by Tom Coyne
Trump Turnberry wasn’t the acrimonious land-grab bemoaned up in Aberdeen. It seemed a lesson had been learned, and the checks in Ayrshire were written with a gentler, even welcome hand. The place needed cash, and Trump had already redone the famed hotel on the hill to rave reviews, restoring what was once an infirmary during World War II, when the course had been turned into a Royal Air Force base. A dormant runway still dissects the golf course, and a memorial near the ninth hole recalls lost RAF airmen.
Turnberry’s Ailsa links was named for the Ailsa Craig, a nearby volcanic plug popping out of the sea that followed golfers around the course, and the site from which the stone signs on the links were chiseled (it’s also the source for all the curling stones used in the Olympics—Ailsa granite reigns supreme in the sliding sport). As iconic as the craig and the white hotel were as golfing backdrops, and as omnipresent as the Turnberry lighthouse perched above the birthplace of Robert the Bruce was in links photography, the course was somehow a bit plain. In my golf imagination, the word Turnberry was burdened by behemoth expectations and uncommon history; perhaps my estimations were unfair, the reality falling short of my Turnberry fantasies. It was good, but it just didn’t seem Turnberry good, insofar as I had arrived believing Turnberry meant unrivaled.
The lighthouse had me anticipating Ireland’s Old Head, that other lighthouse layout of audacious carries and tee-box vertigo. I was ready for butt-cinching carries and wobbly walks along cliffside paths and shots played with my heels dangling off the edge of the known world, but the Turnberry holes seemed shy and polite. The redesign by renowned architect Martin Ebert (who, along with his partner Tom Mackenzie, has been trusted with the likes of Troon, Hoylake, and Royal St. George’s, and was one of the golfing archeologists who uncovered the lost course at Askernish) promised to wring every drop of drama out of its setting, pulling the ocean more into play, and the video rendering of the new course with tees pushed to new edges was eye-popping. The reborn layout all but guaranteed the Open’s return to Turnberry, but sadly for Donald, if he spent the £35 million to get his name on the Claret Jug, an R&A official was quoted as saying the site’s name would still be engraved as the traditional TURNBERRY, sans the Trump.
My caddie, Jack, was a strapping twentysomething and another collegiate Scottish export studying in the States. I could only imagine the mileage he got out of blond hair and an accent seasoned with Glaswegian wit in North Carolina. When my drive on eighteen struck out to find its own fate, I turned to ask Jack where it went.
“Aye, I don’t have a Scooby,” he said. I was pleased with myself for decoding his rhyming slang unassisted—Scooby Doo, clue, he didn’t have a clue. His description of my loose approach shots was more accessible—“You’re on the dance floor but nowhere near the band”—and when Penn sent a ball toward unknown parts of Ayrshire, Jack was forthright in his verdict: “We couldn’t find that one if it was a football.” Caddie commentary aside, I slapped it around and still carded a 75, prompting wonder at what all the Turnberry fuss was about, and I figured Trump was right to pump some theater into the place. I just hoped that the folks who had plotted to blow up the statue in Golspie turned their attention to some fountains down south first.
As the years pass and itineraries accumulate, I won’t remember Turnberry for its sculptures or its owner or its lighthouse. I won’t recall it for its duel, or for Tom Watson in 2009, or for my scorecard with three circles on holes I cannot recall. Above my desk sits a picture of six friends with arms over each other’s shoulders, five men and one woman, each with one finger raised, the windows of the Turnberry Hotel above their heads in the distance. I will remember this photograph, and the faces in it, and why we were holding up a single digit.
I see Penn and Scott, laughter in their smiles, their frames almost hiding wee Gretchen, who had flown back in from Amsterdam to see me off to the qualifier, and I see Duff, who had driven up from London. This trip’s first partner had arrived a day early for a lesson from the Turnberry pro, and he’s smiling in the picture, even though his palms were bleeding beneath bandages after an evening of hitting balls until dark, desperate for a reliable drive. It meant a lot that Duff was there. He had just returned from Philadelphia, where he’d laid his dad to rest. Duff’s father was an old Irishman who loved his Phillies and his golf, a man of genuine Philadelphia grit who owned a small tap room that put his boys through the best schools. When Duff visited his old man in hospice, he wasn’t sure if his dad could hear him, but he told him all about the courses we had played down south—two Open tracks in two days—and how much he would have loved it. His father couldn’t answer him, but Duff said he smiled.
