans were easy to spot in baseball caps and layers of new rain gear; we stand out for our bulk, and for the money we spend on negating the elements. I interrupted their bacon rolls to introduce myself, and one large Californian (we also stand out for our height) greeted my greeting with, “You don’t sound Scottish!”

  “No. Sorry, I’m from Philadelphia.” I’m not sure why I apologized, but I did.

  “You’re playing with us?”

  “I am.”

  A collective hush of disappointment settled over their table of six. The revelation that one of their threesomes had been filled out by an American sent their nearby tour operator into a bit of a flurry—he must have promised them local wisdom, or a genuine Scottish experience.

  “Don’t worry, lads, I’ll sort you a forecaddie,” he explained, hurrying off to the starter. They were concerned that they wouldn’t know where they were going out there without a local, and when I told them such naiveté was often part of the fun on these courses, they eyed me with pity, some hack who must have taken up the game that morning. They were here to compete, to best their buddy from San Francisco who’d nipped them by two shots at Royal Aberdeen yesterday. I sympathized with their wanting to score well, but I also recognized the traveling golfers’ flaw that I had lamented on many a trip: folks roamed so far only to weep at their scores and bury their heads in their cards without seeing where they were. Hell hath no fury like an accountant from Minnesota who paid $6,000 to golf Scotland and just shot 104. I often advised people to forget about their scores, or to play Stableford; don’t let not playing to your handicap ruin your one trip around god’s courses.

  When no forecaddies could be found, the threesomes were juggled so that we would all have a Scot in our group. Being that guy nobody wanted to play with was a bit of karmic payback for me. How many times had I tried to rig a tee sheet so that I wouldn’t be stuck with a slow or whiny player? Any residual nerves quickly melted into quiet resolve. Bring on those boards in the bar where our scores would be posted next to our names and hometowns: Philadelphia was going to kick California’s ass.

  The Peterhead Golf Club dated its origin to 1841 when, at its first membership meeting, it was decided that the club uniform would consist of a green jacket with distinctive buttons, in contrast to the red coats of the R&A and the Honourable Company. The introduction in the yardage book boldly suggested that Augusta members perhaps had a peek at these Peterhead coats at some point, a bit of fake golf trivia that I appreciated for its cheekiness. In fact, the Augusta green jacket came about as a way for members to stand out at the Masters so they could assist visitors; golf’s most coveted garb originally identified the guy to ask where the bathroom was. Sunk deep into hulking dunes, Peterhead’s Craigewan course did not feel much like Augusta, but was just as good a test in the rib-rattling wind. The Californians would be glad for their layers.

  After a sloppy bogey on the short opener and three birdies missed from within ten feet, I felt some confidence at the turn. Anything around par in these gales would surely have me in the running for some silver for the fireplace. But as the front nine turned homeward and steered us straight into the gusts, my chances whooshed away like seeds off a dead dandelion. I had been a few shots up on my Scottish playing partner, Gordon, whose card I was keeping, but on the back nine, I could reliably take his score and add two to make my own. He had a homegrown swing that I would have bet against, but he knew his way around the course and through the wind. Eleven through fifteen felt like a mountainous death march of unreachable par 4s, and as my ballooning drives and rejected hybrids got slapped down and knocked sideways into the badness, Gordon suggested I try to hit “a little hooky something,” because regular upward spin into this air was an idiot’s errand. It was the first time in all my golfing life that it occurred to me that a straight ball was the absolute worst shot, and this realization was proven as I penciled in doubles for myself while Gordon hit sneaky low hooky somethings along the fairway, creeping up on the holes and snatching unlikely par after unlikely par.

  For the buffet of humble pie that I consumed after having to sign for a 45 on the back and post a total of 81, it was worth the ego reduction to watch a Scotsman manage an untamed wind. I had bested the Californians, but it was bland consolation—my score was a worrisome tally. One month to the qualifier and I was posting laughable competition scores, and our Carnoustie caddie’s prophecy about too much golf in the wind was weighing on my mind. Was I getting worse? Had my game peaked back in East Lothian? Did I have the slightest clue how to hit a low hooky something?

  I took a long drive back down to Aberdeen to consider it. My eagerness to visit the Peterhead tournament had me playing the Aberdeenshire courses out of sequence, so as I worked my way back south along the coast toward Scotland’s oil city, it occurred to me that my ball-striking wasn’t the thing holding me back. I’d proven I could hit low shots, and tee to green, my game was tidy enough to the point where a few putts should have me around or under par on most days. My back nine at Peterhead wasn’t about the wind; I’d been here too long to claim breeze as an alibi any longer. I had simply stopped caring once I figured myself out of contention, violating another one of the commandments of good golf that I’d learned long before this trip: Thou shalt grind. I had played with a lot of elite golfers over the years, and they all had their own way of arriving at 67; bombers, scramblers, technicians, one-putters—the styles varied, but there was one trait that every great player I had ever watched possessed: they never frittered away a single stroke. Even if they were putting for triple bogey, they studied and processed that putt as if it were for eagle.

