Category: Overview1

In July 2015 on the Old Course at St Andrews, the curtain came down on one of links golf’s greatest modern career. At the venerable age of 65, five time Open champion, and 3 time senior champion too, Tom Watson stood on the Swilcan Bridge in the half light of a gathering gloom before marching up the 18th for the final time.

The lights had burned brightly in the bay window of the R&A’s headquarters that overlook the green. Members (and it should be acknowledged Matt Kuchar and Graeme McDowell too) lined up to welcome him back. Now this isn’t another eulogy to Tom, but rather a comment on the fact that this happened at half past nine in the evening. You see, the ‘twilight round’ is a particularly rich nugget in Scottish links culture, and one that is worth giving full attention to.

It’s easy to overdose on adjectives when trying to describe just what a twilight round involves. Words such as tranquillity, serenity, and peacefulness readily come to mind. There is something uniquely calming about a links course bathed in the retreating summer glow of a receding sun. Long shadows are cast across the fairways. The subtle contours are accentuated as hollows appear deeper and darker and crests lighter, as they catch the fading illumination. Silhouettes are thrown into starker relief be their distinctive shaping, be it buildings, headlands, or skylines out at sea. If you’re lucky enough to catch such an experience in its true majesty, you could be treated to an explosion of colour as the sky catches fire, and the water below acts as natures ultimate mirror. It’s not just colour though, even the screech of a seagull reaffirms that nature’s conducting this symphony. Shangri-la.

At a latitude of 56.3404° N, St Andrews is nine degrees further north than Seattle. It’s an experience we at Faraway Fairways encourage our guests to sample. Reflecting on Friday evenings closing round the Daily Telegraph described it as;

“deliciously indulgent – and a peculiarly Scottish – pleasure. For summer golf here is traditionally an evening game. Indeed, in weeks when the Open is not in town, the St Andrews locals tend not to allow tourists even to tee off between 5pm and half past six, so that they can bathe in the strangely permissive enjoyment of golf in the gloaming. Even at 10pm – there is more than enough light in the sky to read the line of your final putt.”

Just in case you’re concerned, the locals of St Andrews might cherish their early evening starts and twilight golf, but they can allocate tee-times; so-called ‘dark times’, a bit of journalistic license maybe? but then the author has used the lower burden of “tend not to”

So where exactly are the best Twilight golf rounds to be had? Somewhat counter intuitively given that it’s the most southerly of Scotland’s major golf playing regions, the Ayrshire coast has a well won reputation. The sun sets in the west, and that means out at sea. The Isle of Arran and Ailsa Craig provide a hint of drama. Turnberry, Dundonald, and the Gailes courses won’t disappoint.

At 57.8800° N, Royal Dornoch can even play up until 11 o’clock at the height of summer. You’re on the equivalent of somewhere between Sitka and Juneau in southern Alaska.

At Nairn Dunbar they have a charity event called the ‘Longest day challenge’. It tees off at 01.00 in the morning and finishes at 23.00 (when it becomes too dark). They routinely play five courses in the 21 hours or so of light.

Courses like Dornoch, played in natural bays, which can often cast shadows and bend light. Cruden Bay on the Aberdeenshire coast is another candidate, and is leant further dramatic impact by the ruin of Slains Castle.

Courses with elevation can also become dramatic in fading light. The Castle Course is probably the pick of the St Andrews family. Here you’re greeted with extended vistas back into the town below. The harbour is also in full view and becomes symbolic of a safe haven against the gathering gloom. The distinctive ancient skyline is also thrown into relief, and of course the expanse of sea to the east.

Gullane is another dramatic links that looks out across Aberlady Bay and the Firth of Forth, towards the skyline of Edinburgh. On the same stretch of Lothian coastline, North Berwick is able to stir similar emotions set against a northern sky.

Castle Stuart combines a number of facets. A natural inlet on the Moray Firth ensures it has a more westerly profile than other courses in the area. Distant mountains give it relief, whilst the two tiered contouring provide elevation. As if that isn’t enough, you also have the foreboding atmosphere of being little more than a couple of par 5’s from the battlefield of Culloden.

