Scottish Links Golf

I did not, on this trip, plan to bring my golf clubs and play famous golf courses. I could see doing that for a week sometime; but lugging my clubs for a month was not on my itinerary. However, I did want to see how “links” golf in the home of golf compares with the few links golf experiences I’ve had here on the west coast. Brodick offered an easy and convenient opportunity, sitting just across the road from our B+B. This is the first green of the course.

I walked in towards town to the clubhouse, a modest structure that sits on a rise overlooking the course. The purple on the mountain in the background is heather which was in bloom while we were there.

I arranged to rent a set of clubs from a very friendly course manager who went down in the basement and assembled a set from several collections he had available. They were a grab bag of clubs to say the least; but I figured that maybe that was part of the links golf experience. The first tee sat adjacent to the clubhouse and you hit from there out to the meadow and the first fairway, behind me in the photo below. The bridge crosses a small stream that cuts across the course just below the tee and 18th green.

“Fairway” requires some clarification here. It’s essentially a large field or meadow that’s been mowed to a reasonable length. Groomed would be too strong a term in that the various uneven spots have been left uneven – part of the links golf charm. This course sits mostly on the flood plain of a couple of streams and so is relatively flat or very slightly rolling. As a result drainage channels, or “birns” have been cut across it in various places.

These sharp-edged birns can be hard to see in the distance (where you’re planning to hit your ball) and as you can see they wander around a bit so you have to learn where they are or you’ll be in them all the time. They’re not the sort of thing you can easily play out of so it’s costly – in terms of strokes – to spend much time there. I was lucky not to get caught since I was playing alone and sort of feeling my way around the course. The first green, as noted, sat across from our B+B.

As you can see, the green flows gently with the meadow – no drama here – but as you can also see, it has lots of smaller ripples and undulations that make putting a real challenge. The greens also have a bit coarser texture than we’re used to so a firmer stroke is required to assure the ball reaches the hole. After playing this hole I got the next of many surprises – I walked back along the first fairway to the second tee. And then, believe it or not, I teed off right over the first green.

I’ve highlighted the first green – at which you actually aim. Needless to say, people playing the first hole have to wait after hitting to the green for people on the second tee to pass by, after which they can move up and putt. The second green is another fairly straightforward affair.

The difference here is that you can see how close the course is to the water – one of the defining characteristics of links golf. The third hole (don’t worry, I’m not going to torture you with all 18 holes) introduced a variation that showed up a couple of times, a par three played across another stream that bisected the course.

It’s more of a mind game than anything in that it’s not a long shot and the stream is not really in play – unless you put it in play. I managed to knock the ball on the green and two-putt for my par. Many of the other holes were pretty uneventful but then every so often one would come along to challenge your assumptions, like this one.

In this view from the tee, the green is NOT the one off to the right; that’s the previous green. Then next green is somewhere down the shoreline and over some trees. You just have to take it on faith that you’ll find a green when you get there. Obviously, this is a course you have to play more than once to know how to select your clubs and and aim your shots. Finally, the course works its way back to the clubhouse. The final hole requires another blind shot over some trees to a lay up area short of the first stream and then a shot to the elevated green by the clubhouse. Since I couldn’t actually see the stream from the tee I managed to find it the hard way, and had to drop another ball to hit on to the green and putt out.

All in all, I had a lot of fun; and since I played with modest expectations, I did fine. One aspect of the course I really liked was not on the scorecard, though. That was the way in which the course sits so comfortably in the community, both physically and socially. It’s a public club that lots of locals use frequently and enjoy for what it is. That was a really pleasant part of links golf to discover.

 

Brodick

The Isle of Arran presents a pretty simple layout for visitors: a road that runs essentially around the coastline and another that goes up and over the mountainous center. The town of Brodick sits in an indentation in the eastern (more sheltered) coast, facing Ardrossan across the firth.

We chose to stay in a B+B (left red dot) about a mile north of the center of town (right red dot), along the perimeter road.

While at one time the island, like a lot of Scotland, produced very high quality wool for export, currently its economy is driven mostly by tourism. This means that the population varies seasonally, often tripling in the summer. We were not lonely in July. Though there is pretty regular bus service around the island, we opted most of the time to simply walk into town. Our B+B sat directly across the road from the first green of the local links golf course. In the view below the greenskeeper is mowing early in the day.

The course stretched in a casual fashion about halfway back to the center of town; so a few times we walked through the course on our way back and forth. Here’s a view of the B+B from the first green.

More about the golf later. The town of Brodick presents an unpretentious collection of buildings and businesses to the highway. There are lots of family-oriented eateries (we had ok Thai food one night), putt-putt golf, souvenir shops and other vacation oriented activities, all clustered along the road with houses on small streets climbing up the hill behind.

In our walks we did come across a ‘resort’ hotel tucked in behind the residential neighborhoods. It offered a higher level of entertainment and dining but also charged $350-400 a night. Nice looking place and grounds.

How a place like this makes it through the off season is a mystery. We sampled a nearby restaurant that had been created from an older estate. It also sat a bit off the beaten track but seemed to cater to more local clientele.

Some outrageous landscaping framed the approach driveway. Looked as if it belonged in Hawaii.

I’m not sure if the house included this greenhouse or if it was added when it became a restaurant; but it gave us a very congenial setting for dinner, especially with the geraniums hanging everywhere.

In our few days in Brodick we learned that the weather pulses across the island in a fairly regular way. Almost every day included some really comfortable, sunny weather interrupted by a dash of rain that would suddenly appear and then disappear. This pattern creates some dramatic skyscapes that became companions to our activities.

No one appears to pay much attention to what we saw as drama. Everyone just takes it for granted. One day we saw a women’s golf tournament starting out into one of these daily showers with everyone in slickers and under umbrellas. When we got back from our excursion a couple hours later the sun was out, the women were finishing up, life was good.