  They all mattered. How had such simple math remained a mystery to me? Birdie putts mattered more to me, and early strokes were of more importance than the later, thoughtless ones. Yet my scorecards never shared my perspective. A shot was a shot, and I was too much of a genius to understand it.

  I resolved to respect every stroke for what it was—a stroke. And the more scores I tallied in Scotland, the more I believed another law of the golfing universe: The putter is three times more important than any other club in the bag. Missed birdies infected my next drive, which polluted my approach and poisoned my bunker shot. So small there in the bag against its taller neighbors, my flat stick was a sneaky little Napoleon that was running the whole show.

  I felt I had figured something out on my drive down to Aberdeen. If nothing else, Peterhead had identified a specific shortcoming in my game. As I drove, I told myself, I am a great putter, I am a great putter, a mantra my former golf shrink insisted I believe before teeing it up in a tournament. What I couldn’t figure out was why that police car in the rearview mirror had been following me for so long. If it was going to pull me over, wouldn’t it have put its lights on already? And then it did. After many days spent trying to acquire the experience and insights of a Scotsman and blend in among the locals, I pulled over and quickly changed suits, donning my best dumb American.

  “Do you know
why we pulled you over?”

  You pulled me over? Is that what’s happening here? “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  The officer was a kind-looking woman in the unintimidating neon yellow coat of the British police, with a sort of Mary Poppins–ish police hat that suggested to me if I just continued to play stupid, I might appeal to her hospitable spirit.

  “You were driving at thirty miles per hour over the posted limit.”

  Or maybe not.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not from here. I’m traveling, and this is a rental car—I’m over here golfing, I’m not from here, and I’m in a rental car and I didn’t see any signs . . .” Did I tell her I’m not from here yet?

  “Yes, we know this is a rental car.”

  “I thought the speed limit was sixty, I’m sorry . . .”

  Turned out that the speed limit was sixty for some of the coastal drive in Scotland, but thirty when passing through “built-up” areas. I honestly hadn’t taken note of the switch—not that it would have altered my pace much. This little Beemer cooked.

  The officer conceded that the speed limit did change over the course of the road I was traveling, and her eagerness to ticket seemed to subside.

  “Are you known to British police?” she asked.

  Am I known to them? I resisted the chance to say, I might be if they love golf books! and told her that my British rap sheet was squeaky clean.

  “You’re on a golfing tour? Are you playing Cruden Bay?”

  “I am!” I exclaimed, overjoyed that the conversation had turned from speeding tickets to golf.

  “We’re just going to give you a warning today. Please mind the posted limits. Enjoy the rest of your stay,” she said. “Happy golfing.”

  Happy golfing indeed. I just had no idea how happy it was about to get.

  • • •

  I knew very little about most of the courses on my list, but when it came to Murcar, I knew less; I didn’t even know how to pronounce its name—not Mur-car but Mer-ker. All I knew was that I was hoping my ticket-dodging luck would extend to a less windy afternoon, but I soon found that I had expended that day’s good juju on the carriageway: the pins on the practice range bent over like they’d been gut-shot. Pellets of rain bounced off my windshield as I sat in my car in the parking lot, wondering if this Murcar was worth four hours of Fuck this. But I had a poster to gift and a course to cross off its map. And thank god I did, because Murcar turned out to be more than a golf course. For this weary golfer, it was a renaissance.

  Originally laid out in 1909 by Archie Simpson, the pro over at Royal Aberdeen, and then updated by James Braid in the 1930s, Murcar was a jewel of a track that I thought out-joyed its royal neighbor. The two links literally overlap one another; in later years, it was discovered that each course had a tee box on the other course’s property, but as the members get along well enough (they play a yearly tournament across a routing that combines the ocean holes of both links), the encroachment was overlooked. Murcar was often missed by visitors on their way to the new behemoth links up the coast, built by an American whom the Scots loved to hate, and that was a shame. Bigly. Because Murcar was the rare course—perhaps the only one of its kind I played in Scotland—where I didn’t feel the rain, not even as it cleared the course of golfers save me and my playing partners, an Irish pro named Cullan and a quiet Swede named Clem, whom I got to know about as well as a highway toll-taker.

  Cullan was in his early twenties and from the town of Doonbeg in County Clare (I assured him that he didn’t need to explain where that was) and had played on scholarship at a college in the States. I learned early in our round that he would also be teeing it up next month at Bruntsfield in the qualifier, so our friendly tour quickly became an unspoken competition whereby I might gauge my game against the fresh-from-college pros who attacked golf so fearlessly, and who would make up the majority of the field down in Edinburgh.

  “How are your legs holding up?” Cullan asked me as we made our way down the first fairway. “Two rounds a day. You must be knackered.”