Faraway Fairways always try and treat you to at least one twilight golf round where we can, it’s a uniquely Scottish preference and you really ought to play one to experience the inner-calming . We called it Shangri La, which naturally sent us to the Oxford English Dictionary for lexicographical insurance purposes;

“Imaginary earthly paradise – the name of a Tibetan utopia”

Well there’s nothing imaginary about this Shangri-La, and it’s Scottish, not Tibetan

In our series of classic holes, the name Carnoustie set us a puzzle. Ordinarily Hogan’s Alley (the sixth) and the Spectacles (the fourteenth) would be more than worthy candidates, albeit the second named plays as a formidable par 4 for regulars and a soft par 5 in the Open. We’ve tried to consider which hole you’re the most likely to be familiar with however, and perhaps derive the most enjoyment from playing. We’ve also looked for holes that have a compelling narrative. There can be little doubt that the burden as shifted to Carnoustie’s 18th hole, the final hole called ‘Home’, in light of the sheer drama and stories from recent decades. Ahead of the 2018 Open Championship, the BBC conducted an admittedly small sample poll of the rota’s most feared hole. Perhaps Carnoustie’s 18th hole was upper-most in their thoughts? but the casting vote went to Padraig Harrington, who after his torment of 2007 duly settled the argument in favour of Carnoustie ahead of the ‘Road Hole’ at St Andrews. Interestingly Justin Rose nominated Troon’s ‘Postage Stamp’, but then he did go onto record a remarkable four consecutive birdies on Carnoustie’s closing assignment! Perhaps the secret really is in the head? The hole itself isn’t the most demanding at Carnoustie by stroke index, but golfers have always endured something of a fatal attraction with water. The two weren’t really meant to co-exist one increasingly comes to realise, but they can’t seem to help themselves. Carnoustie’s 18th hole is defined by a water serpent that snakes its way through the fairway, the now infamous Barry Burn. In all a player has to cross it three times en-route to the sanctuary of the green. From the tee it snakes across the fairway making it a hazard both long to the left, and short to the right. It continues to whisper on your left shoulder throughout the second shot. A hook is fatal. Finally it performs an evil snap and turns viciously to the right to run in front of the green on a yardage that will frequently ask the question. Carnoustie’s 18th hole can become even treacherous if the R&A decide to permit the long rough to grow. At 3 feet high on the right of the hole this becomes borderline unplayable. For all this the secret to the eighteenth is relatively straight forward. Know your yardages, and keep it straight. The modern Carnoustie story, and the role played by the dastardly 18th possibly starts in 1975. With opening rounds of 71, 67 and 69, American debutant, Tom Watson sat three shots off leader Bobby Cole, in a chasing pack that included Jack Nicklaus, Jack Newton, Johnny Miller, Hale Irwin and Neil Coles. The following day Watson shot a solid 72, which included a 20 foot putt on the 18th that would ultimately prove decisive (something Stewart Cink would repeat in 2009 at Turnberry when Watson was the cruel victim). With the weather worsening challenges either failed to materialise or slipped away. As we moved towards the climax, Johnny Miller emerged as the most likely. A par at the last was all that was required. However, his tee shot found the fairway bunkers on the right. When he failed to escape his fate was sealed. Playing three from halfway up the fairway on Carnoustie’s 18th hole is no place to be. The play off would be featuring Watson and Newton. In these days a full 18 holes were played the following day in a strangely subdued atmosphere. Watson only established the advantage on 14 when chipping in for an eagle, but Newton pushed him all the way to the 18th. When Watson two putted for a regulation score, and Newton’s birdie