Beneath his arm in that picture is another friend who had arrived with a gift from home. Beside the Turnberry clubhouse doors, I had found my name stitched across blue Mizuno leather; it was a tour bag from my halcyon Paper Tiger days, an accessory befitting an Open qualifier. Just seeing TOM COYNE on a pro bag made my game feel like it had tightened up two shots. But even brighter than the sight of the bag he had somehow exhumed from my basement in Philadelphia was the grin of my good pal Paddy.
I wouldn’t have made it around Ireland if it were not for Paddy the Caddie from Philadelphia and then Kinsale. He had been living as an expat in the south of Ireland, watching the kids and caddying at Old Head while his wife pursued her corporate career abroad. He met up with me along the way to lift my spirits and dump writing material into my lap. Paddy was as shy as a Sunday preacher, and his was a steady sermon of ball-breaking commentary delivered with a hint of Philadelphia hoagie-mouth, an accent that whisked me home to where we showed our affections by making strangers laugh at our friend’s shortcomings. If he wasn’t busting chops, he was connecting friends in common; exile Paddy to a lost Pacific island and he would discover that he had taken the island hermit’s cousin to prom. And with a personality as large as his frame, the former college tackle already knew all my travelmates and half the pro shop staff before I arrived.
Paddy played a three-ball with Duff and Gretchen, whom he immediately dubbed G-Money and then the Hottie by the second tee, once he felt he’d known her long enough. She was quickly his surrogate little sister and his audience for eighteen holes of getting under Duff’s skin. Better than finding himself at Turnberry, Paddy was thrilled to find himself paired with another Philly guy he could needle—Duff having attended prep school while Paddy was a proud diocesan alum—and it stoked his punch lines. After Duff sent his opening slice toward its final judgment, Paddy proclaimed, “That was a son-in-law.”
“A son-in-law?”
“Yeah,” Paddy said. “Not exactly what you had in mind.”
Little did Duff know that he would spend his day at Turnberry hearing about his elite high school after every wayward shot—“They teach you that at Penn Charter? Charter guys are supposed to be good at golf”—from a former Philadelphia steamfitter who was equally relentless about Duff’s college alma mater, singing a modified version of its fight song around the fields of Turnberry: “Shame, shame on old Notre Dame, they play Army, Navy, and Penn. They play the Polish, Germans, and French, while all the Irish sit on the bench . . .” After eighteen, Duff looked like he had just spent four hours on hold with customer service, the frustration heavy on his brow. “Jesus.” He shook his head, eyes cast off into the distance. “He’s just like my friends from home.”
By the afternoon round, Duff was firing back at Paddy about the anonymous legacy of Lycoming College football; little did I know, the two had known each other for some months, thanks to the gang’s semisecret email chain. Between his inquiries as to whether or not this Gramma Billy character could dance, Penn had exhorted my future partners to engineer a plan for leading me to the secret to golf and the Open. There was no consensus on a golf secret among them, but without knowing it, they had each arrived with answers of their own.
Paddy’s pointer was to be Paddy. He cared not what anyone thought of him, a trait I endeavored to practice yet backslid
by habit. His shunning of pretense was on display in the Trump Turnberry pro shop, when he approached the register with golf shirt in hand and asked, “You got anything without this wanker’s name on it?” The girl behind the counter looked back at him like he had just picked his nose and stuck it on her forehead. He cared not when the steward pulled him a pint to be enjoyed in the Prestwick lobby but instead went looking for a better seat and found himself alone in the members’ bar overlooking the eighteenth green. Outside, Duff passed the windows of the room we had been told was off-limits and spied Paddy sprawled across a leather chair, waving to Duff with a pint and a handful of peanuts. That was Paddy—comfortable in the uncomfortable places, and authentically so. Life was too short to give a damn what other people were worrying about. He made such wisdom seem effortless, but for me, it would be work. If I could get there for the qualifier, I had a chance to play my comfortable best.
If Paddy’s ticket was being unbothered, Gretchen’s was being fearless. She wasn’t afraid to hop on a plane for golf with strangers, and didn’t worry about traveling alone or making a bogey. Speedgolf? Sure, I’ll try that—and maybe I’ll win the world championship while I’m at it. I could put my finger on two necessities for playing great golf: First, you had to be good. Second, you had to believe it. Gretchen proved the latter was more important. She hadn’t gotten serious about the game until eight years before, but her confidence had her contemplating a run at the pros, and rightly so. On these big-boy courses, she played like an irreverent whipster, unimpressed by their reputations for burly numbers. She carded scores in the low 70s, and at Turnberry her courage could be heard from holes away.
As we made the turn toward Turnberry’s back nine, we knew someone had jammed one from the roar up ahead. Later we would hear how at number eleven, Paddy the Caddie told everyone in the group, “Hit 8-iron. I remember this hole in the Open. I was standing right here, and John Daly said, ‘I don’t give a shit what the wind’s doing. It’s an 8-iron.’ So we’re all hitting eight.”
Duff and Gretchen looked at their caddie, Sam, wondering whether he was going to offer them a yardage. Sam nodded at Paddy. “He’s fuckin’ right.”
They couldn’t see the bottom of the pin from the tee, but as they jogged for the green in pursuit of Gretchen’s shot, which had split the pin, Paddy insisted: “I’ve seen enough golf shots in my life. I’m a looper, I know. That went in. Sam, am I right?”
“He’s fuckin’ right.”
And he was. An ace for G-Money, and later in the pro shop, Paddy dictated the engraving for the trophy. “Make sure it says, ‘Hole-in-one by the Hottie. Witnessed by Paddy and Duff.’ ”
At Kilmarnock Golf Club (also known as Barassie) that afternoon, a muscular links and a worthwhile add to any Ayrshire itinerary, we found the head pro, Gregor—Paddy loved reciting his name, Gregg-ore—standing in the pro shop in the dark.
“Power’s out,” he told us. “Couldn’t charge you if I wanted to.” Paddy learned that his new buddy was going to have to sleep in the shop; without power to set the alarm, Gregor said he was looking at a night on the floor. Paddy promptly started planning an evening of running beers and food for him—even with fresh acquaintances, Paddy was that kind of pal. And then on the tenth hole, Gregor appeared on a golf cart as though he knew we’d been talking about him.
The Scottish pro pulled up to our group, and I instinctively checked our pace—well ahead of four hours, per usual. But Gregor wasn’t here to play marshal; rather, he was bearing gifts in the form of a stack of cups and a clear bottle of expensive-looking brown. He had just made a trip to the western Isle of Jura for this tankard of rare spirits and carefully poured each of us a dram. Even without electricity, word of Gretchen’s morning ace had made its way to his pro shop, and Gregor broke out the good stuff and tracked us down to celebrate her. This was why you played places off the published bucket lists, I thought, as Gregor passed the shots around until one landed in my hand and, for just a moment, I completely forgot whose hand I was looking at.
It didn’t happen in pubs or at dinner parties, when I knew drinks would be offered and I was prepared to pass gracefully, but in the midst of a round of golf, a glass of rare island hooch proffered by a genuine Scotsman caught me unawares, one of those moments after years without a drink when you realize, Holy shit, I actually don’t drink. Do I apologize and hand it back? Toss it over my shoulder? Swallow it and pretend? In two seconds my sober years flashed before my eyes as though they had never happened, and looking into my cup of spinning amber, my mind wandered to the state of Scottish emergency rooms, the price of a taxi chauffeur for the remainder of my trip, and the cost and availability of bachelor pads back home. Some drinkers planned for a night on the piss; folks like me foresaw the fortnight. We lifted our cups and toasted Gretchen and Barassie, and as I stood there looking at mine, Paddy took it from my hand and slugged it back without a word. He was that kind of pal.
Scott coughed half of his down and offered the rest to Paddy, who was again happy to help. Scott was another friend who was comfortable in his own frame, and time spent in his company reminded me to savor the journey.
I hung my head the next day as Scott and I walked off Royal Troon. I had just emphatically snapped a string of eleven pars by launching a drive into a pasture of waist-high forget-about-it. It was small consolation to think my ball might be found by a patron when the Open visited next year, because it would take a gallery of hundreds to find it. Aside from that drive and a few untidy opening holes, I had rationed myself more fear for Troon than it required. The Railway Hole was long, but I didn’t notice the train tracks for the rain in my face; dumb golf remained the best golf. And the Postage Stamp, Troon’s renowned eighth that was a wee par 3 with an even wee-er putting surface guarded by the Coffin Bunker, which did actually look like a pit from which evidence was exhumed yesterday—its green, stuck into the side of a sand hill, stood out for its drama, but it was a hillock of whimsy in an otherwise straightforward golf course.
I arrived at every rota course with a cargo of presumption, expecting each Open track to be an enchanted pathway conjured by potions, its dunes aglow with golfing sorcery. But sometimes they were just golf courses with enough prestige and parking for a major championship. The histories on display in clubhouse photos and trophy cases were all goosebumps stuff, but the golf courses were golf courses—good ones, but void of that aged context, none would stack up to the likes of Cruden Bay or Machrihanish or even Shiskine, not for this golfer. As we loaded our sticks into our cars at Troon, Scott asked how many Open courses that was for me. At that moment, I couldn’t tell him; I’d lost count. But Scott knew. “Thirteen. You have one left: Musselburgh.”
His awareness struck me. The guy had a checkmark next to ninety-nine of America’s best one hundred, plus thousands of other courses populating his spreadsheet back home, yet he still savored every hole, every swing, knowing precisely where he was in each moment. Scott’s qualifier at Bruntsfield was a why-not cap to his Scottish adventure; he wasn’t missing the fun of each day’s golf, fretting over how his final round would end. He reminded me that the best day of this adventure was the one I was in, and whether we qualified or not, we would have played a course called Scotland. And that was something—quite something, and it hadn’t all just happened along the way to something else. How I struggled to remember that the along-the-way part was the something else.
Duff’s wisdom was of a different sort, but his was the most honest and hard-earned. He had bandaged all four of the appendages on his 6-foot-4-inch frame at various times throughout the trip, his skin splitting in protest against two rounds a day. At the fifth hole of Prestwick, where the Open Championship was born as a way to determine Allan Robertson’s heir as best golfer on the planet, it nearly took much more than a Band-Aid to save Duff.
He found his tee ball stuck into the slope beneath the green while I moved ahead to summit the blind two-hundred-yard par 3 called Himalayas on the card. I caught my
breath on the green and looked over the Prestwick property, perhaps my favorite of the rota destinations for its quirky character and compact routing. Holes overlapped and ran shoulder to shoulder, making for an easy walk and unusual targets—Take it over that tee box; aim for the pin on that other hole. It had hosted a staggering twenty-four Opens, including the first dozen, and in the thorough introduction to Prestwick and Open history given us by the club steward, we learned how Prestwick’s Open streak was broken only when Tom Morris Jr. won his third in a row in 1870 and got to keep the trophy for good. The cummerbund of red Moroccan leather with the large silver buckle was worth a lot more as collateral than the winner’s purse (which, in the beginning, was zilch), and pros of that era—mostly caddies and greenskeepers—liked the Open not for its payout but for all the action they could score in side bets. Golf’s most regal event started as something of a horse race in which the players were the thoroughbreds, and it thrived because it gave the leisure class something to bet on (remember this the next time someone tells you they don’t like to gamble on the golf course). When Prestwick, the R&A, and the Honourable Company decided to chip in for a new trophy that would become the Claret Jug, it meant Prestwick would have to share the tournament and rotate it among the clubs who had thrown in for the prize.