I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
And when I find my ball.
In a bright egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday fridagg brid.
Egg, Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the course.
Welcome back to the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson, and UH, I'm excited. I'm back from Scotland. Uh, back from the Masters. UH wrapped up a ton of crazy travel and UH wanted to unpack a little from our trip from Scotland.
So we've got a couple of things for you.
In today's episode, we have our live podcast with Scott McPherson, the great author, historian, golf course architect who wrote The Evolution of the Old Course, a exhaustive history on all the changes and you know kind of how the Old
Course came to be as we know it. But first I'm going to unpack Scotland a little bit with one of my colleagues, Matt Rushis, who joined the trip, and we're going to talk a little bit about golf in Scotland, the Old Course, Old Course Reverse, and then we'll kick it over to our live podcast that was held at the Buyer Theater in Saint Andrew's really organized and put together by the Links Trust. Big thanks to both of them for doing that. It was kind of part of
their programming for Old Course Reverse. A great event that I would suggest everybody enter the lottery for. I know that lotteries can be frustrating that if you don't get it, but you know, enter enter for the rest of your life and may you'll get it once, maybe you'll get it twice. I met somebody who had won it twice in the short you know, a couple of years since they restarted doing the big lottery for it. So it was really fun, really great event, and in Scott was a wonderful guest.
So we'll do that.
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percent off. You're not gonna get that twenty percent off at Costco, but you'll get it at perfect practice dot Com. Big thanks to our friends at perfect Practice. All right, let's welcome in our colleague, Matt Rush's Matt, you're back from Scotland. I got to ask you, was that I think this was your first trip to Scotland.
Right, yeah, very first time. I made it to Ireland. First, was my first overseas trip the England last fall, and now I've completed the trifecta and made it to Scotland.
Wonderful, wonderful. I asked you to do a little prep for this. Matt obviously does a ton of writing for US and Friday Golf Club about golf courses. He makes a lot of videos also about golf courses.
He was kind of.
The solo dolo on our recent YouTube video about Crooked Stick mascot a lot of bona fides in terms of his golf architecture, understanding and education through the years of either working on construction sites, working on turf teams, and now working with us. What was your favorite thing about the old course? It was the first time you'd been out there.
Yeah, it was tough. I was going back and thinking about it, and the trip was really a sprint. We were shooting four different videos across a seven day period, so it was a lot of jumping around and I didn't get I would say, as much time to sort of digest and consume the old course itself. I mean I was walking around it basically every day, and like, I think, my biggest takeaway and something that has even piqued my interest more in the old course. It's pretty cliche,
but just how complex it is. Like I walked it forwards one day shooting a video, and then the very next day, like twelve hours later, walked it in reverse shooting another video for the reverse routing, and that just like completely threw my mind for a loop. Seeing the old course for the very first time walking it forwards and then going backwards, it like got me so disoriented and like really illuminated how complex the golf course is.
There's so much going on. There's so many little intricate little things in the ground contours, and so many different ways to play the holes, and they changed so much based on the pin position. So even though I spent like four probably full days walking in and around the old course, I still feel like I barely know it. And I've watched tournaments, I've like consumed so much of the old course, yet it still feels almost like this foreign thing that I can't yet fully like wrap my head around.
Yeah, having been there, I don't know a ton now.
You know.
I spent eight days during the Open in twenty two walking around, you know, went out there last year and then this year. I would say, the only thing I understand about the old course, like to a very you know two deep understanding of the holes are one, nine and uh and ten are the ones I really I in eight, eight and nine ten because they're like the simple ones.
You know.
One it's like, Okay, I get how this works and it's dead flat and it's kind of you know, you got to burn and you understand how that works.
But then you know the yah, the holes in the middle. I think like.
And I think there's a lesson here about about golf. It's like it is the most entransing place to play because of the sophistication and that it's not the sophistication in the architecture, Like it wasn't built to be sophisticated.
It's just what the natural.
Contours do to you know, where like there's so many ways to play every hole and you don't necessarily know what's right and in because the greens are so large. In the double green aspect of of all the greens, there's so many combinations of everything that can happen in a way, in a nutshell, the Old Course represents. Like what I think is so amazing about golf is that you never hit the same shot twice in your lifetime.
And at the Old Course, between the wind, the contours in the ground throughout it, and these giant greens, it's unlikely that you'll ever play one of the holes and have it feel remotely similar to the day to another day that you played the holes.
Yeah.
Another thing that sort of kind of illuminated to me is how one of one the old courses, Like we probably saw almost ten golf courses on the short trip jumping around, and they're all Scottish Linkslan golf courses, and none of them feel like remotely even close to the Old Course and the amount of complexity and just the way that the golf course plays and the land that it plays over, Like, Yeah, the courses right next door in the New Course and the Eden on either side
have very similar landforms and the contours can be similar, but they're not presented in the same way with the old courses, with just like so much plain ground and such wide corridors for the holes that you have all these other contours that I would presume are on the New Course and Eden and all the other courses at Saint Andrews, but maybe there's a gorse bush over the top of them, So you're not quite like getting as much of that complexity in the visual part when you're
playing those other courses. So there's really just it's just an endless like fascination with the course of like you can just keep diving in, learning more, finding new things. And that was something like playing with Scott, Like every time I had a question or thought about something, I just asked him and he had the answer for it because he's such a wealth of knowledge.
It's incredible, Like any anything you could remotely think about with the old course, you asked Scott and he's like, well, let me tell you about how that came to be. It's it's honestly incredible. The uh I think like it. So it's funny. I you do a lot of our drone videography, photography, uh I used to do, you know, all of it. I still jump on uh and do some of it, and I feel like I learn a
lot about golf courses when I shoot them. I don't remember golf courses as well if I don't do drone photography and videography like it, it helps me like think
about see things differently. One of the things I find very like, having now flown a drone at the Old Course of a few times now, is that it's also like the hardest place to do that because there's so many things, so many Like you know, when you fly a drone and this is just an anecdote, like you you find these and out features and you you kind of get I feel like you get fixated on like certain places. And if you think about it in the lens of like a famous course that everybody would know.
If you're flying a drone.
At Pacific Dunes, you get fixated on those holes on the coast, yeah, right.
Because it's een. They're just pulling you over there because they're so epic.
At the Old Course, I find that like I just get lost and it's like, wait, did I just like spend thirty minutes on two holes that just share a corridor? And I'm just because there's so many things that like pop and it just is a it's it's it's a testament to what we're talking about of like just the sheer like number of like little features that are there is unlike any other golf course.
Yeah, And something that like sort of was illuminating to me when we were flying the drones and taking photos of the course is like the greens and the bunkers are really like they make up like ninety five percent,
maybe even ninety nine percent of the golf course. So yeah, there's all the other contours and everything in the fairways and whatnot, but it just feels like the greens are such a key component to everything on each hole, the strategy on how you plane it, where the pin is, and there's so much that gets derived from that that I feel like it's even more so than most golf courses.
Like there's the famous CB McDonald quote where he said the greens are like the face to a painting, and it's it's it's never more true than any other course than the old course.
Yeah, Yeah, it's it's an amazing place. Obviously, they're the hosts of next year's Open. We'll have a ton of coverage for that coming. You know in the coming months. Talking a little bit more broadly, I asked you to compile three big takeaways from your first trip to Scotland. What's your first big takeaway.
I'll start a little bit broader, and then maybe we can work into some more minute takeaways. But the biggest takeaway that I started to realize is just like the baseline of quality and golf in Scotland is just like almost exponentially greater than America. Like I was kind of hashing it out in my head, and it's like every course in Scotland that's on Linksland is bound to have like one, two, three, maybe even four like really stand out world class holes because the land just lends itself
to really interesting and unique things. And then part and parcel with that is like the sandy the sandy soil and the fine fescu turfs make the plane and like the playability of the golf courses like such a drastically higher level than America. So it's like you have these inherent qualities in Scotland, in the land that just makes the level of golf so high, and it almost like makes each course like destined to be like really good
in some form or fashion. So when you're like trying to rate them or like assign some sort of grade to them, like we're talking about kind of our egg riting system and the courses, it makes it so much more difficult because it's like, oh, well, it inherently is going to play really really well and allow you to play very creatively and either fly the ball or use the ground and play your game how you want to
play it. And then also like the land itself is going to generate some really spectacular golf holes in themselves. So it's almost like every course in Scotland is worth going to venture and see because there's there's there's bound to be a few really cool holes playing over some really unique landforms because it's just inherent from the natural environment.
Yeah.
I think like the the turf, uh is the turf and the soil and then the wind also. Yeah, so the combination of those three you know allows actually like very simple architecture to to wow you where you know, like a lot of simple architecture is great architecture, but where the if it's really you know, windy and as firm and as fast turf, you're able to like put a bunker ten yards in front of a green and if it plays down wind a lot, that bunker all suddens like right where you want it to be.
And that if you did that in America, it wouldn't matter.
Because you just fly it over it and you land on the green and you know whatever, Like everything has to be pushed up and you know, pushed up into the green and you know, if you're you know talking about like especially say golf architecture in Saint Louis or Washington, DC, like everything has to be.
Geared towards ariel.
And I think the benefit of Scotland's you know situation, and I think it is similar with Ireland, is that you have aerial and ground game where in certain situations even the most aerial player a Rory McElroy or a Scottie Scheffler have to land the ball short of the green. And that makes just more golf architecture come alive, whether it's contouring, whether it's bunkers, like that changes the whole
dynamic of like what a golf course could be. And just that turf, the turf and the wind and the natural elements allow rudimentary architecture to play better than really sophisticated architecture in America without elements.
Yeah, And one thing that kind of adds to that is like with those elements, you can simply have like one singular feature kind of like the fourth hole on the old course, there's just a singular like bump right in front of the green, and it causes so much like thought anxiety of how am I going to get around this, thinking about where do I need to land it to properly use it and not have it kind of hurt your shot. So that's another thing, is what you're saying, and how you can just it can be
so simple yet so captivating. I feel like we often found ourselves amiring such a small like detail on certain holes and being like just wowed by it because of how much impact it had on how you played that golf hole.
Yeah, it and it's I think there's also something about Scotland where, you know, the way we experience it is like you're kind of going out there and you're, you know, it feels like you don't know a lot sometimes about some of the courses you're going to, and you're just looking for something, and if you discover a couple things that you like about it, you feel this like gratifying feeling of like, yeah, it was awesome playing out here. And I think part of some of that it always
goes back to like the turf. Like the turf being the way it is and allowing you to hit all these different shots absolutely lends itself to you having a better experience out there.
Definitely.
So what's what's the next on your list?
The next one, which might not come to a surprise, is that Saint Andrew's Links as a whole is even more incredible of a golfing facility as I imagined. I mean, I didn't really know a ton about the other golf courses going in. I just knew that there is so many, and I didn't even realize, like you have the Streft, Tirem and Bowgrove courses, which I had no idea even about,
And it's really cool the way that it works. One of the caddies was telling us about how you kind of start on the Bowgrove course or the Himalaya's putting course and you kind of work your way up because there's like kind of this like tier system of courses and the difficulty, the length and all that. So like as you progress as a child and get better at the game of golf, you get to progress up the
golf courses. So it starts with the putting course, the Ladies Himalaya Putting Course, and then you move on to the bow Grove Course, which is like a Paul par thirty, like fifteen hundred yards, and then you have the strath Tim Course, which I believe is a par sixty nine
and it's probably like only fifty five hundred yards. And then kind of the three other main ones, like the Jubilee, the New and the Eden kind of sit in their own class, and then kind of the penultimate one of the Old Course, and I didn't really think too much about them, And then the more I got to get to know each of these courses, you really start to realize how different they are and how they all have like kind of these different landforms and just styles of
golf holes, where like the New Course and the Jubilee, a lot of the holes sit more on the ground and feel like kind of more of those natural links courses. And then the Eating Course has just like these incredible green complexes built by Harry Colet, and it just feels so different that it's like pretty fascinating that there are only a few hundred yards from each other, and each of the courses when you're playing them just feel so different.
And the landforms and the way that they look visually from the tea and when you're playing them is so different. And it honestly was like kind of reminding me of band and Dooms, where like it's all kind of the same area. It's all all the courses are on top of each other, but they each have such a strong identity that makes them all like so worth visiting each one and getting to know each one and play each one. So that was a big takeaway that I wasn't really
thinking about going in about the other courses. Obviously, if you're going to Saint Andrews, you're gonna be pretty focused on trying to play the old course and get on that ballot if you don't have a tea time secured. But there's so many other good good times to be had on the golf courses that are right next to the old course.
I I will contend that the most underrated golf trip is just you pick a weekend, especially for anybody on the East Coast, You fly into Edinburgh, you get it. You get a taxi that picks you up and just drops you at St. Andrew's and then you just go play, just go play the Links Truss courses and you don't have to do anything. You don't ever have to get
in a car. You just carry your bag and there's there's restaurants, all sorts of stuff to do, and you just enter the enter the ballot every day for the old course. But if you don't win, you go to the new course, you go to the Eden Course, you go to the Jubilee. Like that's a wonderful trip you play. You know, it could be like a you play one round of golf a day and hang out in town the rest of the day. Like I would be perfectly content doing that. I would love to do that more often.
Is just go and hang out, Like yeah, there's all these other great locales and people become enamored with like checking boxes. But there is something wonderful about just it's like, oh, I just went for three or four days and I'm I'm done. And there are so many other great golf courses in the area that you know, we went to We went to Krale, We played the thirty six holes there. I was actually I hadn't played the Craighead Course, the gill Hands Course, I loved it. Done Barney and and
and King's Barns. Get all the love is the new golf courses in that area. The thing I liked about Gills course was actually felt like it was old, like if you had told me that it was, you know, it felt more like there were a couple of greens where you're like, okay, like this is a gil Hans green and I can see it like it's a new green. But for the most part the golf course felt like I was playing another Scottish Links golf course, you know,
at King's at dun Barney. I think people have great times, they deliver awesome experiences, but to me, like one of the things is it's just, you know, it's a little bit of American American eyes and it's not like why I'm going to Scotland. That's not the type of golf I'm going to Scotland to play. But but to me
that that Links. You know, there's so many good golf courses in the area that you can obviously just arrange a taxi the night before to go play, but the but just playing the Links trust courses, you leave very happy. The Eden, the New and the Jubilee are all very well worth playing, and I haven't played the Castle yet. Hand up. The castles also look absolutely and so insane that I kind of want to play it.
I mean, and it's on like prime real estate. Like I didn't I didn't personally go up there, but I saw some of the photos you guys took and it's like such a spectacular site overlooking the entire Saint Andrew's city. So it's I mean, yeah, there's there's no shortage of options and kind of, like you said, my personal preference is if I'm going to Scotland to play, you know, golf courses that are hundreds of years old, those are the ones that I want to seek out and go see.
It's just really hard to build a modern golf course with modern equipment and make it feel like a golf course that's been sitting there for two hundred years and was basically kind of forged by nature.
Yeah.
Oh, look at you using the open slogan too.
That's that's one of the big bingo board. All right, what's your final big takeaway?
My final takeaway is kind of centered around the reverse course or the left hand routing, as some locals we'll call it. I was a bit skeptical going into it. I just thought like it was going to be a little bit more contrived and forced to like make thatt like going around the opposite way work. I know kind of all the history around it and how they would alternate basically weekly long ago, but I just wasn't really sure how it was going to be and if it
was just going to feel kind of gimmicky. But it turns out that there's like a blethora of really awesome golf holes, and a lot of things really illuminate themselves.
Like one thing that I think people can kind of this paints the picture well for him is when you're playing the sixteenth hole on the the clockwise or the correct routing, there's all these really cool rumples and contours right in front of the tee box on the sixteenth hole that you're basically just hitting your drive over and walking over, and you don't even think about them when
you're playing it the normal way. But then once you reverse it and you're playing what is that the third hole then out to that fifteenth green, it's like amazing how much these little contours come into play in your approach shot, and it just completely flips the script on you, and it really does present like this completely different golf course that it's just like it's almost like this eerie feeling because it's like, you know these greens in the
forward direction, you've become familiar with them and you know their identity. But then the second you turn around and play it in the opposite direction, it changes the entire dynamic of the golf holes. And there was just so many of them, especially on that kind of outward nine.
Playing the back nine in reverse essentially that works so well, and like some of those holes even feel like maybe they're even meant to be played in that direction and the green because the normal way you're coming in, the greens pitch away from you, and then when you play it in reverse, it's kind of a more typical back to front slope. So it was really just fascinating and it kind of shocked me of how well it work.
I mean, there's obviously a lot of things that don't work super well, like the loop at the end gets pretty wild on the reverse course and there's kind of balls flying everywhere, but.
The crossing nature of the reverse course you cross over three times, so there's definitely some shooting out, like you got to have your head on a squivel.
Yeah, and then when you're like, there's some holes where you step up to the tee and you're just like wait, wait, what, like we're playing over there? That makes no sense? Like it's just pretty wild. But but all in all, like it was. It was more so like it worked better than I than I anticipated and thought it would, which I wouldn't say I had the strongest desire to play it in reverse when I was going, just because I
haven't played it the normal way yet. But now after walking it and seeing it like I do, I do have a pretty a strong interest in trying to play it both ways.
Yeah.
I I was also shocked at how well uh some of the holes, as you said, the back nine on the regular course, on the on the course you know it, I thought it might actually be better going reverse. I
think the ninth holes better going reverse, for sure. But but there's there's I think if you if you mode it out completely, Like one of the tricky things is they just you know, because they play it the other the regular way all year round, some of the approaches aren't mowned if you mode that out, I I think
it's a really good golf course. Like I think, like the biggest issue with some of the holes, like on the on the front nine, get where it gets like the regular course is front nine, so the back nine of the of the reverse course it gets a little weird. But I think that's mostly because of the mowing situation.
But you know, it makes you It definitely makes me appreciate the loop and what Tom Doak did more there Having done this, it also makes me realize like how freaking good the old course would be if it was fully mode fully presented going both ways. You know, it would make It makes me want to have more reversible golf courses in golf. I think that's one of the big takeaways, Like, yeah, maybe one way is more famous,
but it's really fun to play the other way. I I'll say, you know that I played with Scott had an extra set of Hickorys that I played the reverse course with, and it was amazing some of the shots and the way you have to bounce shots in and the way bunkers. I think that's something that's been lost in a point that Scott makes and I think he makes it in this live podcast. If he didn't, he
made it a lot with us on camera playing. But the the old course used to be known for its hazards, not as greens, and now it's known, as you said earlier,
it's known for its greens, not necessarily its hazards. But when you're playing with the Hickory's God, the hazards are terrifying, like and you have to do things that you don't want to do in order to avoid hazards, more so than like with the aerial approach to the game now, where you have to get to certain sides of the fairway to to play in because you just can't stop a Hickory Club the way you can stop a modern sand wedge. So I yeah, I thought the reverse the
reverse exceeded my expectations. I thought it was going to be kind of like, you know, I hate to use this term, a little mickey mouse, but I it was awesome.
Yeah, it was certainly shocking. Do you think your experience would have been maybe hindered or less enjoyable and nervous with modern Do you think, yeah.
I would have just hit because it was it was set up at like six thousand yards.
I would have just hit so many little flip ledges.
Yeah, what's uh, let's get you out of here with a couple rapid fires here.
What was your favorite course that you played?
So I didn't play the old course or it reversed, so that kind of changes things a lot. But I think my favorite course was the Eden. I was I was just like, I kind of fell in love with the greens there. The first eleven holes are just simply amazing, really really cool. You play out to the estuary, the fourth hole place right along the Eden estuary, and then you kind of do this like mini loop and play another short part four along yestuary, and they's just the
greens are really cool. They definitely feel a lot different than kind of the the other courses where they're more kind of laying on the ground, and like these found greens that are kind of placed among really cool contours have a different feel, feeling like more modern, even though I believe it was built in the nineteen teens, if that makes any sense. But the Eden is for me at least a must play course if you're going to St. Andrews.
Yeah, some of the most amazing greens that I've ever seen, So cool, I would say there's like ten greens, ten greens that are like if you were a golf architect, I would say that there's like ten greens out there that every golf architect or aspiring golf architect should go see.
It's also cheap.
It's also like the cheapest course, one of the cheapest courses to play in the area.
So that's that's another reason to love it. I would be.
I would be very happy playing there every day, despite it having maybe the two worst holes I've seen in Scotland.
Yeah, I was gonna say, you just mentioned there's probably ten greens that you have to go see if you're an architect. There's also two holes that you have to go see on the back nine, so you can learn not what not to do when trying to add add new holes to an old Scottish links course.
Yeah.
Donald Steele renovated four holes, I believe, in order.
To held the triming range the hole.
So there's it's it's a design disaster. Hard stop. It's bad. So it feels like you've kind of like been transported. Me and you were both from Illinois, like a mediocre public facility in Illinois that's dead flat.
Yeah, with some.
Kind of crazy. I can't believe they have to fix that. I mean it would be that hard to get an architect in there to build like a couple of cool greens and get rid of the ponds. Yeah, all right, And then last question before we get you out of here, what was your best What's the best non golf thing you did?
I think overall it was just like being in Saint Andrew's.
We stayed in the house right and downtown and just being immersed in that college town and being able to walk around it and like, oh, we have a tea time, let's just grab our bags and walk to the links, with such an amazing kind of ability with how small the town is and how intertwined it is with all the golf that it was like, at least the thing that I enjoyed the most a couple quick shoutouts the I believe it's Jeanette's Gelato or Gelateria was an incredible
ice cream stop that we had on one of our last nights that was very enjoyable. Cameron and I went there after we were out shooting on the old course, so a little late night treat was really good and just like an overwhelming list of ice cream. There was probably six or seven different ones that I wanted to pick, so that's a quick shout out. And then lastly, the pasta I had at this restaurant called Dune that we
went to. It's a seafood place. I'm not a huge seafood guy, so I picked out the only pasta dish on the menu and there was fresh morell mushrooms in there and just really really fresh ingredients, and that was a delicious pasta I had.
Awesome, awesome. Well, Matt, thanks for all your hard work during the trip and coming on and chatting about your time in Scotland. Let's get over to Scott McPherson. But first let's talk about our friends over at Cobalt. I was out, you know, I was carrying my bag in most of these places and or pushing, did a little pushing too. And one of my handy dandy friends that helped me get around these golf courses was the Cobalt QZ six rangefinder.
What made it extra delightful.
Sometimes in Scotland they don't have like the little things on pins that help your rangefinder pick it out. That wasn't a problem for me because They have the six acts to twelve x optical zoom which lets you zoom in real tight on pins. Also really easy to you know, zoom in and get yardages on bunkers, and it avoids any issues maybe over clubbing where you shoot the trees in the and and end up with a bad number.
This is a rangefinder company. They make rangefinders, and you can tell because this is one of the most thought out products that I've ever come across. It just makes it really easy to use. It's really easy to turn on and off slope, it's really easy to you know, change your settings on how bright you want it.
It is a awesome, awesome product.
So it is super durable, it's got clear optics, and it's designed for consistent and reliable yardage yardages, and it's backed by a lifetime warranty. And it's only sold direct to consumer, which means you don't get any retail markup. So use the code fried egg Pod fifteen that's all one word fried egg Pod fifteen for fifteen percent off at Cobalt dash goolf dot com. That's Cobalt dash goolf dot com and use that promo code Frida egg Pod fifteen.
All right, let's get to our conversation with Scott McPherson. Huge thanks to Scott for his time and coming out, coming up to Saint Andrews for a couple of days to spend with us. Also huge thanks to the Links Trust in the Buyer Theater and I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation Scott. I you know, we had this whole intro planned out. We're gonna bring it on stage. We talked about this, this is what the this is what the mic check time was for. Anyways, it is
great to be here. Thank you to everybody that came out. Since the Old Course has started doing the Reversed Day, It's been at the top of my list of things that I've wanted to do and very very honored that the Links Trust suggested us doing. I believe this is the first ever live podcast in St. Andrews, So doing that and getting to you know, come out and experience this, I think we're all in for two spectacular, unforgettable days
of golf. When we started talking about doing a podcast about the Old Course and the Reversed Old Course, my brain all went to one person to talk and talk to and have come up here and be the expert on the Old Course. Our guest is Scott McPherson. He is a golf course architect who found himself in St Andrews spending a lot of time researching Saint Andrews while he was building a golf course nearby, which led him eventually to producing kind of I would say, a declarative
book on the history of Saint Andrews. It's it's incredibly well researched and incredibly well laid out. The book is called Saint Andrews The Evolution of the Old Course. So immediately when I was asked if we'd want to do a live podcast from here, immediately I was like, well, we've got to get Scott involved because he knows everything about the Old Course there is to know that. You know, there are probably some other great historians too, but that
I've come across. So I'm honored to be joined by Scott tonight and get to do this podcast.
Thanks Andy, It's great to be here and I really appreciate the invite that what the Links Trust have put on here in the biotheater is fantastic and opportunity to talk about the Old Course with you is great. I just know how passionate you guys are the fried Egg about history and about golf, and so this is a feels like a fitting place to talk about it.
Yes, yes, let's get into it. Can you bring us back to your first visit to the old course?
Yeah.
So I'm New Zealander by birth, hence the accent, but I've my grandparents are Scottish and they emigrated to New Zealand where my father was born, and we came back, you know, during the eighties we still had family here. But I'd been working for one point, Peter Thompson in Melbourne, the great Peter Thompson, five times Open champion. And this is in the in the mid nineteen nineties, towards towards the end, and things had slowed down in the design side.
There was quite a lot of work in Philippines in Asia, and they slowed down, and so Peter said, look, you know, what do you want to do? And there was an opportunity to stay with the company, but I really wanted to do a bit more travel. I felt as a designer I hadn't seen enough. And so while I'd been to St. Andrews previously in the eighties. At that point, I wasn't really a golfer. I didn't come from a golfing family, and I wanted to come back and learn
more about it. So I had a lot of knowledge from reading, from talking with Peter, and from reading the incredible library that it was Thompson Wolvag Parrot was the name of the company in those days. And so when I came, I thought, great, this is this is a
wonderful place to be. And Peter had written a really nice letter, an introduction letter to Michael Banellick at the time, and so I called up the RNA and said, look, you know, I've got this letter and it'd be you know, if there's a chance to meet mister Banellick, I'd be really appreciate it. So I got invited into the trophy room and sat down with Michael and he said, Scott,
what do you want to do? And I said, I'd like to stay with a golf course design and he said, oh, well, actually there's a new resort.
Planned for s Andrews.
And this is in August of nineteen ninety eight and the new resort is now Fairmont s Andrews with s Andrew's Bay at that time, but they didn't have planning permission.
But I was invited to a meeting.
One of the great things about that meeting, which was in Younger Hall, I'm sure in the audience audience here with no Younger Hall, the great Jene Saracen was there.
You know. He had been flowing over.
With the developer A, a guy in pharmaceuticals called Don Panos made his money inventing the nicotine patch, so he'd flown Gene Sarason over and they had a resort in Atlanta called Chateau Land.
So I had a bit of a heads up.
Michael had said, by the way, I think that the man who invented the sand wedge is going to be at this meeting. So I rushed down to a bookshop called Quarto no longer exists. It was on Golf Place, and there was Margaret in there, and I said, Margaret, do you have Gene Sarason's autobiography Thirty Years of Championship Golf? Maybe have a look, And it was a fact similarly like a reprint. That's all I need. Rushed off of this meeting and got Gene Sarason's You know, I can't
remember how old. He was in his nineties at that point, and I still was one of the prize books of my collection and a great read, by the way, So that led to me.
Your early golf life. I'm working for Peter Thompson and then you stumble across a meeting with Jeene Sarazon. It's like two of the greatest major champions of all time.
Yeah, And in fact, if you line them up, you could see over Jean Saracen's head to Peter Thompson's head. Jean Sarason was so short. I couldn't believe how tiny he was. And actually when we was going a bit off piece here, but eventually we built the golf courses out at St. Andrews Bay, and one of the holes there, which was originally the third hole, is quite a long
downhill part three. And remember Jeene Sarason saying, Scott, the one thing this hole needs to do is if you're in the wrong half of the green.
It's a really tough three part. So there's a ridge that runs through it.
And I haven't played there for a couple of years, so I remember last time I was up there and I looked back and I thought, gee, I still got Jeen Sarason's words ringing in my ears.
So yeah, and they're incredible.
We're lucky with the game of golf that we've had all these incredible men who have paved the way. You know, you and I come along, you know, sort of down the back of the bus, do our best. But you know, we're very fortunate with golf and what it's given us.
Yeah, Yeah, it's amazing. There's a feeling I think because they've shared passion. People give back and give back their time and lend advice. I certainly have been the lucky recipient of some great advice from people that have achieved so much in the game. What were your big kind of things that stood out to you about the old course having spent so much time originally, like if you can think back to when you were younger.
Yeah, So while we were waiting to build s Andrews Bay, I had a year and a friend of mine was New Zealand guy I was doing his pH d at the university, and he said, well, I was like really a bit of a loose end. Despite having met Jean, we weren't sure havings would go and all my parents have said, I don't know what to do, and they.
Said, well what do you just stay so soon? What am I going to do?
You know, it's quite We didn't actually know it was going to be a year at that point, but it was. So I ended up caddying and my friend was university, that's what they did in the summer. So I thought, great, I've done a little bit on the Australasian Tour, so I can carry a bag. And so I went down to the caddy master was a guy called Rick Mackenzie. Anybody remember Rick Mackenzie, gruff old character. Looked at me up and down. He said, you don't look like you'd be.
Much of a caddy.
Sounds like a good caddy master.
He was probably right, actually bindsight, and I said, I'm not sure how good i'd be, Rick, to be honest with you, but I like the game. And he said, well, what have you been doing with yourself? And I said, I've been working for Peter Thompson. Peter Thompson, you're in. So that led to caddying for a year. I think we did about three hundred rounds, two hundred and twenty of them or something on the old course and it
was a great experience. I mean to learn the old course and go round and round with these older guys mainly, and I started at the bottom as a bad carrier. You know, you didn't say very much, you definitely kept up and you know, I saw parts of the course
that I had never seen before. And it really just in having spent the time with Peter and knowing what I thought I knew, and then hearing from the caddies all the bunkers were made by sheep, and you know, the railway station was built and make up a year, particularly as they're coming towards the end of around and wanting a bigger gratuity, a bigger tip, make up anything. And I was like, well, there has to be some data, some information, and I couldn't. So that's what really started
me on. You know, what became the book eventually just a personal research project.
You know, at this point, you you want to be a golf architect. You're in the field. Caddying is I think an amazing thing from you know, a perspective of golf architecture because you're you're exercising strategy, You're you're carrying a bag and oftentimes so you're you know, carry carr for somebody who needs help getting around the golf course
and you're guiding them on ideal lines of charm. Were there holes in particular that you thought, wow, like I can really save someone because they think they should go over here, but we should go over here.
Yeah, I think certainly. Probably.
It takes about twenty rounds, would be my feeling before you really start to understand the strategy of the old course. And my experience was that started to build up almost an aerial view, so what you were seeing off the ground and you know, sort of that point, sort of seven of the first nine holes were blind off the tee. So for a first time, it's very discombobulating and not really not sure where you're going. It's double greens and
where do I take my bag? And so yeah, I think from a caddy perspective, pretty early on in the round, usually by halfway down the first hole, if not the second, you've figured out the level of ability that you've got and the idea. You know, in those days, Rick mackenzie was like, right, Scott, you've got to make your own yardage book. Can you imagine that? You know, now we've got lasers, you buy everything there was no yardage books. There was no distances on sprinkler heads, so you know,
it's literally like a homework project. Fortunately I could draw and I'd done it, you know, done a bit of it, so my handiwork was decent enough to get the seal of approval from mister mackenzie.
But it was every caddy had to make their own yardish.
But that's right, you didn't get a job until you had your own book.
I've still got mine, I've framed on the wall at home actually, along with my little caddy badge. But it was and there was a bit of swapping of books going on. It'say, okay, you know, Jim going to borrow your book just to check there was up.
These were right.
But it's really hard to explain to people now that the art of caddying has probably changed a little bit lately.
Lately everybody's got their own yardage guy.
But at that point we were really trying to figure out how far a person would hit their five.
Iron, three would whatever club.
And then it was a case of not saying it's one hundred and seventy five yards or whatever it might have been. It was literally giving them the seven I and five iron three would whatever they might have been. So yeah, I felt there was an art involved at that point.
What I used to caddy, I would figure out the yardages and then just adjust the numbers to fit whatever the golfer thought the yardages were.
Yeah, that happened too, Definitely, there's some ego stroking that takes place along the way. The women were a lot better than men, was my takeaway from much of my caddying was it was they tended to take direction a lot, a lot better. So read into that whatever you wish to.
What is there a particular hole from your caddy experience that you thought was you know, really beguiling of like a novice on the old course as to the way that you should play it versus the way you you know, your intuition would take you to play it.
Yeah, I mean the classic is always fourteen. I mean it's Alistair Mackenzie obviously did that famous plan which led him into golf course design, and even now I just think fourteen is such a clever hole. It's chained based on equipment through the years. You know, what they would have been doing with the Hickory clubs and what we're doing now with modern balls and modern clubs, it's very different.
But certainly the amateur player who doesn't have the distance off the tea is still trying to figure out do I take on the beardies? Okay, now I've got past them. Do I go short of Hell? Do I go overheld bunker? Do I play down the fifth fairway? And so that whole idea of strategy is I think still alive for the amateur golfer through that. I mean, it's just still everyone talks about seventeen, and rightly so it's a great hole.
But I think I think from a design perspective and from a playing experience, fourteen is still a really fantastic hole.
I mean, and that green is just unbelievable green. You know, it's it's like a contrary I think. You know, I spend twenty twenty two the Open all day every day out there watching and walking, and you know, it's just
a counterintuitive green. Where to me that Rory McElroy lost that major by knocketing that his second shot passed the hole and having to contend with that severe false front, it's like, if you can get it passed, which is still counterintuitive, you know, most golf holes you just learn long as dad, and it's like you push a path, then you're chipping road back up the hill, you know, and it's actually much easier. You don't have to contend with that false front, that's right.
So and we were almost leading ourselves into a conversation around the reverse course as well, right, so I would.
So you've been cadding, you know, and we'll get we'll get into the reverse in a second. But what led you from there to start? You know, what became this exhaustive book project, Well.
That I liked.
I like to know why something might have happened, so, you know, once I put together within the book for those who have it towards the back, there's a double page fold out and it shows the length of all.
The holes for all the Open championships held in St. Andrews.
And that was for me, my into trying to figure out when the old course had changed, which led to a y. So it became very little data from early on. So the first Open was at s Andrews in eighteen seventy three and then it's sort of been played reasonably
regularly ever since. But there's not a lot of early early data until really the late eighteen hundreds, eighteen ninety eighteen ninety five and then and then it's very good data from then on, and I started to see really quite significant changes to the length of the old course, and particularly around nineteen hundred was the first big one which we can track with accuracy, and there was a
moment so why would that be? And at the same time I was tracking length, I was starting to look at technology as well, and it was quite clear that if we follow the ball in particular, golf has been played in s Andrews in the fourteen hundreds, and then the feathery golf ball came in in sixteen eighteen, and we went for about two hundred and twenty years until the gull a Perture, which everyone will know had a big impact on Old Tom and his relationship with Alan Robertson,
and we ran with that ball for quite a long time, and then an eighteen forty eight came the Gutter Perchure, and then we moved into the has School, which was nineteen oh one. So he's starting to have this alignment now between changes to length of the old course and technology. And they added between those two opens nineteen hundred and nineteen oh five exactly two hundred yards, most of it to the front nine, and you can correlate it exactly back to the introduction of the Haskel ball. That so
for me that was, oh, that's quite interesting. And then as you track that information through as the ball changes and we get different versions of the gutter perchase, the gutter perchure, and then moving into the hash school with the rubber corl ball and more recently the pro v one, there is this returning theme of improvement and equipment, primarily the ball also you know shafts obviously, and then into clubhead a bitsize the face of the thing. So they
all work together. People debate about is it the ball is the face, it's everything together. But from the old course point of view, you can see for the first time. So that's why, you know, it's really important to understand that golf course design never leads the way. It's always been a response and it remains a response today.
Yeah, I mean in a way, it's really the only course that has been around and evolved with technology, correct.
Yeah, So that's its importance.
You know, it's our only touchstone to be able to prove in a linear way that as this has been an open venue right through all those changes, and other venues weren't. Some have come and gone, whether it's press work or whether it was Muscle Brough, which were early venues. This is the only venue which has stayed relevant through
all those periods. And we can look at data. We can say, well, in eighteen ninety five the old course was six thousand, three hundred and twenty three from memory yards long, and we go that to the last Open Championship in twenty two and it was seven thousand, three hundred and thirteen. So there's almost exactly one thousand yards different between one hundred and thirty years. And what's happened
to scoring in that time? Well, in eighteen ninety five from memory, the score was I think three hundred and twelve and when cam Smith won it was two hundred and sixty eight in all time low.
So we've had fifty four strokes less in one thousand yards more. You know, what do you think about that? Right? It's crazy?
I find myself laughing. There's a club in the States, Biopia Hunt Club, that hosted a number of US opens in the in the eighteen hundreds, and they loved to talk in the early nineteen hundreds, they'll have to you know, we have the highest scoring us self is like, well, you know, the equipment's changed quite a bit, you know, it has.
But this idea that length will will solve you know, say it's going to defend parts of hypothetical number. So it's a rather tenuous conversation, but we can now track that one thousand yards longer over one hundred and thirty years has not at all slowed down scoring. It's you know,
because and you can say why. There's lots of reasons why, but you know, there's it's multifactorial about how we get But that's the value of the old courses that the guys and I think we've got now the RNA and the USGA really great custodians who are very serious about the impact of the ball on playing experience. Because what's happened in one hundred years is the game's got slower, more expensive, and has it got more fun?
Debatable?
Batable?
You know, So it depends on who you ask, Yeah, it depends.
So it's a you know, as the courses get longer, and this is from it, this is my day job, really, so as the golf courses get longer because the ball and clubs are going further at a new developers question might be how much land do I.
Need to buy?
Well, it's more than ten years ago or twenty years or fifty years ago, right, so we need to buy more land. The golf course needs to be longer, it needs to be wider because of the ball sort of safety issues and ball strike incidents. And then it's obviously they haven't got to be maintained. So there's a lot it's more expensive to buy, it's more expensive to build, it's more expensive to maintain.
So those costs are all passed on. And who are they passed on to?
Consumer?
Consumer?
You know, the member, the green fee player who so so not only has our game got longer and slower, it's.
Got more expensive as well.
And you know, we can talk, we can move into a conversation about the role this rollbacks. Not a rollback, it's more of a line in the sand. You know, I would love to have seen them go further back. Now there's a lot of pushback from manufacturers and this is ground which probably is slightly more shaky. But my view is that it would have been better a while ago to try and slow the ball down.
I think it would have helped a lot more.
But we are where we are now, so I'm reassured by I think the stewardship that we've had within the RNA and the USGA, that they're fully aligned. I'm not sure there's other sectors of the industry which are.
It's a basic conversation. Had a lot of those conversations last week at the Masters, and I think there's a lot of different opinions out there, you know. I think the Old Course is like the perfect example of what happens. I always use this as a Chicago and from the States.
But you know, if baseball hadn't regulated the bats, you know what would what would we say if it was like, you know what, it's too small, too small of a field, we can't play in regular anymore or funway, people would be outraged and and it's it's kind of you know, we're getting to that point with with a lot of our venues, you know, and you know, I definitely regulation, and as your book illustrates, you know, distance and the changes to the Old Course are heavily correlated. And then
the scoring reduction. If you could take us to the early days of golf at the old course. What did it look like? And what did the golf course look like?
Yeah, so this is this is I mean, it's it's been an incredible change.
Right.
Imagine golf being played here in the fourteen hundreds and how wild that would have been with a with a wooden ball, probably a hardwood, not a soft wood. But you know there's there's no mos right, it's a concept of mowing grass. So you know it was a target cross country adventure from one patch of being asked rescue grass to the next. And you know, there was no sense of how many holes we're going to play. It was wild out there. You know, there was long, there
was winds, and there's gorse. So the same things would be.
It would it be if you look at the beach when you see the dunes, right, would it be almost imagining looking at that and there'd be just you'd pick a point in the distance and play there.
Yeah.
I think that's you know, that's almost the point you've got to get to in your imagination is almost imagining a place, a beachside location with no golf on it and figuring out if you could And you know, this is this early period because you know, they talk now that there was a period there in seventeen sixty four where the course became eighteen holes, and up to that
point it'd be twenty two. And I try to think back to what was it in fifteen hundreds, Well, it might have been three or seven, or there was no number. It was a you know, you played from point to point and then at some point you decided to come back. So fortunately what we have in eighteen twenty one is the first play.
I'd like to be down in a match and decide, get to decide when I come back.
It's right, yeah, now we got.
To keep going.
Game over. I won three up with Nundergo. It's kind of like that, but it was. And so so what do we know?
Right? If we don't know that, when do we start to know stuff.
So there's a guy who I think will go down in history very favorably called James Cheap Strathiram. Strathiram State still exists, and there'd been a crazy period in the late seventeen hundreds where the town had gone bankrupt and that sold the old course. I think to a guy called Thomas Erskin from memory, and he had decided to farm rabbits. Over the next twenty odd years, there was a lot of rabbits out there doing a lot of damage to this golf course where people were still.
Trying to play.
So along came Aimes Cheap and he bought the course and he made a map of it, and that map still exists in the RNA, have it. And in order to define what the golfing ground was, he put in the ground boundary markers. Boundary markers are now known as march stones, and they still exist. There's one in the middle of the fifth fairway and they're dotted around the place.
There is a ball headed in the last open. I remember a drive. Yeah, it could have will have happened like Rick Across.
I've seen it happen when I certainly when I was caddying. They're now covered instead of artificial shields to try and protect them.
But that sort of defined the other thing. So I am.
Thinking, right, okay, great, we've got to plan eighteen twenty one, and the parameters are kind of defined. And at that point there is eighteen holes, right, eighteen holes, but actually there's only ten holes, so it's an eighteen hole course.
But if you think.
About it, they dig a hole for the one, they dig a hole for two, three, all the way up to nine, so with nine holes in the ground, and then they have to play back, so there are at nine and then they play back to the eighth hole, black to the seventh hole, back to the sixth, and then they have to have one home hole. So there's actually only ten physical holes in the ground, even though.
In the holes at this point they aren't like what we think of a horse.
No, So at that point the hole cutter hadn't been invented, and there's great conversations around that it was a drain pipe and it was old Tom and I think there was still a little bit myth around there, but certainly in eighteen twenty one there was not a hole cutter, and we did some found some material when the book was updated, and it was it was a story about how the caddies would go out, the first caddies of the day would go out and cut the holes. So
you can imagine it's still pretty wild out there. They find a lovely bit of a rescue ground the right we're going to cut the hole. He had literally have a hand trail and dig a hole in the ground, right like you're in a garden, yes, and there's no flax, right, So now they have to caddy has to stand near that hole as the other golfers and the other caddies come up and play to it, and then they go to the next one dig the hole.
The first group out has to do the digging.
And because at the end of the day they're all filled back in. And we've got this written down in tech. So there's no flags and there's no holes, and they're kind of made up as you go, and I mean it's a different game, right.
They have the first caddy utst up born. I didn't wake up on the wrong side of the bad too.
Yeah, that's right. Well, this is also like to tee it up. They were taking sand out of the hole. Then for them to tee up the ball tea up put it on amount of sand to play off the next one.
So the hole would actually get bigger as the day.
Won't potentially and all the ground around it would become rougher because there's all these little piles of.
Sand that are coming along. So we know that that was happening.
That's all been documented, and we also know through the rules of the game that in order to compensate the rules where we had to be one club length from the hole and then laid on it was two, then four, then eight and twelve and eighteen eighty eight they's actually scrapped that rule. So from eighteen eighty eight for the first time we actually you know, it's separate teas for the tea in grounds. It's terminology is tyfinically talk about tea.
Is that the peg or is at the ground. Okay, so we're talking now talking about the tea and ground could be separate a non specified distance from the cup the whole and again, cups at that point didn't really exist.
That was old tom.
So the first cup was in the eleventh hole on the old course because it kept caving in. So again the terminology keeps changing. Is that the game keeps changing. But yeah, the holes were were so now we now we kind of have unpicked how will that happened?
It must have been an incredible time, yeah.
I mean wild time. Yeah. When when did it become an eighteen hole course? And when when was it this reversible course or what was the terminology then of this course? When did that come to be?
So this is so we try to talk through these this sort of period from the eighteen hundred, so we know that from eighteen twenty one that was the first plan of the golf course and this was starting to be a really dynamic period. The sort of mid eighteen hundreds were where in the you know, the RNA it was, you know, the Society of s Andrew's Golfers that started in seventeen fifty four and they renamed themselves in eighteen
thirty four. There's another club in Perth which became Royal Perth Golfing Society, and so the RNA thought, hang on, we're more senior, far more royal, we will claim that title. So they went to the King at the time and renamed themselves. At that point they weren't in the current clubhouse that was built. I think eighteen fifty four was you know, the railway opened in eighteen fifty two and two years later the current RNA Clubhouse as we know
it was built. And at that point try to imagine this that the current first fairway didn't exist, that there was. If you could imagine a line from the left hand side the town side of the RNA Clubhouse all the way down to the left side of the current first green that was Beach and it was really from eighteen fifty four up until the bruce embankment was finished in eighteen ninety seven.
That was when that.
Started to get wider. So there was a really dynamic period. And that point Old Tom Morris had gone to Prestwick. He had come back in eighteen sixty four and then we had a ten year period where lots changed. The eighteenth Green was built and opened in eighteen sixty nine. Within a couple of years the first green, which has been another mystery, I think we've solved that now.
It never existed. It sort of emerged as the hole.
Remember at this point the seventeenth Green was a double green, so had two holes cut in it and the one closest to the burn as you play the the old course and reverse one you play to That started to move towards the sea because there washerwomen there and they were trampling down the grasses and the game had become a lot more popular. People were coming off the train.
The cost of golf had come down because the gut of Perchy was a lot cheaper than a feathery ball, so all these people were coming and now there's lots of golfers and they needed a wider sort of course in which to play and old tom so that was an incredibly dynamic period in the evolution of the old course.
An amazing trivia item would be what are the newest halls on the old course? Most people wouldn't ever think it'd be one in eighteen.
Yeah, no, you know.
And of course at that point, so there was a period where there was one double green, so we had no double greens, and then there was some safety issues. So the first double green in the eighteen thirties was eighteen thirty four, I think for a memory was five and thirteen, and then within twenty five years or so, the RNA said, well, the game's still growing, we've got safety issues out there. All all the greens are now going to be double greens. Course, the two that weren't
were nine and eighteen. As you came back, and then we had this split between eighteen seventy and eighteen seventy two, just prior to the first Open in eighteen seventy three, we had this evolution of the first green kind of moving towards the sea.
And we know.
It because there was a court case which happened in eighteen eighty five, and it was to do with trespassing of all things on the Himalayas the ladies putting course, and there was a guy called James Denham who was accused of trespassing, and his point was, well, hang on,
I can play wherever I want. And at that point there had been that section of ground which is the lady's putting course, was privately rented for the purpose of the lady's putting course, and Old Tom was told to usher this chap off the course and he said, well, I've got the right to play wherever I want. So it became a court case, and it could have gone
either way. As it turned out, this guy lost. But what became interesting during the two days it was held and the Cooper Court were all the great and good of s Andrew's, including Old Tom, Stuart Grace, who was the honorary Secretary of the RNA, a number of other players, you know, well known players who competed in the open all turned up and they gave their view, and so it started to paint this picture of what the washerwomen
were doing. And Old Tom's sister was a washerwoman, so she was part of the court case and they were saying, well, you know, they would go down there and they would light fires under these big bowls and take water out of this fulk and burn, take down their sheets and blankets and dip them in and put them on the gorse to dry. And that was just knocking down all
this grass. So when the popularity of the game was going old Tom took the opportunity to slowly cut this hole closer and closer, and that's how we ended up with what is now known as the First Green.
Unbelievable. It's like all the societal influences that led to golf in the Hall built at this point, is is it a reversible course or what? Where you know? And how did it work? How did they go about, you know, changing which direction you played at.
Yeah, so obviously if we go back to that eighteen twenty one plan, we know at that point it's a very narrow course and it's linear, and but there's not many people playing, right, so occasionally be people going out and they're coming back. They probably all know each other, they're probably members of the at that point, but it still would have been the St. Andrew's side of Andrew's Golfers hadn't become the RNA at that point, so they
would have been familiarity. And then there's more people coming. People who don't know each other probably don't know the golf course. So there's this build up, the courses getting wider and busier, and there's this need to try and
have some degree of separation between the two courses. So from a really around the eighteen seventies up until sort of just after the Open eighteen seventy three, up until about nineteen oh five, there was the left and right hand course which was the terminology of the day, and it alternated week on week, and the idea was that there was the competition course was always the right hand course, and that stood except for one time.
And that's the course they play today, the right hand course, correct.
Correct, So we now play the right hand course. And so the question was, well, why did they choose to lengthen the right hand course, And the answer really is safety related in terms.
Of the reverse course.
Or the left hand course has three crossovers, it's possible to do it two crossovers, but at the moment really it's always been three three crossovers. So you have one in eighteen and then you've got sort of seven and eleven, which we kind of have, and then there's nine to ten, and so that's a less safe course than what the right hand course is with just the single crossover at seven and eleven.
So effectively, you know, because you know everybody, most people here will experience this because you're playing and you're going to have t shirts going in opposite directions while people are playing whole that's how they decided the right hand course had to win out.
Yeah, I think it was as simple as that.
It was literally a safety related And of course then once they start, so we've got this time eighteen eighty eight when individual separateees can be built right around the same time. So there's this correlation between the rules changing, equipment changing, old course changing. That led to a series of decisions that we now see, you know, the old course through a modern prism, just through. But it was like, well,
how did we get to where we are? So once they started lengthening the right hand course, which is the course we know right and play today, mostly you've got to kind of keep going at that point and probably the one way, the one hole that we can see what's happened, which is teas come right and they go back.
Is is the fourteenth hole again? Because I think we've got just to the right of the bunker which sits to the right of the thirteenth green, there's a pop punker there just next to it, within ten yards or so,
there's this small rectangular, flat bit of ground. It's my view that that was possibly the first individual tea built once the rules change in eighteen eighty eight, so with old time, and then from there there's very clear aerial photography now which shows that continuation of the tea moving right and further back.
With a reversible course. And you know, were there benefits to having people play different ways? And how did that work? Did you did they switch it every day? How did the logistics of deciding which way people played every day occur?
We know from documentation that it changed every week. So there was a thirty year period there between eighteen seventy three ish seventy four through to about nineteen oh five it would literally alternate. And the reason given was really around wear and tear is that when you play the course the opposite way, obviously balls will end up in
a different place. One thing's quite interesting about when you think about that, and you go, okay, let me see if you look at the whole, we know it's sixteen if you don't right hand course, but it's three if you're playing in reverse and you draw a line between the middle of the sixteenth green. I'm going to use modern numbers here because it's easier if you draw a line between the sort of sixteenth green and the fifteenth green and you try to find midpoint between those two points.
Guess where it is.
Midpoint between the fifteenth and sixteenth green would be three fair away.
Well, yeah, kind of, but it lines up almost perfectly with principal's nose, a hole which is one hundred and eighty five yards so literally one hundred and eighty five yards on as the princip's own when you're playing the other way, So perfect position for bunker right, and you've got to imagine the course is narrow. A three fairway didn't really exist at that point, so no matter which
way you're playing, Principal's nose was in play. Yeah, and so you know, now we fly over it both ways when you're playing it and and you're playing out, So there's all these little things that have changed. You know, whether you attribute a reason to that or not, but it goes to show that not only has the old course change in length, that's changed in width, and along with that has has been strategic change in the way the course is played.
What do you think are some of the standout halls on the left hand or reversible course.
Yeah, well, I mean it starts off with a cracker. I mean I think one in reverse is and you know, playing to seventeen green from that way actually is a really great hole. You know, do I play left? You know, do I play closer to the road and try to come in that way, or do you go why and try to come in and avoid the road bunker.
It feels like you should just tell people to play to one green and then they'll end up left, yeah, because they'll avoid right. Yeah, that's right, and then you'll be in the perfect spot to play seven to seventeen green.
Yeah.
Well it's fun too because at that point that's little section of seventeen green slopes back towards you, so it's actually quite receptive. Go long you're on the road, and go the other long right side you're in the bunker. So that's a really terrific hole. Seventeen and reverse is one of the hot hardest holes I think I've ever played in my life. You know, it's hard to imagine sort of holes on the PGA tour that can be
more tricky than what it is. It's a long drive and the pinch point there is where the track kind of comes around the Old Course Hotel and you've got cheap spunker on one side and you're trying to get as far up as you can, and particularly if you're playing, say with Heckory clubs, because you've then got to come across a bunker right in front of the green, and most of that green then slopes away away from you, so you're struck and initially straight off, you know, off
the bat with this really tough start. So I really enjoy the Old Course in reverse, and there's certainly a series that you talked earlier about the fourteenth green. That hole makes a lot more sense when you play edit reverse, as does twelve in reverse. People come over and I remember caddying and people say where am I meant to hit this ball? We say, well, hit it over in the rough on the right hand side. Why would I hit it in the rouff? It's like, well, there's bunkers
that you can't see. Why can't I see the bunkers? But when you're playing reverse, of course, you can see all the bunkers, right, So you go, okay, this one, I get it now, I now get it.
Why this course was so engaging both ways?
Is there a hole that's famous on the right hand course that you don't think works as well? Because everybody's always said that, like twelve doesn't make a lot of sense. It's actually like you stand on the T box. Every time I've a T box, I'm just like, this makes no sense whatsoever. But then when you play the other way, it's like, oh, this makes sense. Is there a hole on the right course you feel that way after you've
seen it play reverse? That makes less sense, you know, in the inal routing, And.
It's probably not. I mean maybe i've maybe I haven't thought about. That's a really good question. Leave it with me.
Nothing jumps off my bat. I think they're pretty logical because they've been adjusted so much through time, you know, I think was when I look back at you know, this continued expansion with wise, what does become clear is that the central that the old course really its identity is around the central hazards more than the peripheral and of course as the course got wider, decisions were made to try and punish offline shots, so pop bunkers were
added down the sides of the golf course. But I keep reminding myself that actually this course was very narrow and the hazards, the most important hazards are still the central ones. And we've gone through this interesting change where back in those days the hazards were king right, you know, if you could talk.
About done, if you go into like hell Banker.
Also as a member of here, or Preswick or Raws and George's where we you know, people would talk about the Cardinal or the Alps or hell Bunker and they were proud, you know, how difficult their course was and how many shots it took to escape from these god forsaken places. Now that's changed, you know, now people go, oh my god, have you seen the green over it? You know, fifteen or whatever hold, you know, whatever course you're talking about. So we compare courses differently now than
we did, well they did in those days. And if you go into the RNA, if you have that opportunity, the bunkers are not they're planned and they're and they're named, and they're measured, and now.
We do that with greens.
So I think from a design perspective, I was quite captivated by how there's been a shift and how we identify our and rate to a degree our golf courses.
Yeah, I mean the thing about the old courses. The greens are amazing. I was going to ask you about, you know, the double greens. How did they almost allow a reversible concept to exist? The actual green complexes themselves?
How did they exist? How did the.
Yeah, like, what role did the greens play in this course being able to be reversible?
Well, probably because they're central, So because everything was fairly central, and I guess in my mind, I'm still thinking about that concept of eighteen twenty one plan eighteen holes but only ten cups cut and then this growing popularity of the sport and then the safety related aspects. So the RNA is saying the committee meeting, right, chaps, you know, we've had some issues here. Bob got hit last week. You know, maybe we should bring in at another hole.
I suspect there was a fairly logical conversation which led to a practical solution.
Is that answering your question.
Yeah, it makes sense. So they all started, you know, visually central and if you said their safety from people playing back to the natural idea would be go like this right, it was very functional you think about it. Yeah, and that's what makes the whole thing work. Yeah.
Correct.
So then so then we talk about when did mo's come in? Like what you know what Hang on a second, what's happened here with technology?
Not so.
We've talked about club and ball, but there's a whole nother level of sort of agronomy taking place as well. So what happened with you know, in the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties MOA's became important. Great, well, where now we can expand these putting areas, these green types areas. And I remember talking with talking with Peter Thompson and Melbourne and he would say, Scott, do you do you know what was do you know why we had practice rounds?
I think I knew why Peter and he would say, well, it was to learn the speed of the green So here we are in the fifties and sixties where you know, the stimp meter was not really invented, it wasn't important, and you know he went out and they all went out to try and figure out that the fifth green was slightly slower than the seventh, which was faster than the twelfth, which was slower than the thirteenth or whatever.
Made notes you know that they didn't care, Peter said, they didn't care about the color of the grass, didn't care about the speed of the green, just as.
Long as it was smooth. That was the art of putting.
So now it's changed again, right, Yeah, you know every green, you know, you see the RNA and all the tournaments, and they're like, well today the stimp is ten point eight or twelve point two or.
In the hater cud whatever it might be.
Yeah, So well, I hang on, this is a change. This was never important before, but it is now.
Is it right? Is it wrong?
You know, people will have different views on that. I wonder if something's been lost. I think Peter probably wondered if something had been lost as well. I don't from a design perspective, div when we saw a few years ago twenty eleven, twenty twelve, there was a small change on the eleventh green where they tried to regain a historic pin position, because once you're running really above ten on the stimp meter, particularly with any type of breeze,
there's no way to really stop a golf ball. So we have this sort of thing with design where you're really trying to get that about a one percent somewhere maybe between half a percent one and a half percent around those puddable areas. So I know it was controversial at the time, I actually liked it. I thought getting that pin position close to hill bunker, which is one of the really iconic bunkers if you know the story
of Bobby Jones getting stuck in that bunker. So this idea that we're speeding up greens but we're losing pinnable area, and particularly classic pinnable area, is a touch point for discussion. And you know, so you run, say forward to the open in twenty twelve, at twenty fifteen, and then twenty twenty two, and you look at what the RNA we're trying to do, this whole idea of maybe defending par again,
and it comes down to pin positions. You know, how close can they be tup to mounds or on the first green, how close could it be over the swilkn burn. So we have really great data now, so they release all the pinnable information. We know in twenty twenty fifteen there was four pin positions over the four days, round one, two, three, four, And on three of those days it was really tight to the burn. Round one two it was twelve and thirteen yards. Round three it went thirty yards to the
back of the green. This is measurements from the front. And on round four it came back and it was twelve yards from the burn. And you jump forward to the next open and you know, again technology has improved, RNA is still looking to you know, protect par and provide other you know, and provide other challenges. Right, And the greens of the pin positions for that year were identical almost to the previous year, except they were closer.
To the burn.
So now round one six yards, Round two seven yards, Round three thirty one yards, Round four back.
To sort of six yards.
So we've halved the difference between in seven years. We've gone from twelve being quite close to the burn to six, six or seven yards.
It's an interesting thing.
Well, I mean, I think the undertones of all this discussion is like you and it's kind of the fascinating thing about the old courses, the evolution from the fourteen
hundred's where it's this is wild. You're playing on the beach effectively through dunes on you know, uncapt unmown grass with wooden sticks to you know today where you have you know, track bands and you know clubs that the bill to fit your clubs, to optimize your spin rates, to get the perfect the ideal launch for your your game, to the maintenance practices getting to be moan it's it's effectively becoming a less and less kind of wild battle
against nature game that that you started with. And and you know, and this is the historical you know canvas that's undertaken.
This whole change, so we can agree it's changed, right, Oh yeah, And so then you move into and it's not it's not good language to use, but there is one better, you know what is better?
Mean?
Right, depends on the person you ask. And that that's the whole box of rocks if you get into that.
Yeah, it really is. So you know, we we.
Competitive golf gives us an opportunity to compare things. Particularly the data coming out now is we're drowning and data more than we've ever had. But what's a good golf experience? You know, what does that mean to somebody, I mean ultimately, actually a good golf experience is just playing with nice people and having a good social time.
But if we're trying to find the.
Best golfers, then there's certain tests that need to be faced, they need to be presented, and then then the golfers need to try and do them. So what how does that play out in the setup of a golf course? And we've seen we can now see how that plays out from agronomy point of view, we can see that how a length point of view, and then we can
see that in a scoring point of view. You know, was the twenty twenty two Open better than the twenty fifteen, better than two thousand, better than nineteen sixty four or Jack's when you know, there's so many factors that go into.
That, it's very hard to say, well that was the best.
But certainly people have is saying well, actually, if we're trying to align the score, you know, the winning score with par with length, actually you go back to the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties where everything kind of align before everything took off again. Now we're well below PA. So it's a great debate. It's I'm not sure as a clear answer.
No, there isn't. It's you know, like many things, it's up to everybody's individual interpretations. Last question before we dive into some opens of yesteryear with Brendan and Kevin, for just you know, somebody's playing the next two days. What are what's like a couple things they can do to get the most out of it from like understanding the architectural and reverse aspect of the golf course.
Yeah, it's a tricky, but I think it's a saying earlier if it's your first time, I mean, just relax. You know, know that every famous golfer who's ever walked the planet has played on this course with one exception.
Anybody know who was that? Correct?
The only part I would say that's that he the only famous golfer we know never played in s Andrew's course. He won the Open at conny Sea, but everybody else has. So I think when people come to s Andrew's and play the old course, just know that you're among the greats because it takes a while to try and really figure out what the angles are in order to you know, and depending on your ability, what's really fantastic. I think
about the Old Course is how the experience builds. You know, people actually sometimes by the time they've got back, they've forgotten there was even a burn on the first hole. I've so overtaken with emotion. But as you play all the way out and you start to turn and come back in and you have that townscape of St. Andrew's skyline and the towers and the just the colored color, you know, Hamilton Hall, Hamilton Grande is now that red stone stones, sandstone. I just think it's the most amazing
place to come back to. So, you know, get you can talk about individual bunkers and individual greens, but I think it's the overall experience is just unmatched.
Yeah.
I always say, you know, the I think the greatest golf courses in the world you have like this. I personally have this like sadness that comes about me when I know it's almost done. And I think one of the unique things about the Old Course is like you just the buildings start getting closer and closer, and it almost like you know, you're just it's a bittersweet feeling of like I'm playing one of the best courses of
the world, but I know it's almost over. Yeah, And the buildings just get closer and closer to remind you of that.
That's right.
And you see some golfers and they've headed a long day and I can see it's dusk is sort of coming towards them, and they're halfway down the thirteenth fairway and they're like, am I going to get back and I'm going to get my photo on the sulk and burn bridge. I know some of some of the caddies have been saying, well, you know, we a better hurry up because the Links Trust take away the Sulk boom bridge at sunset. What do you mean is that you try to get the players to hurry up? Of course,
it's just made of stone, that's nonsense. But you know that it's such as so many great touch points that happen as you're coming back in from sixteen to seventeen to eighteen, and then you walk off and up those steps and back past the RNA, and you know, for so many people, and certainly when I was caidding, this was like a one time deal, right, This is the pilgrimage to the home of golf. And you can almost
sort of see the body. You know, the golf is totally irrelevant, you know, so I just maybe I'm with my dad or my mom or the while for the family or the son or who it might be, and it's like they live off that for the rest of their lives. I almost felt like, you know, sharing this experience was really special for me actually as well. And you start to realize that there's some places on the planet that just touch you in a really sort of right in your heart.
It's a really special place to be, all right.
Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. A big thanks to our A plus producer p J Clark. We'll be back next week and I hope you guys enjoyed this chat about the Old course in Scotland.