putt slid past, the deal was sealed by a single stroke. Carnoustie’s 18th hole went into legend however when the Open returned to for the first time again in 1999. Frenchman Jean Van de Velde stood on the 72nd tee with a three shot lead of the Open Championship. As he withdrew a driver from his bag people looked on with incredulity and some audible murmurs of disapproval were clearly heard. He duly hit a wayward shot that went off towards the seventeenth fairway, but it was playable, surely he’d learnt his lesson? Nope!!!. The next club he took was a 2 iron!!! He hit the grandstand and with a wicked bounce found a horrible lie in deep rough. Not to be deterred though he duly turned concern into disaster and chipped into the ‘Barry Burn’ in his attempt to reach the green rather than playing laterally. Assessing his worsening predicament Jean decided the only answer was to go fishing, and began the torturously slow process of theatrically removing his socks and shoes!!! In truth, it was probably this animated act that cost him the Open. The ball had come to rest on a water shrub. Enough of it was clear of the water to permit a shot. It was this that persuaded him to investigate. Van de Velde later said that the weight of the ball had pushed down on the shrub causing it to dip below the water. No it hadn’t! What he didn’t know was that the burn is tidal. As he continued the ceremonial socks and shoes routine time was ebbing away. The tide was coming in. Had he got straight into the burn and played it, he would in all likelihood have escaped, and been holding the claret jug with wet feet After much deliberation and surveillance of his stricken ball, he started to take some practise swings. Ultimately common sense prevailed. Contrary to popular folklore Van de Velde didn’t actually try extracting his lie from Davy Jones’s locker and elected to take the penalty drop. His pitch however fared little better and scurried across the putting surface before dribbling into a green-side bunker. He completed a triple-bogey 7 to see him tie and ultimately lose in a play-off to Paul Lawrie. Today his exploits have been cemented into the walls of the Barry Burn by way of a tribute 1999 was pure drama and theatre, you sense the R&A couldn’t wait to get back, and eight years later he we were again. By Saturday evening however, the championship had taken on a decidedly anti-climatic feel. Sergio Garcia had been reduced to tears back in 1999, but in 2007 he stood three shots clear of his nearest challenger, Steve Stricker, who was himself three shots clear of a group including Padraig Harrington. It was going to take a Herculean effort for someone to come from six shots back surely? García struggled without collapsing. By the time the closing holes came around he had been caught by Harrington who was on fire. The Irishman had clawed himself into the narrowest of leads at 9 under, one ahead of the Spaniard. Padraig Harrington duly stood on the 18th knowing that a regulation score would likely be enough. Like 1999 however, the Barry Burn was to take a hand. Harrington went into the water not once, but twice. Somehow he managed to salvage a double-bogey six to finish seven under. The pendulum had swung back to García, who now held a one-shot lead. Playing last he only required a par. His second shot found a greenside bunker. He chipped out and left a ten footer for the title. Agonisingly the 18th was being as capricious as ever. The putt lipped out and he had to settle for a playoff. Ultimately Harrington came to the 18th second time round with a two shot lead, and after having twice found water earlier that afternoon played for a bogey and secured the title What’s not remembered is that Andres Romero also had one hand on the claret jug that Sunday. He was 9-under after 70 holes with a two-stroke lead, but the Argentine was done in by a double bogey at 17, which he compounded when also becoming yet another victim of 18. He too shot a bogey to finish a single stroke out of the playoff.

The Postage Stamp might be the hole that catches the media attention, but it’s Royal Troon’s, ‘Railway Hole’, the 11th, that is ranked number one by stroke-index.

At 490 yards from the Championship tee, this is a tough and penal par 4. The ‘Road Hole’ at St Andrews generates more bogeys, and a marginally higher average score (there’s not much in it). The ‘Railway Hole’ however, generates significantly more doubles, triples, or worse. It is the archetypal score wrecker. You don’t just drop a shot here if it goes wrong, you blow your card up instead! that’s why it ranks as arguably the most feared hole on the Open Championship rotation.

The eleventh is one of those rare breeds of holes that always makes it into any composite course nomination without argument. Rather than attempt to extol its virtues ourselves however, Faraway Fairways thought we’d allow Jack Nicklaus to introduce you to it.

“The eleventh hole at Troon, ‘the Railway’, oh this is a tough, tough, golf hole. Right along the railway, gorse on the right, gorse on the left, very little fairway to play to. There’s out-of-bounds to the right on the second shot. The wind is usually sweeping left to right across the golf hole, it’s a very, very, difficult hole. You play it just off the tee and usually think… just how do I survive, the hole? The first Open Championship I played there in 1962 I got in the gorse and I didn’t know how to get it out. Or what to do with it. I made a lot of strokes. So that hole has always been a very difficult and frustrating hole for me, and a very dangerous hole. You really don’t know where the left edge of the fairway is, and don’t know where the right edge of the fairways is, so when you hit it, your first reaction is, did it carry? Yeah it carried. Did it stop? Because you’re playing at an angle through the fairway. And even if you get it in the fairway, you’ve still got this long shot into a green that’s right against the wall that goes to the railway. So you’ve always got a chance of hitting the green and bouncing over the wall out-of-bounds. I think it’s probably the most dangerous hole I know in British golf” – Jack Nicklaus

The Championship tee is on the right. The safer, shorter line, is to the left, but it leaves a longer second. Not only that, but the fairway undulates more as well towards the left. The lie and stance for your second can’t be guaranteed

The second is all about accuracy and distance. You will normally have a stiff breeze snapping at you from the left to contend with now

The out of bounds runs right along the green whilst the green itself isn’t without its tricks, or certainly the surroundings is. It’s slight raised on a plinth which means that you really need to hit it from the vertical. Trying to roll onto the surface risks being taken by the swale and a horrible up and down scramble. The railway line ensures that a terminal out-of-bounds is snarling at your right flank throughout the flight. Just for good measure, there’s a perimeter stonewall on the right-hand side of the green too, with devious contouring designed to help anything that fails to apply the brakes from running into it. As you might imagine this leaves a borderline unplayable third (shades of the Road Hole at St Andrews) but without the option of playing a feasible ricochet. A heavy hit on a shallow angle, with a hard bounce can be equally as fatal. The wall isn’t necessarily big enough to prevent you bouncing over it and onto the railway line.

The temptation to err down the left (the preferable bail out) has been anticipated. A nasty pot bunker awaits with tapering designed to draw your ball in like a moth to a light. Even if you get a flyer and run through the green (few do, or even can) then there is another jungle waiting behind the putting surface.

Jack Nicklaus isn’t the only legend to have come to serious grief at Troon’s ‘Railway Hole’. Having put a field to the sword by a staggering twelve shots at Augusta a few months earlier Tiger Woods made his Open Championship debut at Troon in 1997. For the first ten holes he strode around with the air of a king awaiting his coronation. Let’s be honest, the custodians of links golf were nervous. They didn’t really want someone shredding the course. As he came forward to address his tee-shot on eleven, they got some relief. Like Nicklaus before him, Tiger was about discover that gorse respects no reputations.

“Tiger in the Jungle” the British tabloids led with the next day. Tiger hacked out of the gorse and into the long rough. Eventually he hacked back into the fairway, and by the time he’d finished he would be signing for a triple bogey seven. The courses honour had been restored, and Troon’s ‘Railway Hole’ would claim another illustrious scalp

Playing from the non-championship tee is no less a daunting prospect. The treacherous gorse and railway are still in play. Those who play the links of Troon have long suspected that gorse is a cunning collusion between nature and golf ball manufacturers.

By the time Henrik Stenson was adding his name to the plinth on the claret jug in 2016, another notable winner was being confirmed. The ‘Railway Hole’ had further cemented its legend in the tapestry of Troon. Once again it ranked first by stroke index and yielded an average score of 4.559.

Despite the R&A bringing the tees up after the opening day this pernicious par 4 had taxed the golfer’s a total of 61 double-bogeys or worse. New names added to its victims included; Bubba Watson (7) Dustin Johnson (7) Danny Lee (7) Rickie Fowler (8) and Louis Oosthuizen (9). We should give a shout out to both Brandt Snedeker (-1) and Andy Sullivan (-2) who were the only golfer’s under par all week. They must have wondered what all the fuss was about?

If imitation is indeed the ultimate complement of excellence, then the Original Redan Hole, North Berwick, the par 3, fifteenth hole on the West Links, can probably lay claim to be the best hole in golf. No single hole in the history of golf course architecture has been more copied.

The chances are you’ve played a ‘Redan hole’ albeit not everyone is aware of it. The only thing that probably prevents this hole being more internationally recognised is the fact that North Berwick isn’t long enough to host Major championships. If it were, then the Redan would be every bit as famous as the Postage Stamp. So just what exactly is ‘a Redan’? Well in this case it’s a mid range par 3 hole laid out to about 190yds, which was long in the days that it was conceived.

The yardage is important, as its designed to be reachable with a longer club and hence a shallower angle of approach. This is because a Redan hole has a specific geometric and topographic fingerprint. The green is set at an angle of forty five degrees to the approach, right to left. The first thing this does is reduce the available landing area. In effect a shot hit at identical yardage can be too short or too long dependent on just what portion of the green it is aimed at. The geometric alignment is only part of the challenge. There’s topographic headache to contend with too.

A Redan green will normally sit on an elevated ridge line and make a traditional bump and run shot extremely hazardous. Elevated greens aren’t uniquely tricky though. A Redan is characterised more by the fact that it slopes downward and away from the point of entrance, typically the front right portion of the green towards the back. As you might imagine therefore, approach on a shallow angle, which 190yds almost guaranteed, will only see the ball roll away on the contours. You quickly run out of green as the forty five degree angle reduces the playing surface to the precise line of intersection.

The final twist in the DNA concerns earthwork defences at the front, and on the left flank. In golf, this means bunkers. A typical Redan layout lies at a 45 degree angle to the tee, with bunkers on the direct line, and the use of mounding at the front to cause a runaway zone. The green is often defined by the contours of the slope. It kind of begs the question why anyone would even try to solve this puzzle by playing at the pin?

The analogy with a hill fort isn’t just poetic license. A ‘Redan’ is salient strategic position, typically a V shape, which protrudes from a defensive wall. It permits defenders to engage an attack early and weaken it before it reaches it’s main objective. The reason the name ‘Redan’ came to rest on a Scottish golf course was a direct result of the Crimean War. A serving officer, John White-Melville was frequently thwarted by North Berwick’s 6th hole (now the 15th) on his return. Exasperated, by the holes formidable defences he compared it the fortress he had encountered at Sebastopol. It was conquered only after nearly a year of attrition, in which deaths totalled more than 20,000 British and 80,000 French soldiers. Other’s who played the hole quickly came to sympathise with John White-Melville. Charles B MacDonald is the name most commonly associated with the Redan hole. Macdonald’s oft-quoted description from Scotland’s Gift: Golf is as follows:

“Take a narrow tableland, tilt it a little from right to left, dig a deep bunker on the front side, approach it diagonally and you have a Redan.”

In truth the formula for a Redan is a little bit more complex. Outside of novelty courses which seek to replicate classic holes to their exact measurement (never successfully) the secret lies in taking the building blocks of the concept, and then applying them to the circumstances that the course architect has inherited. MacDonald built his Redan hole at the National Golf Links of America, Southampton, where the fourth is regarded by some of the best Redan in the world.

The seventh at Shinnecock Hills is another famous Redan. It came to notoriety in the 2004 US Open. Players called it unfair, spectators gave it catcalls and golf writers termed it a travesty, such was it’s difficulty. We’ll invoke Ron Whitten to tell the story and speak in its defence; “Hardly anybody in the Open played the Redan the way it’s supposed to be played…. I saw Phil Mickelson go for the flag, as did Tiger Woods and Ernie Els and many others. On Saturday, only 27 percent of the field hit the green. On Sunday, only 15 percent, but one of those was Tim Herron, paired with Tiger that day. Herron played it correctly, hitting short right of the green, bouncing it onto the surface and rolling it down to the hole, which was in the right center. Herron’s shot stopped 15 feet away and he made his putt for birdie…. Retief Goosen was one of only six players to par the Redan hole all four rounds. Not surprisingly, he won the championship. People attribute that to his deft putting, but I think it had a lot to do with game management, too. With four pars on Shinnecock’s tough Redan, Goosen obviously knows how to analyse and execute”.

Chris DiMarco was one of the victims offered his solution to Shinnecock’s Redan to Golf World magazine. “They just need to redo that green,” he said. “The seventh hole had been sitting there for five years. There’s one hole out of control every year [for a U.S. Open]. It’s just unfair. It’s not golf.” Whitten delivered the rebuke: “With due respect to DiMarco, who is a top-flight player and a nice guy to boot, the game will be poorer if we start going around obliterating classic old Redan greens because modern players can’t play their usual game of darts on them.”

Modern designers still build Redan holes. Tom Doak is one such advocate, so too is Pete Dye, who introduced his own variant at the 13th at TPC Sawgrass. Not surprisingly he did away with sand and used water! As you will have realised by now, the signature of a Redan lies in the green complex. You don’t need to restrict it to a par 3. Fisher’s Island has two Redan holes, the par 3 second, and the par 5, eighth. We’ve described a difficult hole for good reason, it’s tough!

So how do you play a Redan hole? An intuitive links player will normally be at an advantage over a target parkland golfer. Links Magazine debating the point were dismissively prescient on the subject “best of luck playing dart-board golf on a Redan”. A Redan is often played in an indirect manner; that is, the player pitches away from the target and then allows the ball to discuss the issue with the contours of the green to determine its final resting point. A shorter hitter who is reduced to using a longer club is of course most in danger. Some Redan’s will incorporate a raised banking. Raynor and Macdonald generally designed their Redans with an exaggerated “kick-back” slope in the approach and front section of the green. This feature permitted players to risk a bump and into this embankment, and hope the banking absorbed most of the energy from the shot, whilst allowing it to retain just enough to skip forward and flop onto the deck.

The original Redan hole can still be found at the 15th on the west links of North Berwick, and is in no danger of being dug up to satisfy the whims of a new generation of target golfers. If you fancy pitting yourself against it, then it climaxes a little run of great links holes including the quirky 13th, with it’s stonewall traverse, and daring 14th where an over-hit puts you onto the beach.

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The St Andrews Road Hole is one of golf’s ‘great holes’ and yet the anatomy of a great hole is never easy to completely dissect, yet alone bottle. There are a few things however which can certainly give it a boost.

1: Where it sequentially features on a course.

2: The realistic possibility of all three scores being achieved

3: A number of different things that can go wrong

The 17th at St Andrews ‘the Road Hole’, passes the first of these requirements by definition. The Road Hole possibly falters a little bit on the second parameter however. Since it was lengthened from a sporting 445yds to a brutal 495yds, birdies have been an increasingly endangered species. We said “all three scores” though? Well perhaps we could interpret that as meaning ‘par’, ‘bogey’ and ‘double’! OK, so with a bit of license we’ve ticked the second box as well. It’s the third requirement where it distinguishes itself however.

So let’s take a step-by step look at this score wrecker

There was a time when the trauma started with the dilemma faced on the tee. The shot plays blind over the old railway sheds, now the hotel. Club selection was the key. The conservative option was to play to the wider top of the fairway and slightly left. A drive of 260yds onto the larger landing strip however, would still leave you a perilous 235yds to the flag into a narrow green. You could postpone the difficult shot from the tee, but you couldn’t avoid having to play one at some point. There is a higher risk option. As the fairway advances towards the green, it starts to narrow. The hotel to the right is out of bounds, and anything hit too far left is likely to fall into the long rough which will nearly always prevent you reaching the putting surface in two (unless your name is Seve!).

If you play longer, and succeed in finding the narrower fairway on 280yds, you’re left with a 2nd shot of about 210yds; easy! Golfer’s who frequently surveyed their second from the safer yardage would begin to wonder whether they’d actually assigned themselves something closer to the more impossible of two choices.

You won’t be able to see where you’ve landed from the tee. It’s only as you round the corner into the fairway that you’ll get the telegram that tells you the good or bad news. This was what Tom Watson faced in 1984 when going head to head with Seve Ballesteros. Against conventional commentator opinion, it was the more conservative Watson who elected to gamble and go aggressive. The supposedly cavalier Spaniard by contrast played safe. As Tom walked into the fairway, he learned he was in position ‘A’. His ball had found the spot for a perfect approach.

Seve’s by contrast dumped his short, and in the hay. A horrible second awaited. Surely a sixth Open awaited the American, and an unprecedented clean sweep of the Scottish roster?

The first thing to notice about your second shot is the actual green itself. The geometry of the green is also working against you. Viewed from above it resembles a figure-eight, peanut, with bulbous ends and a slender middle. Playing to the nearest of these bulges leaves a lengthy putt over a ridge with little prospect of anything better than a par. Trying to hit the middle section is hideously difficult. Not only is it a mere 16yds in width to land on, it is brutally defended by two of the most famous hazards in golf.

In the front lies ‘the Road Hole Bunker’. It’s deceiving. The bunker itself is small in area, but deep and steep. It tapers like a hole on a pinball machine, and therefore plays appreciably bigger than it is. Any ball bouncing or rolling too close will invariably be snaffled by it. A bit like a trap-door spider. It’s a bunker you don’t have to ‘hit’ to end up in. Just getting near enough, within its magnetic pull, and the chances are you’ll roll into it

In 1970 Doug Sanders played what Jack described as the best bunker save he’d ever seen when chipping out to inches. Surely the claret jug was his? Well no. His fate is well documented and unravelled with one of golf’s greatest ever missed putts on 18 some fifteen minutes later.

In 1979 Tommy Nakajima led the Open before becoming acquainted. He took four shots to execute his escape leading to the British press corps to dub the bunker, ‘The Sands of Nakajima’. The name didn’t last, but the story endures. In 1995 it was the bunker that decided the fate of the Open again. In regulation play John Daly blasted out from an improbable lie to limit the damage. An hour later it would be Costatino Rocca who faced the same shot in a play off with the American. Rocca needed two attempts. Daly sailed to the title

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The threat isn’t restricted to the front of the green though. If anything the area behind is defended even more aggressively. The green itself has a fairly steep swale. In itself this isn’t a problem. It’s just that this one leads onto a road. A golf ball wasn’t decided to hold on tarmac. Anything the lacks elevation and comes in on a shallow angle risks kissing the surface and skipping through. The Road Hole isn’t finished with you though. A limestone wall runs behind the road. As the ball picks up speed on the tarmac it will nearly always hit the wall. A strong ricochet might bounce you clear. A deadening one however leaves you tight against the wall with potentially no back swing.

One shot Watson did have available to him incidentally, is one of the classic shots in golf and unique to this hole. This involves turning your back on the green and playing straight into the wall itself with the view to affecting a rebound off the rock and back across the road to the green. An Open championship will normally see someone attempting this escape. Miguel Angel Jiminez famously saved himself doing this.

One of the great beauties of golf is that it’s a slow burn. A punitive hole should perhaps offer the golfer a chance of recovering on a sliding scale of difficulty commensurate to their error. The 17th at Sawgrass for example is just one shot and lacking in subtlety. It’s either on the green to cheers, or it’s in the water (usually to cheers as well!). Then it’s over. It doesn’t pose the riddle of ‘what you’re going to do next?’. That can only be asked if the ball stays in play and has the scope to ask many different questions dependent on where it’s come to lie.

In 2014 the BBC surveyed a sample of tour professionals to establish which hole of those on the Open roster was their favourite. It was a two horse race. When the final counting was done, the par 3, eighth, ‘The Postage Stamp’, at Royal Troon, narrowly headed the 17th at St Andrews, ‘the Road Hole’, but why?

The hole’s charisma wasn’t immediately obvious. It originally assumed the name ‘Ailsa’ due to the view of Ailsa Craig on the horizon. It took a 1909 article written in Golf Illustrated to change this. With a sense of palpable protest rather than affection, Willie Park Jnr described the eighth hole at Royal Troon as;

“A putting surface skimmed down to the size of a postage stamp”

What is it about this beautifully simple description that immediately ensured that everyone who read it, knew what this green was about? It’s fair to say the name stuck.

The tee is slightly elevated and involves driving over a gully in order to find the landing strip. Gorse to your left can deceive you into thinking the flight is more sheltered than you’re about to discover it is. The carry is only 123yds, and in range for all of us. It’s the geometry combined with the topography that makes it such a potentially formidable nemesis however. It’s difficult to hit, and equally difficult to hold. From front to back the green measures 31yds. It’s protected by a phalanx of deep pot bunkers, two right, two left, and one centre front. It’s the width of the green that makes it so frightening. It measures just 9yds at it’s narrowest, and 14 yds at it’s widest (front bulge).

The landscape is no less forgiving. The green is cut into a sand hill. It gives the impression of being a mini amphitheatre, but you play to an audience of spiteful long and tangled grass. Aggressive vegetation has reclaimed the riparian boundaries with relish. The penal philosophy of course architecture advocates gradation of punishment dependent on the severity of the error.

The Postage Stamp can be harsh. A shot that only misses by a few feet can land you in deep trouble, and yet this is links golf, a quirk or two is mandatory. In 1973 Scotland’s David Russell, then a mere 19 years of age, became the youngest player to hole in one at a Major when his badly hit 7 iron took a fortuitous bounce off the dune, trickled between the two bunkers, and politely enquired before consenting to drop. Forty five minutes later, at the venerable age of 71, the 1932 winner Gene Sarazen took aim. As he retrieved his ball he became the oldest player to fire an ace in a Major Championship. The next day Sarazen was given a bit of additional attention to see if he could repeat the feat. His tee shot landed flush in a bunker. Well that’s the Postage Stamp for you. He calmly walked down to survey his predicament, picked up a sand wedge, and chipped in for a birdie. Easy really isn’t it?

The Postage Stamp hadn’t finished in 1973. In the final round Johnny Miller and Tom Weiskopf were paired and going head to head. Miller playing first struck his shot to with a few feet, and being unable to resist playing a few mind games with the notoriously talented but temperamentally fragile Weiskopf couldn’t resist a look over at Tom to let him know. Tom duly responded and hit inside of Johnny’s ball. Both men birdied, but Miller’s prowess was punctured at the Postage Stamp. The name Weiskopf would be carved into the claret jug a few hours later.

With a Stroke Index of 18, it’s the easiest assignment on the course, yet when things unravel, they tend to come apart spectacularly. In 1997 a 21-year-old sensation called Tiger Woods arrived at Troon. He’d just smashed up Augusta and become the youngest winner of the Masters by a record margin. Things had started go wrong for Tiger in the opening round when he fired a quadruple at Troon’s most notorious11th, the Railway Hole. Improbably however, he’d clawed his way back to the outer fringe of the pack by Sunday, but would finally come to grief at the Postage Stamp. Having landed in one of the greenside bunkers, he failed to escape with his first attempt. A three putt would follow from 15 feet for a triple bogey six. Tiger’s analysis was simple and typical “The ball was buried and I pretty much didn’t have a shot. I was just trying to get it out and didn’t hit it hard enough. The putts, I don’t know… maybe I rushed them”. To some extent that is the Postage Stamp encapsulated. It’s demoralising to think that 123yds could require six shots to complete. Even Tiger Woods doesn’t really seem to know how it happened, but it did.

Troon is Colin Montgomerie territory, it’s his home track, and he can probably talk with more authority than anyone on this subject. “No round at Troon is secure until you have passed this hole in regulation numbers. I’ve hit the ball to one inch and tapped in for a birdie, but I’ve also had sevens and eights. The wind can change everything at Troon. If there was no wind, ideally, I would hit a wedge straight at the pin and birdie the hole. If I was playing downwind I would try and hit a sand wedge to the front of the green and let the ball release to the back where the pin usually is. Into the wind the shot can demand anything up to a five-iron and then things become interesting.” Spare a thought for a German amateur named Hermann Tissies however, who found a bunker with his first shot in 1950. Thirteen shots later he escaped, before putting the infamous green to the sword when he holed out for a 15.