Burnīs Old Links
When golf began in Scotland many centuries ago, some say as early as the 1400's it was a very different game than the one that most of us recognise today. The courses were fashioned out of the dunesland along the coast as there were enough natural hazard to make life interesting without having resort to artificial forms of punishment for stray shots. The whins (gorse) and the open sand dunes and natural terrain were quite a challenge in their own right. As golf became more developed some of these links courses became more heavily played and some of the natural hazards were trampled underfoot after many hundreds of players had played over them. A few of the more prominent sand hazards were formalised and made permanent with the addition of wooden bulkheads to stop the faces collapsing and burns (streams) were shored up with stone walls to keep the path of the water under control.
It is on such links courses that the earliest championships were played. Prestwick is one such course and hosted the very first Open chanpionship in 1860. The course consisted of only 12 holes then and the winner was Willie Park who triumphed over his great Rival Old Tom Morris (the designer of Prestwick) by two shots.
Over on the other side of the country on the east coast of Scotland golf had been played at St Andrews since the 1400s in one form or another and in 1681 was even called by one of the St Andrews university professors "the metropolis of golfing!" The old course evolved over centuries with the now famous double greens first being used in 1832 with many of the fairways being shared as well as the greens. The result has stood the test of time over centuries and although the Open championship has outgrown Prestwick it still visits St Andrews more than any of the other courses on the Open rota. It's amazing to think that the same basic course that the likes Of Old Tom Morris and Harry Varden played all those years ago is now still being played by the elite players of the modern era such as Tiger Woods.
With this course I have tried to recreate some of the strategy and feel of the very oldest golf courses in the world. Courses where the holes were sqeezed between the old town and the sea. Using photographs of the old courses I have modeled some of the deep bunkers and mountainous dunes to create a course that is rich not only visually but also strategically. You may stand on some of the tees and have to think long and hard before deciding which of the multiple routes available, you are going to take. The best route will depend on your game, the wind, pin positions of the day and not least your bravery. There will always be an easy "no risk" way out of any challenging situation but don't think that championships are won by the meek. Confront the challenges and succeed and you will be rewarded in more ways than by just the score marked on your card.
Pit yourself against the challenges of the monstrous double greens, the alps, winding burns and bunkers so deep that you need steps to help you in and out! Cut the corner over the greenkeepers sheds but watch out for the out of bounds as the course plays along right up to the very edge of the road and the old town. You will be confronted by shots that may be rightly considered unfair as the penalty for a near miss will be nightmarish as you find yourself in a pot bunker so deep and so small that in the words of the famous golf writer Bernard Darwin "there is only room for an angry man and his niblick!" Other times you could miss your mark by 50 yards and be sitting right in the middle of another fairway and still with a shot to the green. Such are the vagaries of this type of golf and patience will be your ally as well as your shotmaking skills.
Look out for "Burn's Old Links" in September 2003