  “They’re holding up,” I told him. “I was pretty sore at the start. I’ve lost some weight. That’s helped.” And I had; I was down at least twenty pounds and a notch and a half on my belt. In the first fairway, I pulled a 9-iron from my bag, ready to impress Cullan with my new Scottish shot-making. I’d been working on taking two extra clubs and playing low and punchy approaches. It took some humility to hit a 9-iron from a hundred yards, but it was fun to make the wrong club go right; there was wisdom in the low ripper I was about to make hop, check, and release to the hole. Cullan would witness the stylings of a genuine player and wonder where an American had learned to golf that kind of ball.

  I set the ball back in my stance and delivered a hard upper-body blow at the turf. Cullan was indeed wondering where this American had learned to golf his ball that way as it shot sideways off my clubface like a frightened grouse.

  “You were asking if I was tired?” I said, still posing in my low-hands follow-through, as if I were waiting for the ball to decide it was just kidding, hop out of the tangles, and trickle down to the cup. On the shank scale (1 being a gentle forward-moving brush of the hosel, 10 being the rightward rocket of a pitcher trying to pick someone off third) it was a 4 from which I would scramble my way to a putt for par, but that quiet neck-click held enough gunpowder to destroy the next eighty-four strokes and blow this round to pieces. There was no sight in golf as emasculating as watching your golf ball travel on a path completely at odds with the physics of your swing; worse than a whiff, a shank was bad in an almost magical way. So it would have been easy to spend the next seventeen holes paralyzed by the fear of the next one, playing simply to prove I had played golf before, apologetically limping my way across the Murcar dunes.

  It was my default golf setting: self-doubt and self-critique, reinforced through long strings of heavy numbers. But as I holed out my par, it was clear that my default had shifted. I didn’t have the energy to be embarrassed. I had come too far and played too much to doubt anymore. I knew this game. It was an attitude I had formerly tried to fake, a mode of thinking I’d pursued through meditation and psychologists, through books and tapes and visualization, but my new conviction that I had to go out and play my way into the player’s mind-set was bearing fruit.

  I couldn’t think my way into better play; I had to play my way into better thinking, and that thinking was: I shanked it. So what. Fifty-two rounds in thirty-one days on the landscapes where this game was born: I wasn’t just playing at golf anymore. I was golf. The golf bullies in my mind had turned to wispy specters. It might still beat me on the scorecard, but there was nothing golf could do anymore to scare me.

  Finally.

  Cullan and I both hit one or two weird ones that cost us a ball and a double bogey, but our games were well matched that afternoon. I didn’t keep his score, but I held the honor on half the holes, and my 76 would have been a shot or two within his. On such a nasty day, and for first peek at this track, I had to take encouragement from a three-birdie round on a course full of holes that gave you no peace. Holes called Ice House and Pool were tests that snaked through the dunes. Even snakier was the killer seventh, Serpentine, which saw us slicing our way around a mountain of golden thorns with the ocean blasting us from the opposite side. The biggest difference in our golf was when Cullan’s ball arrived on the fringe and he reached for his lob wedge. From even an inch off the green, Cullan hooded his wedge and firmly chipped his ball, and he never missed the hole by more than a grip’s length. It was reinforcement of the old golf adage that they don’t ask how, but how many. It took some guts to chip that way—I felt like I was watching a basketball center shoot foul shots underhand but swish every one—and it was a reminder that what anyone else might think about what or how I was playing was none of my damn business. Just get the ball underground.

  More unanticipated than the quality of this mystery links were the views from the tee boxes. From our vantage point,
the sea vista looked more like Kuwait than Scotland. I counted eighteen oil tankers parked on the horizon, a literal traffic jam of vessels waiting to dock in Aberdeen. Cullan explained that they were charged thousands of pounds a day when docked in port, so they queued at sea until their slot opened up. The ships beyond the dunes were a juxtaposition of nature and industry, leviathan watercraft lurking offshore as if awaiting the signal to invade. Yet it didn’t feel unsightly; it looked like new brushing past old, today nodding at yesterday in a place far from home. You didn’t see that at the Jersey shore.

  I didn’t exchange many words with Clem, who was quiet from what I assumed was a language barrier, but I appreciated his guts for sticking it out through stinging rain in a Windbreaker that, by the third hole, was hugging his large frame like soggy Saran wrap. Water dripped from his nose as he carried on, lugging his rental clubs with the resolve of a man who had come to Aberdeen for the weekend with his wife and was set on playing golf while she got nine hours’ worth of spa treatments at the hotel. He was going to have fun, goddammit, as he fired a half dozen meatballs into the Murcar vegetation. He played quickly and never complained (or maybe he did—I don’t know how you say son of a bitch in Swedish), and Cullan and I cheered him along, exclaiming Good shot! when he hit one, confident that our English was easier to translate at higher volume. It was around the fifteenth hole when Clem hit one so far off the map that the oil tankers were suddenly in play, and I found myself unable to summon any hopeful commentary. Hit a turtle? I love Ikea? But Cullan knew what to say as we watched the ball move sideways on the wind on its way off of Scotland: