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Gollan, Scotland – I’m not sure what the hell I’m doing here.
Not that I hold anything against the Genesis Scottish Open, which the distinguished editors at GOLF have sent me to cover, nor against the many fine golfers in the field at this week’s event. It’s just that Scotland is so far away from New York, and it feels more like home for just three days. My friends and family see very little of me. Why, exactly, am I prolonging the effort for 72 hours of 55-degree gloom in mid-July?
The answer is everywhere at the Renaissance Club, which is hosting this week’s festivities. It’s hard to travel more than a few steps on the property before it attacks your senses like Friday rain, written on the terraces in block letters for all to see.
This is golf country.
Golf Country’s twisting borders extend beyond the championship gates, with scores of courses sprouting from the ground like lawn grass. There is a beloved local club in every direction, and there is no shortage of daylight hours, which start around 4am and finish after 10pm. With almost every Scottish course available for public play, there is also no shortage of epic tee times. The only problem is that everyone wants them.
“You can count on your hands how many tremendous golf courses there are in a four or five mile radius,” says Jordan Speth. “It’s one of my favorite places in the world to play golf.”
On most evenings during the Scottish week, the fairways in Golf Country look more like highways, filled with a steady stream of both hard golfers (pros, caddies, agents, families, announcers) and noble people (locals, surfers, gold Labs). It’s rare for this reclusive group to scale the walls of country club life into the real world, but this is a rare week on the golf calendar.
“I thought I’d go in there with maybe a few clubs and dance and putt and walk with them,” said Speth of the first 27-hole Tuesday of his professional career, which ended in a surprise run at North Berwick. “I ended up taking my bag and played all 18 holes. I played the first and was like, I can’t really let go.”
this This is why any person of sound mind and expense account would bother jumping on a red, burning eye and driving an hour to the coast. Because Scotland is the spiritual home of the golf world. And because this week is one of the few real opportunities to cleanse the spirit of golf. And because the spirit of golf is in dire need of it now.
The truth is, golf has fallen out of love with itself these past 24 months, and it’s gotten so bad that the sport can’t even agree on why. There is a widespread belief that things will eventually work out, but two years is a long time no Personal things out.
It seems that’s what brings everyone here to Golf Country – the opportunity to glimpse a more romantic version of the sport. We probably remember that we enjoyed golf all along. Maybe we realize how ridiculous all of this was. Maybe we’ll find a way forward together.
If ever there was a place to rediscover magic, it would be here in Scotland.
Ninety minutes up the coast, in St Andrews, a group of my former bosses are about to sit down to dinner.
It is a sultry evening at the golf house, and the rain is expected to continue into the night. It’s quiet at first among the group, most of whom have just been called back from a late afternoon nap to the Old Course Hotel’s fourth-floor bar, but the conversation slowly swells to a crescendo.
An old course tends to have this effect on golfers, especially golfers this A group of golfers: a dozen bakers of fifty and sixty from the other side of the world. This is their first time in Scotland, and although many of them have experienced embarrassment of fortunes in American golf, none have ever experienced anything like it.
A year ago, the group booked the ultimate golf trip: six rounds in six nights across East Lothian, with stops along the way in Edinburgh and St Andrews. When it’s over the guys will have played all the Golf Coast hits: Kingsbarns, Carnoustie, Muirfield, Gollan and North Berwick. Tonight, though, they’ll bask in the spotlight of the historic tour from The Journey, The old course. From the back room of a South St. Modern as the arrangements are made for a group of 13, it’s clear the Scottish golfers have already stolen their hearts.
“I must have gotten to within 400 yards,” said one of the group members in astonishment.
Another rolls his eyes.
“I must have taken about 400 rounds from the same bunker.”
“I just can’t believe how open and accessible everything is. You can play anywhere. It’s incredible.”
I should make it clear that I didn’t fly to Scotland just to join a group of 12 of my former bosses for dinner. The show was simply too good to pass up. It’s not often that caddies find themselves the guest of honor.
My first golfing job was at the Rockville Links Club, a small course on the outskirts of Long Island. The guys on this trip were my regular bag during the summer as a college student. In time I remember the sharp smoke of cigars and Tito’s vodka and a series of petty crimes committed within the confines of the carriage barn.
By the end of my first month as a caddy, I had fallen off the deep end of golf. In hindsight, some of that passion may have come from the people I worked with. The members were serious players, sometimes very serious bosses, but most were decent people – the kind who kept in touch years after I left the club.
I arrived to find the room no more dull than a few years earlier, but noticeably grey. After we were handed the lists, the group traded in the deadening insults and, in a new twist, the group traded in the reading glasses.
“Look around the table. Look at how old this group is,” said the group leader, Chris, in a tone that was only half-joking. “If we wait another 10 years, we won’t be able to do this.”
The clock was ticking louder for the group now than in the days I had known them. They lost a dear friend, another club member, early in the pandemic. When the shock wore off, the delegation began.
“We had to do it now,” Chris said.
When the main course arrived at the table, I felt an opportunity to pop the question I’d been thinking about all day.
“You’ve been playing golf for six straight days now. Do you still like it?”
A member of the table immediately caught my attention.
“no.”
it’s off.
“I love He. She.”
Golf is in a crisis of confidence.
While the Tours grapple with their stake in the sport’s bright green future, they often overlook a gruesome present. A generation of fans has been conditioned to believe some ugly truths about sports: It is little more than a pot to make money; that the biggest sports numbers can be bought and sold; That the only meaningful people are the ones who sign the check. Professional golfers have been told in no uncertain terms that ethics, the cornerstone of the sport, is at best a talking point and at worst a bargaining chip.
There is fatigue that comes with such a relentless news cycle — the kind that seeps deep into your bones. You can see it on the faces of those around the sport every week, and you can hear it in their voices.
“I don’t trust people easily,” Xander Schauffele said of embattled PGA Tour commissioner Guy Monahan. “He had my confidence and he has a lot of it now. I don’t stand alone when I say that.”
Burnout is a serious thing in the modern world of professional sports, losing attention in a nanosecond. Tire your audience for too long and you risk apathy; Make yourself an apathetic audience and you will find that you have no audience at all. This possibility should run the rounds deeply.
Rory McIlroy said, “As long as I play golf, I am happy.” A little indifference to everything [else] per minute.”
But if there is at least one place in the world of golf where fatigue gives way to energy, it is Scotland.
Everyone who’s been here will tell you that, not only because they all plan to come back. The energy here comes from something deeper – something that is inherent in people. It excites even the most hardened golfing soul, and not even Rory can put his finger on it.
“It’s…” McIlroy said, pausing for a few seconds. “It’s hard. I would give the Scottish golfing fans a really big compliment, but it would probably offend a lot of people elsewhere in the world…”
McIlroy will not be offended Americans Arise at St Andrews on Saturday. The stormy evening had given way to a fine morning, warm and blue, and the group of first-time visitors were in a complete swoon—you couldn’t tell by hearing them. Six days later, their week-long collegiate competition tied. Now, at Kingsbarns, they had to find a winner.
“Why don’t we just end up with a tie?” asked one of the chiefs.
“because this AnticlimaticSomeone else replied.
Some day soon, perhaps as soon as a Sunday, they will long for mornings of strokes and couplings from the Old Course Hotel. They wouldn’t dare say that to each other now, but they didn’t need to. In private moments, the truth came out soaked.
“It’s not just that Trip of a lifetimeOne of the chiefs told me. “This will probably be the greatest trip of my life.”
Just on the road, in Golf Country, the journey was just beginning. McElroy burst out of the gates on Saturday morning and delivered a vintage 67 as he appeared on the cusp of his first win in months on the eve of the Open Championship.
McIlroy isn’t sentimental about Scotland – he says he “takes it for granted” given his childhood in the British Isles – but it didn’t take long to see how satisfying it would feel to see victory before the Scottish faithful.
“They are very knowledgeable,” he said. “The support I received last year at St Andrews was something I don’t think I’ve ever felt before in my life.”
Satisfaction is on two levels, one of which is postulated. It’s been a tough couple of years for McIlroy, who balanced major heartbreak with duties as spokesperson—and later “carrying sacrifice”—for professional golf. The victory would round out the list ahead of a return visit to Royal Liverpool, where they won the Open Championship nine years ago, paving the way for a week as the undisputed favourite. Victory would also It offers a glimpse into the unbridled joy that first made the sport beloved in more than three decades. The latter will bring none of the fame or fortune of the former, but at this moment in golf, it is perhaps more useful.
“I still remember my first Scottish Championship at Loch Lomond in 18 years,” he said. “Eighteen years is too long without a trophy.”
in North BerwickThe only cup was the sunrise. When the blue sky stretched high above the sea, a woman reached the first pass. A large black lab was walking happily along its side. Back on the tee, a golfer hits a five iron that slipped into the fairway. The sound of metal cutting through is calm.
“He’s thirteen,” said the dog’s owner, as he strode out into the grass, flirting with the ball. “he congregation This morning walk.”
Soon the dog and the woman were gone. In the back lane, the quad appeared. They laughed as they began their journey into the Great Beyond. I didn’t know them, but I knew why.
It was morning in Scotland and love was in the air.